This Day, September 18, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L #ourCOG (2024)

#ourCOG This Day, September 18, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

This Day, September 18, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L

September 18

825
BCE:
The Jewish people began a 14-day celebration
to dedicate the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. The Temple project was initiated by
King David, and built by his son, King Solomon. Solomon’s Temple was the
spiritual center of Jewish life for 410 years, until its destruction by the
Babylonians in 422 BCE (As reported by Aish)

31:
Sejanus, Roman head of Praetorian Guard was murdered in the periodic intrigue
that wracked Roman government at the imperial level. Born in 20 BCE,
Sejanus was in the business of violently dispatching then enemies of the
Emperor Tiberias. Sejanus had a
reputation as anti-Semite and his patron Tiberius was no friend of the Jews.

53:
Birthdate of Trajan who was Roman Emperor when the Jews in the Diaspora
revolted in 115. The revolt ended in 117 but Trajan died before the Jews were
vanquished.

323: Constantine the Great decisively defeats Licinius in the
Battle of Chrysopolis, establishing Constantine’s sole control over the Roman
Empire. This victory came between the Edict of Milan (313) which legalized
Christianity and the Council of Nicea (325) which was designed to bring
conformity to Christian doctrine and practice.
This victory by the first “Christian Emperor” would help in the drive to
make Christianity the only acceptable religion throughout the Roman Empire.

1180: King Louis VII of France died. His reign had not been a good
period for the Jews since in 1144 he expelled all the Jews who had converted to
Christianity and then returned to Judaism. Also, during his reign I the first
Blood Libel in France took place in Blois in 1171.

1180: Philip Augustus became king of France. Immediately after his coronation Philip Augustus ordered
the Jews arrested on a Saturday, in all their synagogues, and despoiled of
their money and their vestments. In the following April, 1182, he published an
edict of expulsion, but according the Jews a delay of three months for the sale
of their personal property. Immovable property, however, such as houses,
fields, vines, barns, and wine-presses, he confiscated. The Jews attempted to
win over the nobles to their side, but in vain. In July they were compelled to
leave the royal domains of France (and not the whole kingdom); their synagogues
were converted into churches. These successive measures were simply expedients
to fill the royal coffers. The goods confiscated by the king were at once
converted into cash.” Desperate for money, Phillip reversed his decisions and
allowed the Jews to return in 1196. The
conditions were humiliating for the Jewish community and exposed the avaricious
nature of the French monarch. The King established special accounts to keep
track of the financial condition of the Jews to ensure that he collected the
maximum amount of money from that that was possible. At a time when serfdom was beginning to
disappear, the Jews became the serfs of the King and his nobles. Just as they could dispose of “my lands” in
any manner they so fit, so could they treat “my Jews” in any way they chose.

1346: The sons Judah ben Asher “the German Talmudist who became
the Rabbi at Toledo” signed an agreement similar to the one already signed by
their father and their uncle regarding “the disposition of their own earnings”
for charitable purposed.

1349:
In response to charges that they had poisoned wells “a large number of Jews” some
say 330 were “sent to the stake in the Rhineland although others escaped by
agreeing to be baptized”

1380:
The Cortes of Soria, Castile, denies the rights of Jews to judge their own
criminal cases. The Cortes also reaffirmed King Enrique II’s decree forbidding
Jews from serving in the royal administration. These events help fuel the
harangues of Ferran Martinez who lead the bloody anti-Jewish events of 1391.

1490:
The coronation of Vladislaus II as King
of Hungary and Croatia, who closed the Old Jewish Cemetery Prague in 1478 while
he was king of Bohemia, took place today.

1505:
Consecration of Gian Pietro Carafa, who as Pope Paul IV had issued the bull,
Cum Nimis Absurdum (the title stemmed from its opening phrase, “Since it
is absurd”) ordering the creation of a Jewish ghetto in Rome” which would
have the immediate effect of reducing by half the Jewish population during a
five year period.

1553(10th
of Tishrei): Yom Kippur is additionally somber following the recent burning of
copies of the Talmud.

1553:
Following the death of King Edward VI and he rise of Catholic Queen Mary, today
Miles Cloverdale, a translator of the Bible into English who relied on Luther’s
Bible and the Vulgate but who did have some knowledge of Hebrew as can be seen
by the fact that “the name of the Diety appears in Hebrew on the Title Page”
and that Hebrew characters are used to mark the divisions of the Book of
Lamentations” “was rejected from his see and Vesey…”

1573:
During the Eighty Years War, Spain attacked the Dutch city of Alkmaar. The Dutch forces would withstand the
subsequent siege. Their victory proved
to be a turning point in the Eighty Years, which when it ended would guarantee
that the Netherlands would be an independent nation free from Spanish control.
This meant that Holland would continue to be a place of refuge for the Jews of
Europe, especially those fleeing the Spanish Inquisition, and provide a place
where a Jewish community could flourish.

1587:
Sigmund III Vasa began his reign as King of Poland and Grand Duke of Luthian
succeeding King Stephan Bathori “who was the friend of the Jews residing in
Grodno.”

1612
(27 Elul): In Frankfurt, Vincent Fettmilch a former pastry cook and leader of
the Guilds”, calling himself the “new Haman of the Jews attacked the
synagogue while the community was at prayer. Although many tried to organize a
defense they were soon overpowered and many took shelter in the cemetery. He
was beheaded four years later. His real crime was to turn against the ruling
class of Frankfort. It was for this for
which he lost his head.

1656(10th
of Tishrei, 5417): Yom Kippur services were held for
the first time in Amsterdam. Neighbors thinking
that they were secret Catholics reported them to the authorities and the
leaders were arrested. Once it was explained that they were secret Jews rather
than Papists, they were let alone and the leaders released. The oldest
synagogue in Amsterdam (possibly all of Western Europe) is “The Great
Synagogue” built in 1671. According to historians, it was built so that
Jews would not have to worship in clandestine places.

1722:
On “the eve of the New Year 5483” the Great Synagogue, which was later referred
to as “Moses Hart’s Shul” was dedicated in London.

1739:
The Treaty of Belgrade was signed today ending one of the many wars between the
Ottoman Empire and the Habsburgs. As a result of the treaty, Belgrade and
northern parts of Serbia were ceded to the Ottoman Empire. This was a positive event for the Jews of the
region, many of whom were Sephardim whose progenitors had arrived after the
Spanish Inquisition. At this time living
under the Ottomans was preferable to life under the Habsburgs. Additionally, it made it easier for the Jews
to engage in overseas trade.

1758(15th
of Elul, 5518): Rabbi Akiv Eger author of Mishnas De’Rebbi Akiva who was rabbi
of Zülz, Silesia from 1749 and Pressburg from 1756 and the grandfather of Rabbi
Akiva Eger passed away today.

1758:
A letter addressed to David Frank told of the “the sale of policy of to Mr.
Benjamin Levy”

1762(1st
of Tishrei, 5523): Rosh Hashana

1764(Elul,
5524): Jonathan Eybeschütz, the Dayan of Prague who served simultaneously as
the Rabbi of Alton, Hamburg and Wandsbek, passed away today.

http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Eybeschutz_Yonatan

http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/112378/jewish/Rabbi-Jonathan-Eybeschutz.htm

1765(3rd
of Tishrei, 5526): Tzom Gedaliah

1765:
Birthdate of Pope Gregory XVI. In 1836 the Jewish community of Rome will send a
petition to Pope Gregory XVI begging him to stop the annual Saturnalia abuse of
the Jewish community. He will refuse the request saying that, “It is not
opportune to make any innovation.”

1771(10th
of Tishrei, 5532): Yom Kippur

1773(1st
of Tishrei, 5534): As the colonists try and figure out how to respond to the
Tea Act of 1773 Jews observe Rosh Hashanah just 3 months before the Boston Tea
Party.

1777(16th
of Elul, 5537): During the American Revolution, in a skirmish that followed the
Battle of Brandywine, Captain Lewis Bush was killed today and his brother
Solomon was wounded by a musket ball that broke his thigh bone.

1778:
In “Frankfurt am main,” Bunle Oettingen Schuster and Salomon Loeb Schott” gave
birth to Abraham Schott who eventually settled Amsterdam.

1783:
Sixty-five-year-old Hebrew scholar Benjamin Kennicott, a fellow of Exeter
College, Oxford and a fellow of the Royal Society who wrote The State of the
Printed Hebrew Text of the Old Testament
and Vetus Testamentum hebraicum cum variis lectionibus (Old
Testament in Hebrew with a variety of lessons)
and who in 1760 “issued
proposals for collating all Hebrew manuscripts of date prior to the invention
of printing” passed away today.

1790(10th
of Tishrei, 5551): Yom Kippur

1790:
Forty-four-year-old Prince Henry, Duke of Cumberland and Strathearn who was the
patron of Jacob Philadelphia, “a Jewish magician, physicist, mechanic, juggler,
astrologer, alchemist, and Kabbalist” passed away today.

1791:
In Charleston, SC, Lyon Levy and his wife gave birth Elias Levy, the husband of
Rachel Moise whom he married in 1821.

1792(2nd
of Tishrei, 5553): Second Day of Rosh Hashanah observed as Secretary of State
Thomas Jefferson wrote to President George Washington telling him that he was
returning the signed “proclamation on the proceedings again the laws for
raising a revenue on distilled spirits.

1793:
Woolrich, England native, the South
Carolina State treasurer Lyon Levy and Leah Tobias gave birth to Elias Levy,
the husband of Rachel E. Moise Levy and the father of Cherrie, Charles,
Cordelia and Clarence Levy.

1802(21st
of Elul, 5562): Selichot

1803(2nd
of Tishrei, 5564): Second Day of Tishrei

1806:
Today “Louis-Mathieu Molé announced to the Assembly that the emperor was
satisfied with the answers and that he intended, in order to give a religious
sanction to the principles expressed therein, to call together a Sanhedrin.
Like the Sanhedrin of old, this Sanhedrin was to be composed of seventy-one
members, two-thirds rabbis and one-third laymen, having at their head one
president and two vice-presidents.”

1808:
Moses Nathan married Hava Samuel at the Hambro Synagogue today.

1810(19th
of Elul, 5570): Samuel Jacobs, Jr. the New York born son of Samuel Jacobs and
the husband of Catherine Jacobs who he married at Charleston in 1805 passed
away today in Charleston, SC.

1810: Under the leadership of Bernard O”Higgins,
Chile declared her independence from Spain. It would take Chile 8 years of
effort to finally gain that independence.
The new Chilean government would ban the Inquisition which would give
Chile’s Convsersos a chance to begin practicing their faith in public. O’Higgins enjoyed support among the Convserso
Community.

1811(29th
of Elul, 5571): Erev Rosh Hashana

1812(12th
of Tishrei, 5573): Amsterdam resident Bendit Ben the “author of a chronicle in
Yiddish and Hebrew that covered “the most important era in the history of Dutch
Jewry in modern times (1795-1812)” and “defended in this work the rights of
Dutch Jews to use Yiddish (“our Jewish language” [unzer loshn yehudis],
as he put it) against assimilation to the Dutch tongue which the proponents of
assimilation sought” passed away today.

https://congressforjewishculture.org/people/4553/Ben,%20Bendit%20(%E2%80%93September%2018,%201812)

1818:
During a period of reaction under King Frederick William III, the Jews of
Prussia were no longer allowed to hold any academic positions. This led some Jews, including Heine, to
conclude that the only road to real advancement passed through the Baptismal
font.

1819:
Birthdate of Dutch author and Utrecht University graduate Mark Prager Lindon,
the “inspect of schools in School in South Holland from 1865” until his death
in 1879 and the person who translated the works of Dickens, Thackeray, Field,
Sterne and Scott form English into Dutch.

1820(10th
of Tishrei, 5581): As James Monroe seeks re-election in a Presidential election
unique because he would win all but one of the votes in the Electoral College,
Jews observe Yom Kippur

1822(3rd
of Tishrei, 5583): Tzom Gedaliah

1824(25th
of Elul, 5584): Parashat Nitzavim-Vayleich; Leil Selichot observed for the last
time during the Presidency of James Monroe

1825:
Rabbi David Aaron de Sola, Dutch born Son of Rafael Aron (v. Haim David) de
Sola and Sara v. Isaac Namias Torres and his wife Rebecca (Rica) de Sola gave
birth to Alexander Abraham de Sola, a Canadian Rabbi, author, Orientalist, and scientist.
Originating from a large renowned family of Rabbis and scholars, De Sola was
part of family long known for its Rabbis and scholars. He was recognized as one
of the most powerful leaders of Orthodox Judaism in the United States during
the latter half of the nineteenth century. He passed away on June 5, 1882.

1825:
Birthdate of Seligman Baer, the native of Baden who was “a student of the
Masoretic text, an editor of the Hebrew Bible and Jewish liturgy.”

http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/2340-baer-seligman-sekel

1828(10th
of Tishrei, 5589): As Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams square off in one of
the nastiest Presidential campaigns of the young republic, Jews observe Yom
Kippur

1830(1st
of Tishrei, 5591): Rosh Hashanah

1830:
Birthdate of Hungarian-born American Hebrew scholar and Rabbi, Adolph Huebsch

1831:
In Budapest, Hermann Diamant, the maternal grandfather of Theodor Herzl and
Johanna Katharine Diamant gave birth to Rosalie Reik

1832:
Anna and Isaac Leonard Zeisler gave birth to

1833:
Birthdate of Amsterdam native Henriette Raphael, the wife of Henry Lewis
Raphael with whom she had nine children.

1839(10th
of Tishrei, 5600): Yom Kippur

1839:
Birthdate of Nathalie Levintass, the German born wife of Jacob Geissmar.

1839:
Birthdate of Paris native Moise Schwab, the secretary to Salomon Munk who “in
1880 was sent by the minister of public instruction to Bavaria and Wurttemberg
to conduct an investigation with regard to early Hebrew printing presses.”

1842(14th
of Tishrei, 5603): Erev Sukkoth

1842(14th
of Tishrei, 5603): Fifty-five-year-old French diplomat Frédéric Cerfberr
perished today at sea while traveling from New York to France.

https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/4186-cerfberr-frederic

1843:
Aron Ezekiel Hart wrote to John Neilson , the editor of the Quebec Gazette
today that his father, Ezekiel Hart, who was on Nielson’s “dearest friends” had
passed away at the age of 73 on Saturday, September 26.

1847(8th
of Tishrei, 5608): Shabbat Shuva

1848:
In Popowitz, Bohemia, Jacob Robi and Josephine Arnstein gave birth to Adolph
Robi, the husband of Josephine B. Hahn, the mayor and postmaster Northville, NY
who finally settled in St. Louis in 1893.

1849(2nd
of Tishrei, 5610): Second Day of Rosh Hashanah observed as the forces of
reaction overcome the “Revolutions of 1848.”

1850:
In New York, Benvenida Solis and Leon Ritterband gave birth to their seventh
and youngest child David Solis Ritterband.

1851: The New York Times began publishing. Contrary to
popular misconception the paper was not founded by Jews. Nicknamed
“The Gray Lady” or The Times, the newspaper was founded as The
New-York Daily Times
by Henry J. Raymond and George Jones as a sober
alternative to the more partisan newspapers that dominated the New York
journalism of the time. In 1896, the times was purchased by Adolph Simon
Ochs, an American Jewish reporter of Bavarian background who rescued it from
near oblivion, increasing its readership from 9,000 at the time of his purchase
to 780,000 by the 1920s. His daughter, Iphigene Bertha Ochs, married Arthur
Hays Sulzberger, who became publisher of the Times after his
father-in-law. Her son Arthur Ochs “Punch” Sulzberger also became
publisher of the Times. The Times may be owned by Jews but it sure
is not a Jewish newspaper.

1854:
In London, Solomon and Rachel Lubin Weinstock gave birth to Harris Weinstock,
the New York businessman who followed the injunction to Go West Young Man, Go
West by moving to California where he founded a department store with his
half-brother David Lubin that would be known as “Weinstock’s”, served as a
Colonel in the National Guard and who was the husband of Barbara Felsenthal
with whom he had two sons and two daughters.

https://magnes.berkeley.edu/collections/archives/western-jewish-americana/weinstock-harris-papers-1878-1922

1854:
A column styled “Items of German News” published today reported that two dozen
Russian Jews have been detained at the Prussian city of Memel. Apparently, “they had smuggled themselves
across the border” with Russia and had bordered an English steamer that was
about to leave the city when they were discovered. They were detained because they did not have
passports. At this time, nobody knows
what will be done with them.

1857:
In Brandenburg, Germany, Louis Eppenheim and Marianne Steinhardt gave birth to
Jette Eppenheim, the wife of Federik de Jong.

1858(10th
of Tishrei, 5619): Yom Kippur

1858(10th
of Tishrei, 5619): Jacob Barrett Levy, the two-month-old son of Larra Barrett
Levy and Charles Ferdinand Levy passed away today in Charleston, SC.

1858:
Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto who as Pope Pius X met with Theodore Herzl at the
Vatican in 1904 and expressed the statement that “Jerusalem cannot be placed in
Jewish hands” because the Jews did not recognize Jesus Christ, was ordained
today as a Priest.

1858:
In Austria, Heyman and Rosalie Glazier Epstein gave birth to future Missouri
resident Issac Epstein the husband of Mary Carr Epstein whom he married in 1888
and Zina Lewis Epstein.

1858:
Birthdate of Lawrence Alfred Isaacs, a graduate of University College School, a
longtime member of the Jewish Working Men’s Club and Lad’s Institute which he
served as treasurer of 11 years and the “representative of the Jewish Working
Men’s Club at the Council of the Working Men’s Club and Institute Union who was
a resident of West Hampstead.

1860(2nd
of Tishrei, 5621): Second Day of Rosh Hashanah observed for the last time
during the Presidency of James Buchannan.

1860:
Birthdate of Shimon Meyerovich Dubnow who gained fame as Simon Dubnow, “the Jewish-Russian
historian and author who at the age of 81 was cold-bloodly shot by the Nazis in
the Riga Ghetto because he was too infirmed to be a victim of their killing
spree the next day known as the Rumbula Massacre. (This blog cannot do justice
to the work of this great historian and we urge you to read more about him)

https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/simon-dubnow/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Dubnow

https://www.dubnow.de/en/institute/history/who-was-simon-dubnow

1861(14th
of Tishrei, 5622): Erev Sukkoth

1861:
Birthdate of “Amalie (Emma) Henriette Jessen” the wife historian Ernst Bernheim
who lost his position and reputation when the Nazis came to power and whose
foster Hetti Meyer was killed at Theresienstadt.

1862:
President Abraham Lincoln signed the commission naming Rabbi Jacob Franklin as
the Jewish Hospital Chaplain for Philadelphia, PA which “was becoming ‘a
central depository for sick and wounded soldiers’” including many Jewish
members of the Union Army. A native of
Bavaria, Germany, Frankel had been serving as the rabbi and cantor for Rodeph
Shalom, before the Civil War. His
appointment made him the first rabbi to be named as a chaplain after the law
was changed to make this possible.
Frankel served for three years while continuing to function as the
leader of the Philadelphia congregation.

1863:
In Summit, Mississippi, Ernestine and Abraham Wadel gave birth to Brunett
Wadel, the successful Tyler, TX merchant and community leader.

1866(9th
of Tishrei, 5672): Erev Yom Kippur; Kol Nidre

1868(2nd
of Tishrei, 5629): Second Day of Rosh Hashanah

1868:
Sabato Morais received “a life-time contract from Mikveh Israel in
Philadelphia, PA

1868:
On the second day of the Battle of Beecher’s Island Colonel George A. Forsyth’s
Company of Scouts which included Sigmund Shlesinger continued their fight with
a larger force led by Roman Nose and suffered so many casualties that Forsyth
sent a runner to bring back reinforcements.
(Be Shlesinger wished her was in synagogue even if the sermon was
boring)

1870:
In Maryland, a lawsuit was filed in Circuit Court for Baltimore City by members
of the Baltimore Hebrew Congregation known as the Lloyd City Synagogue,
claiming that changes have been adopted in ritual in a manner that violates the
articles of incorporation.

1870:
It was reported today that the Jews are about to establish a Hebrew University
in Berlin. The university is expected will adopt the best academic practices of
any European university and will be open to Jews regardless of the place of
origin.

1871(3rd
of Tishrei, 5632): Tzom Gedaliah

1871:
In Berlin, Minna Jakmuss and Edwad Huhner gave birth to CCNY graduate and
Columbia University trained attorney Leon Huhner who in 1876 came to New York where
he served as “curator of the American Jewish Historical Society” and author of several
works on American-Jewish history including “Francis Salvador, a Prominent Patriot
of the Revolutionary War,” “The Jews of Georgia in Colonial Times” and “The
Jews of New England Prior to 1800.”

https://www.amazon.com/Books-Leon-Huhner/s?rh=n%3A283155%2Cp_27%3ALeon+Huhner

https://lawlit.net/lp-2001/huhner.html

1871:
Eighty-year-old Amsterdam native Joseph Myers, who in 1819 had married Rebecca
Cohen with whom he had three daughters was buried today at the “West Ham Jewish
Cemetery.”

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1957/06/08/84723892.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0

1872:
In New York City, Mina Cantor and Jaco Rosenzweig gave birth to New York
University trained attorney Joseph Rosenzweig, the husband of Marianne
Silberstein, President of Temple Israel in NY and an active member of the
Jewish Welfare Board.

1873:
In New York City, Henrietta Samson and David Forchheimer, gave birth to Hunter College graduate Estelle Forchheimer,
the holder of Ph.D. from NYU who was an assistant professor of psychology at
Hunter College.

1874:
In Baltimore, “Phillip Hamburger and Rachel Bernei” gave birth to Louis Philip Hamburger,
the Johns Hopkins Medical School graduate and husband of Freda Hamburger who
was “an instructor” at his alma mater who was “examining physician at the
National Jewish Hospital for Consumptives” and “consulting physician at the
Hebrew Hospital.”

1875(14th
of Tishrei, 5546): Erev Sukkoth

1876(29th
of Elul, 5636): Erev Rosh Hashanah observed for the last time during the
Presidency of U.S. Grant.

1878:
Mayor Philips of New Orleans is scheduled to inform Mark Moses, the former
Rabbi of the Jackson Street Synagogue who is now in Providence, Rhode Island,
that his wife, two sons –Samuel aged 21 and Isaac aged 10 – and his 20-year-old
daughter Matilda have all passed away this week during the Yellow Fever
Epidemic. The only survivor is his 4-year-old
daughter.

1879(1st
of Tishrei, 5640): Rosh Hashanah

1879(1st
of Tishrei, 5640): Seventy-year-old Meïr Leibush ben Yehiel Michel Weiser known
as the Malbim passed away today.

http://www.biu.ac.il/JH/Parasha/eng/vayikra/geller.html

1879:
An article published today that decried the quality of the butter available
today traced the history of the dairy delight back to the days of “the ancient
Hebrews’; a little-known fact that will come to a surprise to those who think
butter is a modern invention.

1880:
Religious freedom was granted to the Jews of Morocco. The Moroccan Jewish community was an ancient
one. The Rambam had lived at Fez after leaving in Spain. A large part of the Moroccan Jewish community
would leave for Israel after the creation of the state in 1948.

1880:
Birthdate of Baltimore resident Sadie Jacobs Crockin the wife of Emil Crockin
whom she married in 1908 who was an alum of Radolph Macon Women’s College, a
suffragette, recording secretary of the Council Jewish Women’s Baltimore
Section and a founder a president of Baltimore’s first chapter of Hadassah.

https://mdwomensheritagecenter.org/directory-suffragebios/listing/sadie-jacobs-crockin-1879-1965/

1880:
“Flying Men” published today includes the strange tale an 8th
century Sicilian magician named Diodorous who converted from Christianity to
Judaism. He carved statues for a living
including elephants made from lava that could still be seen at Catania in the
second half of the 19th century.
According to legend, this “modern day” Icarus flew from Constantinople
to Catina, a trick which led to him being burned at the stake by the local
bishop.

1880: It was reported today that based on
studies of different religious denominations in Berlin 1 out of every 400
babies born to Jewish parents are deaf-mutes as compared to 1in 3,000 for
Catholics and 1 in 2,000 for Protestants.
The disparity between the Jews is attributed to the fact that Jews
“encourage intermarriage with blood relations” as compared to Catholics who
forbid it and Protestants who tolerate it.

1880
“Byron” published today provided a review of Byron a biography of the
English poet by John Nichol which
includes mention of the little known “Hebrew Melodies written in 1814” which
show “the author’s familiarity with the Old Testament .”

1882(5th
of Tishrei, 5643): Seventy-two-year-old Alejandro Chumacero, the chakam (rabbi)
of Curacao, Dutch West Indies and the father of four prominent sons — Abraham
Mendes Chumaceiro, Benjamin Mendes Chumaceiro, Jacob Mendes Chumaceiro and
Joseph Chayyim Mendes Chumaceiro – passed away today at Amsterdam.

1883:
Three days after he had passed away, Elias Davis, the son of Israel Davis and
the former Rosetta Levy and he husband of the former Elisabeth Moses with whom
he had five children was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish Cemetery.

1883:
In Riga, Rose Friedlander ad Isaac Blechman gave birth to CCNY, Columbia and
NYU educated Nathan Blechman, the JTS trained rabbi serving Beth-El Temple in
Houston and husband of Esther Lind who was the author of The Philosophic
Function of Value
and member of the
Texas Rabbinical Association.

1884(28th
Elul, 5644): Sixty-eight-year-old Abraham Stein passed away in Prague today
where he had been serving as rabbi at the old Meisel Synagogue since 1864 when
it changed “to a modern temple with a choir, organ and sermon.”

1884:
“A Bid For Hebrew Votes published today described the events surrounding the
race for Governor of Connecticut. The
opponents of Henry B. Harrison have reminded voters of anti-Semitic language he
used in a jury summation in 1857; language for which he has apparently never
apologized.

1885(10th
of Tishrei, 5646): In Alpena, Michigan, a cantor was retained for the first
time to lead Yom Kippur services today.

1887(29th
of Elul, 5647): Erev Rosh Hashanah

1887:
“The Jewish New Year” published today reported that the Jewish New Year, 5648,
will begin tomorrow, and that it is the most important holiday on the calendar
with the exception of Yom Kippur. (What
makes this item exceptional is that it appeared in on the nation’s leading
secular newspapers, not a Jewish publication.)

1888:
Birthdate of San Francisco native and Salt Lake City theatre operator Harry
David.

1889:
In Leads, Yorkshire, Leah Harris and Aaron George Bernstein gave birth to
Julius Bernstein, the husband of Nellie Levi who reached the rank of Warrant
Officer 2nd class while serving with the Royal Fusiliers during WW I
and who served as an air raid warden during WW II.

1889: In
Baltimore, MD, “Jewish department store magnate Max Hochsfield” and his wife
gave birth to Goucher College graduate, painter, and preservationist Florence Hochschild who became Florence
Austrian when she married Dr. Charles Robert Austrian, “a professor at Johns
Hopkins University School of Medicine” in 1914 and who was the mother of
economist Janet Fisher.

https://portraitcollection.jhmi.edu/artists/florence-h-austrian

1890:
The Bowling Circle of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association held its first meeting
this evening and elected offices.

1890:
Second Lieutenant Oren B. Meyer transferred from the U.S. 1st
Cavalry to the U.S. 2nd Cavalry.

1890:
Professor W.R. Harper, the Chairman of the Hebrew Languages and Literature
Department at Yale University was chosen to serve at the President of the
University of Chicago.

1890(4th
of Tishrei, 5651): Benjamin Franklin Peixotto, one of the most prominent Jewish
leaders of the second half of the 19th century, died of consumption
today at his home in New York City surrounded by members of his family
including two children. His wife was not with him. She has a fatal heart condition and is lying
near death at Baden Baden, where she is in the company of the couples other
children. Peixotto’s father had come to
New York from Amsterdam to serve as a rabbi.
Peixotto was born in New York in 1834.
When he was 13, his father died and he moved to Cleveland where
eventually wrote for the Cleveland Plain Dealer and studied law. From his
earliest days, Peixotto took an active interest in the affairs of the Jewish
community serving as a Grand Master of the B’nai B’rith and a director of the
Hebrew Orphan Asylum of Cleveland, an institution for which he had obtained the
original charter from the Ohio State Legislature. He returned to New York in
1866 and then moved to San Francisco in 1867 where he practiced law. President Grant appointed him Consul to
Bucharest in 1870, at a time when the civilized world was expressing their
disgust at the persecution of the Jews of Romania. He held the position for five years where he
effectively represented the interest of the United States while working to
ameliorate the worsening condition of his co-religionist. He returned to the United States where he
took an active role the campaign to elect Ruther B. Hayes as President. He turned down an offer to serve as U.S.
Consul to St. Petersburg (Russia) in 1877 but accepted an appointment as U.S.
Consul to Lyons, France, a position he held until 1885 when he returned to New
York to resume he practice of law. In
1886, he found Menorah, a monthly publication devoted to topics related to the
B’nai B’rith, Jewish literature and the Jewish religion.

1890:
In Alexandria, Moses and Eva Shmeilowitz gave birth to Isroulch Shmeilowitz
who as Issy Smith enlisted in the British Army in 1904, reached the rank of Sergeant
and earned the Croix de guerre, Victoria Cross, Russian Cross of St. George 4th
Class while serving with the 3rd of Battalion of the Manchester
Regiment and raising two children –
Maurice and Olive – with his wife Elsie.

1891:
In Newark, NJ, Charles Lieberman, an active member of the synagogue on Bedford
Street went to Justice Priesel and asked him to issue arrest warrants for six
Polish Jews who “had entered the synagogue and held a bacchanalian orgy.

1891:
Almost three thousand members of Temple Beth-El took part “in the consecration
of their new house of worship” at the corner of 76th Street and 5th
Avenue.

1891:
Emma Leon
Gottheil, the Beirut born daughter of Rahamim Yehuda, a writer and scholar who had
come to Palestine from Russia and Hebron native Hadassah, a member of a
prominent Sephardi family who was a young widow with children married Columbia
professor Richard Gottheil today in Paris after which she immersed hers in
several projects including “the Sisterhood of Temple Emanu-El, the Young
Women’s Hebrew Association, and the National Council of Jewish Women.”

https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/gottheil-emma-leon

1892:
In Seattle, Washington, Ohaveth Sholum Congregation opened their synagogue
which had been designed by Herman Stenman.
It was the second synagogue to open in the state within a four-day
period.

1892:
“Cholera Has Spared The Jews” published today described the results of an
investigation by Jewish communal officials that could find only 40 cases of the
disease among the quarter of a million of the Jews living in Russia. The study did not include Poland, but it
would seem to disprove the contention that Russian Jews passing through Hamburg
are responsible for the cholera epidemic

1893(9th
of Tishrei, 5654): Erev Yom Kippur

1893:
“The musical portions of the services” at Temple Emanu-El, Temple Beth-El and
Temple Ahavath Chesed are expected to “be especially beautiful” this evening.

1894:
Members of Company D, 47th Regiment of the New York National Guard
have been charged with vandalism in Tompkinsville including the destruction of
the front fence of the town’s synagogue.

1894:
Birthdate of Leo Perper, the native of Odessa who came to the United States in
1908 where he became a successful merchant.

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=9E03E6DE173BE036A05750C2A9649D946690D6CF

1895(29th
of Elul, 5655): Erev Rosh Hashana

1895:
One day after she had passed away, 36-year-old Rebecca Lyons, the wife of
Nathan Lyons was buried today at the “West Ham Jewish Cemetery on Buckingham
Road.”

1895:
“Bavarian Enmity To Stern” published today described U.S. Ambassador Runyon’s
effort to intervene on behalf of Louis Stern and Germany’s hostile reaction
including attacks by Munich newspapers that claim “such efforts might be
effective in Morocco but not in Germany.”

1896:
Lucie Hadamard Dreyfus “signed a petition to the Chamber of Deputies that
denounced “the negation of any sort of justice” represented by the
conviction “on a charge that the prosecution produced unbeknownst to him,
and which thereafter could not be discussed either with him or with his
lawyer.”

1897:
In Austria, Isaac and Sarah Fernhoff gave birth William Fernhoff, the Vienna
trained doctor who came to the United States in 1924 where a year later he
married Tola Schwartz and practiced medicine until his death in automobile
accident in 1955.

1897:
“Will Support Seth Low” punlished today quotes
The Hebrew Standard as, “As the leading Jewish papers in this city, The Hebrew
Standard has always…been a staunch supporter of of Tammany Hall, but it now
advocates Mr. Low because it proposes to be independent in this campaign and
because such action voices the sentiment of the best element of the Jewish
people of New York, who compose the bone and sinew of its commerce and trade…”

1898(2nd
of Tishrei, 5659): 2nd day of Rosh Hashanah

1898:
Charles Putzi who is thought to have been involved in the Dreyfus hung himself
today aboard the SS La Gascogne a day after it had sailed from La Harve.

1898:
In Pittsburgh, PA, Morris and Gitel Adler gave birth to Saul Adler for whom the
Saul Adler Community Center in Monroe, LA was named.

1898:
The first edition of Anti-Juif Stephanois was published today.

1899:
“The Children of the Ghetto” by Israel Zangwill will open today in Washington,
DC for a week long run before moving to Baltimore for a week and Philadelphia
for two weeks before finally opening in New York in October.

1900:
The first primary election in the United States took place in Minnesota, the
state that gave us Jewish political leaders Rudy Boschwitz, Lawrence D. Cohen,
Norman Coleman, Al Franken, Jacob Frey, Arthur Naftalin and Paul Wellstone.

1901:
In Russia Fannie Roggin and Louis Goldberg gave birth JTS trained Rabbi Morton
Goldberg and husband of Doris Goldberg who served as the Rabbi at Temple Bethel
in Fall River and Temple B’nai Israel

https://www.nytimes.com/1999/01/08/classified/paid-notice-deaths-goldberg-rabbi-morton.html

1901:
Birthdate of director and critic Harold Edgar Clurman whose first theatre
experience came when as a child his parents took to him Yiddish productions on
the Lower East Side of New York.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/harold-clurman-about-harold-clurman/557/

1902:
Three days after she had passed away, seventy-one-year-old Dutch born “Nancy
(Bosman) Abrahams, the widow Jacob Isaac Abrahams was buried today at the “West
Ham Jewish Cemetery on Buckingham Road.”

1902(16th
of Elul, 5662): Dr. Isaac (Yitzhak) Rülf
who served as a Rabbi in the Prussian city of Memel and who was a Jewish
teacher, journalist and philosopher passed away. Born in 1831, he became widely known for his
aid work and as a prominent early Zionist – a role that set him apart from many
of clerical brethren.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_R%C3%BClf

1903(26th
of Elul, 5663): Fifty-seven-year-old numismatician Eugene Merzbacher passed
away today in Munich, Germany.

1904(9th
of Tishrei, 5665): Erev Yom Kippur

1904:
In Vienna, Dr. of Jurisprudence Marcus Ettiner the son of Rebecca Schapiro and
Isaak Ettinerg and his wife Adele Ettinger gave birth to Fritz “Fred” Ettinger.

1904(9th
of Tishrei, 5665): Eighty-two year old the Baltimore born physician Phineas
Jonathan Horwitz who spent almost four decades pursuing a medical career in the
United States that included service during both the Mexican-American War and
the Civil War passed away today.

https://books.google.com/books?id=q4mwAtj2r3UC&pg=PA302#v=onepage&q&f=false

1905:
In Oakland, CA minstrel performer “Big Ed” Anderson and tightrope walker Ella
gave birth Eddie Anderson who gained fame as “Rochester” the valet of Jack
Benny (Benjamin Kubelsky) on the Jack Benny Show which was hit on radio and
television.

1905:
In Detroit, MI, Cora and Saul Harris Kaufman gave birth to Washington, DC
grocer Cecil David Kauman, the Husband of Isabelle Kaufman and brother of
Estelle Kaufman.

1906:
“Making Useful Citizens” published today described the function of the
Education Alliance on East Broadway and Jefferson Street which seeks to provide
training immigrants ninety percent of who are Russian Jews.

1906:
University of Pennsylvania trained surgeon Sidney J Eichel, the Evansville, IN
born son of Laura Lownethal and Jacbo Eichel married Rose B. Reinhardt.

1906:
The London Committee of Jewish Deputies of the British Isles sent a letter
to the Times of London stating that “as
representatives of the Jews of the United Kingdom we protest against the
threatened slaughter of our hapless co-religionist in Poland” and “we protest
that it is contrary to the laws of justice which obtain throughout the
civilized world that those who have committed terrible outrages upon the Jews
of Siedice should sit in judgment upon the persons whom they, to shield
themselves, have summarily arrested “ signed by David L. Alexander, president
of the Jewish Board of Deputies; Claude G. Montefiore, President of the
Anglo-Jewish Association and Leopold de Rothschild, Vice President of both
bodies.

1907(10th
of Tishrei, 5668): Yom Kippur

1907:
Birthdate of Gerda Baier who survived Theresienstadt only to be murdered at Auschwitz.

1907:
In Vienna, “Malvine (Susman) and
Samuel Aschkenazy” gave birth to Leo Aschenasy who gained fame as
actor Leon Askin whose dream from
childhood had been to be an actor. His dream came true, and in the 1930s he
worked as a cabaret artist and director at the “ABC
Theatre” in Vienna: in this position he also helped the career of the
writer Jura Soyfer get off the ground in 1935. Persecuted by the Nazis, Askin
escaped to the United States via France, arriving in New York in 1940 with no
money and less than a basic knowledge of English. When the U.S. entered the
Second World War Askin joined the U.S. Army. While serving in the military he
learned that his parents had been killed at Treblinka extermination camp. After
the war, Askin went to Hollywood, invariably portraying foreign characters who
speak English with a strong accent. He gained wide popularity by appearing as
Gen. Albert Burkhalter in the sitcom Hogan’s Heroes in the late 1960s.As
opposed to other exiled Austrians, Askin never refused to work again in his
home country. In 1994 he permanently took up residence in Vienna, where he
remained active until his death in cabaret, as well as the Volksoper and
Festwochen. He was awarded Vienna’s Gold Medal of Honor. Leon Askin died in
2005 at the age of 97.

1908:
“Called Christ An Aryan” published today reported that Professor Paul Haupt of
Johns Hopkins University had presented a paper at the International Congress of
Relgion “in which he endeavored to demonstrate by a process of ethnological
reasoning that Christ was not a Jew but an Aryan” which not a single delegate
supported and to which Dr. Moses Gaster
responded that in all of the stories about the Jews reproaching Jesus not one
of them contained the accusation that Jesus had a “proselyte ancestry.”

1909(3rd
of Tishrei, 5670): Shabbat Shuva

1909:
“Jewish Students Win” published today reported that “the dispute regarding the
percentage of Jewish students to be admitted to the universities of Russia has
been settled by the cabinet in favor of the Jews” and that the Ministry of
Education’s attempt to reduce the number of Jews by barring the admission of
Jewish Freshman has been replaced by the decision “that the full percentage of
Jews should admitted to the entering class.”

1910:
In Germany, Ottilie and Rabbi Julius Grünthal gave birth to Josef Grünthal who
gained fame as Israeli composer Josef Tal.

http://joseftal.org/

1910(14th
of Elul, 5671): Ninety-year-old Mrs. Malke Hesselsohn passed away.

1911:
In Norfolk, VA, Miriam Umstadter, the daughter of Michael and Esther Umstadter
became Miriam Blaustein when she married Dr. David Blaustein.

1912:
Isidor and Ida Weinstein Posner gave birth to Rhoda E. Posner Berk, the wife of
Abe H. Berkowitz Berk and the sister of Dr. Irving Posner and Marcy Posner.

1912:
“Gyp the Blood Horowitz and Lefty Louie Rosenzweig, or Rosenberg, the last of
the gunmen wanted for the death of gambler Herman Rosenthal” have been arrested
by the Second Deputy Police Commissioner…and several of his men.”

1913:
When the trial of Governor William Sulzer came before the Impeachment Court in
Albany today, his defense team was led by Louis Marshall. (Marshall was Jewish;
Sulzer wasn’t)

1913:
Today, in Shreveport, LA a
demented man, Abe Walchansky, pulled up twenty headstones in the Jewish portion
of Oakland Cemetery in an effort to test the story of Resurrection.

1913(16th
of Elul, 5673): Fifty-eight-year-old Czech born William W. Pollak, the husband
of Marie Lederer Pollak with whom he had eight children passed away today after
which he was buried in Mayfield Cemetery in Cleveland Heights.

1914:
Three days after she had passed away, the former Susan Joshua, the widow of
Edward Ferdinand Sichel was buried today at the “Balls Pond Road Jewish
Cemetery.”

1914:
Eighteen-year-old Leonard Keysor, the London born son of Julia and Benjamin
Joseph Keyzor who won the Victoria Cross while fighting at Gallipoli enlisted
in the British Army today

1915(10th
of Tishrei, 5676): Thirty-one days after the lynching of Leo Frank, Jews
observe Yom Kippur

1915:
At Temple Israel, Dr. Maurice Harris made “a plea for social service” which he
said “is religion’s latest word.

1915:
At the New Synagogue, Rabbi Ephraim Frisch delivered a sermon on “Juggling With
the Truth” in which he said Russia “has been the only country in Europe to
deliberately and brutally crush every movement toward emancipation among her
own unhappy people throughout the last half century.”

1915:
At Temple Emanu-El Rabbi Joseph Silverman delivered a sermon on “The Pride of
the Jew” in which he said “the pride of race and religion is the defense of the
Jew against prejudice and ostracism.”

1915:
At Temple Israel in Brooklyn Rabbi Nathan Krass “preached a sermon in which he
analyzed social conditions “touching upon the condition of the Jew in Europe
where so many rights were denied the Jew that he was practically dead.”

1915:
Leon Sanders, President of the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society
spoke at the afternoon service at the immigration station at Ellis Island
attended by 100 Jewish detainees on the subject of “The Old World and the New.”

1916:
It was reported today that Dr. Samuel Schulman viewed as “deplorable” “the
rejection by the democratic Jewish organizations” in the United States “of the
peace plan” that would have led to the creation of an American Jewish Congress
to demand equal rights for Jews in other countries.”

1916:
“The campaign of the Federation for the Support of Jewish Philanthropic
Societies to increase the yearly total of Jewish donations to $2,000,000 was
begun” today “by Felix M. Warburg, the Chairman, who said he expected a
successful campaign” but promised to issue period progress reports.

1917:
In Springfield, Massachusetts, Morris Forer, “a Jewish emigrant from Russia”
and Ida Robinson who combined Lithuanian Jewish and French Quebec ancestry gave
birth to June Lucille Forer who gained fame as actress June Foray best known
for providing the voices for countless animated characters include “Rocky the
flying squirrel” and Natasha Fatal.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/27/arts/television/june-foray-prolific-voice-of-rocky-the-flying-squirrel-dies-at-99.html?_r=0

1917(2nd
of Tishrei, 5678): Four days after the Provisional Government declared that
Russia was a Republic, a move that filled many Russian Jews with hope for the
future observance of the Second Day of Rosh Hashanah

1917:
Second day of the special holiday campaign aimed at raising and additional one
million dollars for the Jewish War Relief Fund led by Louis Marshall.

1918(12th
of Tishrei, 5679): Major Rupert M. Burstan, the son of Mr. and Mrs. Solomon
Burstan, a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy who took a commission with the
U.S. Marine Corps after which “he served in Haiti for 18 months” before going
to France where he “led a detachment of 1,100 Leathernecks” died today at the
hospital in Dijon France after which his body was brought home for a funeral
service in Chester, PA officiated by Rabbi Samuel Rabinowitz of Wilmington,
Delaware.

1918:
In Sioux City, IA, Russian Jewish immigrants gave birth to WW II Veteran and
founder of Budget-Rent-a-Car Morris Mirkin the founder of
“the Morris Mirkin Foundation which was dedicated to helping
children with learning disabilities.”

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-06-30-me-201-story.html

1918:
British General Allenby renewed his offensive against the Turks after having
sat idle for almost a year following the capture of Jerusalem. Within a week the British will have driven
the Turks from Nazareth and the Galilee.

1918:
Birthdate of Austrian swimming star Judith Deutsch who refused to compete in
the 1936 “Hitler Olympics.”

http://www.jewishsports.net/BioPages/JudithDeutsch.htm

1919:
Pitcher Al Schacht made his major league debut with the Washington Senators.

1919:
In Germany, premiere of “Madame DuBarry” directed by Ernst Lubitsch.

1920(6th
of Tishrei, 5681): Shabbat Shuva

1920:
Today, CCNY graduate Louis Maurice Josephthal, the New York born son Theresa
Wise and Moritz Josephthal and the husband of Edyth Guggenheim “was placed on
the active list for duty on board the U.S.S. Pennsylvania.”

1920:
Rabbi de Sola Menes is scheduled to deliver a sermon on “Annual Regeneration”
today at the West End Synagogue.

1920:
Rabbi David Davidson is scheduled to deliver a sermon “Right and Wrong
Visionists” at Congregation Tifereth Israel

1920:
In the United Kingdom, Dr. Conrad Ackner, a Jewish dentist from Vienna, who
came to England before the First World War and his wife gave birth to Desmond
James Conrad Ackner, “a British judge and Lord of Appeal in Ordinary.”

1920:
Forty-two-year-old Hugo Morris Friend was appointed to be a “Judge of the
Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois” from which position he serve on the
bench during the trial related to the “Chicago Black Sox” betting scandal.

1920:
Benjamin Friedman of Syracuse, NY wrote to the editors of The American Hebrew complimenting them on the quality of its New
Year issue.

1920: In Chicago, “Frank and Minna (Skud) Cohen”
gave birth to Selma Jeanne Cohen who sought to make dance scholarship a
respected academic discipline and was “the founding editor of the International
Encyclopedia of Dance
.”

http://jwa.org/thisweek/jul/26/1998/selma-jeanne-cohen

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/selma-jeanne-cohen

http://archives.nypl.org/dan/19706

1921:
Birthdate of Sydney Cohen, the expert on malaria and father of journalist Roger
Cohen

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/25/sydney-cohen-obituary

1921:
Amos Kidder Fiske, author of The Jewish Scriptures and The Great Epic
of Israel
passed away.

http://jwa.org/thisweek/jul/26/1998/selma-jeanne-cohen

1921:
Amos K. Fiske, the former editorial writer for the New York Times and author of The Myths Of Israel, The Jewish
Scriptures
and The Great Epic of Israel passed away today.

http://books.google.com/books?id=FoDYAAAAMAAJ&pg=PP1&lpg=PP1&dq=The+great+epic+of+Israel+by+fiske&source=bl&ots=FawjmddUWV&sig=dtkTFvjbHoLdHRyWOzHTRvIQE10&hl=en&sa=X&ei=09YYVOSAIea1sQTMv4HACg&ved=0CCQQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=The%20great%20epic%20of%20Israel%20by%20fiske&f=false

1922: It was reported
today that that Dr. Stephen W. Wished told a meeting of the Executive Committee
of the American Jewish Congress “that he was not disturbed by the situation in
Palestine” and “that at the proper time he would appeal to the Christians
churches to the end that the Arab bitterness against the Jews not be fomented
and deepened by the incitement of so-called Christians.”

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1922/09/18/99073827.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0

1923:
It was reported today that reports have reached Jerusalem that “after a fierce
engagement, revolutionary tribesmen” that had attacked the camp of Emir Abdula
in Trans-Jordan “have been routed.”

1924:
In Boston, Harry Diamond and “the former Ida Epstein gave birth to Zelda Diamon
who gained famed as “Zelda Fichandler, a seminal figure in the regional theater
movement who led Arena Stage in Washington for 41 years.” (As reported by Bruce
Weber)

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/30/arts/zelda-fichandler-a-matriarch-of-regional-theater-dies-at-91.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

1925(29th
of Elul, 5685): Erev Rosh Hashanah

1925:
Services were held for soldiers at the Young Men’s Hebrew Association, while
“the dispensary at Beth Israel Hospital was converted into a synagogue for
services and a special dinner was served at the Home for Aged and Infirm
Hebrews.

1926(10th
of Tishrei, 5687): Yom Kippur

1926:
Thanks to an order from Director of Public Safety Brennan, the Jewish policemen
and firemen of Newark, NJ, are excused from active duty today.

1926:
“Battling Butler,” a silent comedy produced by Joseph M. Schenck, who Russian
Jewish family had named him Ossip Schenker.

1926:
Birthdate of Joseph Kubert, “a titan among comic-book artists whose work
stretched from the Golden Age of the superhero to the gritty realism of the
graphic novel” (As reported by Margalit Fox)

1926:
Birthdate of Siegfried Wortman who began his career with Hakoah Vienna National
team and scored Austria’s second and game winning goal in its victory over
Czechoslovakia.

1926:
Birthdate of Jonah J. Greenspan better known as Bud Greenspan whose cinematic
activities have created a whole sub-culture in American sport. Greenspan is the preeminent master of sport
films. A four-time producer of official films of the Olympic Games, Greenspan
produced the official motion pictures of the 1984 (Los Angeles), 1988
(Calgary), 1992 (Barcelona), and 1996 Olympic Centennial Games in Atlanta. He
also produced the non-official two-hour TV special on the 1994 Lillehammer
Winter Olympics. His “The Spirit of the Olympics”, a multi-screen
visual/musical tribute to the quadrennial games, is on permanent display at the
Olympic Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland His book, 100 Greatest Moments in
Olympic History
, published in November, 1995, has had multiple printings.
Greenspan has produced numerous other Olympic-related productions, among them:
16 Days of Glory, Los Angeles, Triumph and Tragedy: The 1972 Olympics, The
Measure of Greatness, An Olympic Dream, the television series For the Honor of
Their Country, and the two-hour docu-drama, Time Capsule: The 1936 Berlin
Olympic Games. The TV series: The Olympiad, produced with his late wife, Cappy,
has been seen in more than 80 countries around the world.He has earned numerous
industry honors, including: The Directors Guild of America Lifetime Achievement
Award in 1995, and TV Academy Emmy Awards for The Olympiad series, his Olympic
vignettes, and both of the 16 Days of Glory films–Calgary (1988) and
Lillehammer (1994) Greenspan was awarded the Olympic Order in 1985 by
International Olympic Committee President Juan Antonio Samaranch–the 17th
American to receive this honor.

1927:
Birthdate of Kurt Sauerquell, the native of Vienna, who would be known as
Elliot Welles, a Holocaust survivor who spent the years after World War II as a
tireless hunter of Nazis, which started with the man who murdered his mother.
(As reported by Margalit Fox)

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/03/nyregion/03welles.html?_r=2&scp=1&sq=Elliot%20Welles&st=cse&

1927:
Columbia Broadcasting System goes on the air.
Williams S. Paley, a product of the Jewish neighborhood on Chicago’s
West Side and the Wharton School of Finance, was already a part owner of
CBS. In 1928, he would become its
President and later Chairman of the Board.
While CBS may be have been “owned and run by a Jew” it was not
a Jewish media outlet. On a personal
level, Paley was a friend of Chaim Weizmann and a major financial supporter of
the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel.

1928:
In New York, Sigismund Lieberman, the Polish born “son of Adolph and Natalia
Lieberman and his wife Mary S. Lieberman gave birth to “advertising copywriter
Norma (Lieberman) Friedman.

1929:
Western Union announced tonight that normal cable service between Palestine and
New York has been resumed.

1929:
In its commentary on the recent Arab attacks on the Jews of Palestine, “The
Yiddish Communist daily Emes, continued its campaign against Zionism” today
when it wrote, ‘Zionism was born on pogroms, existed on pogroms and has died on
pogroms.’”

1930(25th
of Elul, 5690): Eight-four-year-old
Henry Clay Ezekiel, the Richmond, VA born son of Catherine de Castro and
Jacob Ezekiel and husband of Jessie Myers who served in the Civil War and
settled in Cincinnati where he was a merchant and auctioneer passed away today
after which he was buried at the United Jewish Cemetery in Cincinnati.

1930:
It was reported today that Dr. Henry Moscowitz, chairman of the American has
returned to the United States after attending the conference of the
International Ort in Berlin and has “that although conditions everywhere abroad
were bad, the Jews of Eastern Europe were suffering the most.

1931:
“In response to a plea by Rabbi Jonah B. Wise, national chairman of the
$2,500,000 campaign of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee for
immediate cash for the relief of suffering Jews in East and Central Europe, a
check for $50,000 was received today as an advance toward the quote of Chicago
Jews.”

1932:
“A message of greeting to the Jewish people on the occasion of their New Year,
which falls on October 1, was given today by President Hoover, through the
Jewish Telegraphic Agency.”

1932:
“A medical center will be established soon at the Hebrew University in
Jerusalem, Mrs. Edward Jacobs, national president of Hadassah, the Women’s
Zionist Organization of America, declared this morning at the opening session
of the eighteenth annual Hadassah convention at the Hotel Commodore.”

1933: Birthdate of director Roman Polanski who is
best known for such films as
Rosemary’s Baby and Chinatown and who gained
notoriety as the husband of the cruelly murdered Sharon Tate and for his sexual
dalliance with an underage girl.

1933:
Invisible
Opponent ( Unsichtbare Gegner) produced by Sam Spiegel was released in
Germany today.

1934(9th
of Tishrei, 5695): Erev Yom Kippur Kol Nidre

1934:
Two days after he had passed away, Dr. David Lefkowitz, Rabbi David Alpert and
Rabbi Merfeld, officiated at the funeral of 79-year-old Dr. Maurice Faber of
Temple Beth El in Tyler, TX.

1934:
This evening at Temple Israel in Manhattan, Rabbi William F. Rosenblum is
scheduled to deliver a sermon on “We Bow the Head and Bend the Knee.”

1934:
This evening as The Jewish Communal Center of Flatbush, Dr. Maxwell L. Sacks is
scheduled to deliver a sermon on “A Lost and Found Department in Jewish Life!”

1934:
Pitcher Syd Cohen made his major league debut with the Washington
Senators.(Since there were no night games in those days he must have made it to
the synagogue)

1935:
Having opened in New York in August, “Broadway Melody of 1936” a musical comedy
written by Moss Hart and Sid Silvers who starred in the film along with Jack
Benny opened today in Los Angeles.

1935(20th
of Elul, 5695): Fifty-seven-year-old Isaac Aronoff, the husband of Mary
Gelperin Aronoff and the father of Sarah, Nathan and Louis Aronoff passed away
today after which he was buried in Cincinnati, OH.

1936(2nd
of Tishrei, 5697): 2nd day of Rosh Hashanah

1936:
In his sermon today, Dr. Israel Goldstein told worshippers at Congregation
B’nai Jershurun that “the Jews have no design upon the Arabs of Palestine” and
that “they would not deprive them of any rights, even they had the power to do
so” because the Jews “don wish to dominated the Arabs any more than they wish
to be dominated by them.

1936:
It was reported today that “the Italians” have been secretly “aiding extremist
groups among the Arabs” while also encouraging “Jews to favor Italy as a
possible mandatory power in Palestine replacing Britain” despite the fact that
Jewish authorities have “let Italy know that Jewish policy was firmly
pro-British under all circumstances.”

1936:
At Temple Rodeph Sholom Rabbi Louis I Newman asserted that the British must
“act firmly” to put an end to “disorders and protect Palestine while adding
that “Jews were in Palestine in antiquity thousands of years before the country
fell into Arab hands.

1936:
At Ohen Zedek, Rabbi William Margolis “urged Jews to ‘mind their own business
of religious educational activity.’

1936:
At the Jewish Center on West 86th Street, Rabbi Leo Jung delivered a
sermon entitled “The Survival of the Jew.

1936:
Dr. Jacob Katz led services today at the Montefiore Hebrew Congregation in the
Bronx.

1936:
At the Institutional Synagogue Annex, Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein delivered a
sermon entitled “The of Remembrance” in which he said “as Jews and as human
beings each and every one of us can only free himself from his obligations to
his fellow-men and fellow-Jews by a direct gift in money for our suffering
brethren abroad.”

1936:
In his sermon at Temple Oheb Shalom, “Dr. I. Mortimer Bloom” told worshippers
that he “saw the growth of fascism in America as the ‘most sinister and
portentous social development of our day.

1937(12th
of Tishrei, 5698): Parashat Ha’Azinu

1937:
“Wassif Boutrous Ghali Pasha, the Egyptian Foreign Minister, raised today the
first voice the League of Nations Assembly has heard against the British
proposal to partition Palestine, which the League Council authorized the
British to continue exploring” at the meeting on September 16,

1938:
Dr. Bernhard Kahn, the European chairman of the American Jewish Joint
Distribution Committee” who arrived in New York from Europe last week is
planning on attending today’s meeting of the Plan and Scope Committee chaired
by Rabbi Jonah B. Wise, which “is seeking to raise $5,100,000 for the aid of
Jews from German, Poland, Romania and other European Countries.

1938:
Hank Greenberg hit his 52nd and 53rd home runs of the
season putting him ahead of Ruth’s 1927 record setting season. Greenberg still need 7 to tie and 8 to break
the Bambino’s record.

1939
“Count Jerzy Potocki, the Polish Ambassador to the United States, is scheduled
to speak by telephone from Washington to the members of the Third Biennial
World Conference of the Polish Hews at their opening session this evening at
the Hotel Astor.”

1940:
Secretary of State Cordell Hull sent a telegram to the American Embassy in
Vichy, France, condemning the “activities as reported of Dr. Bohn and Mr.
Fry and other persons, however well-meaning their motives may be” – a reference
to their work trying to save Jews and others from German and Nazi forces.

1940:
Secretary of State Cordell Hull today indicated that the activities of Baron
Edgar von Spiege, German Consul General in New Orleans, who has figured in a
State Department warning against foreign agents’ discussion of American
affairs, are still under scrutiny. Hull was not an isolationist, and he was
certainly not blind to threat posed by Germany and Japan. Possibly reflecting his background as veteran
of the U.S. Congress who was not blind to the realities of American attitudes
on race and religion, Hull was not supportive of measures designed to rescue
the Jews from Hitler’s Europe. He
opposed allowing ships with cargoes of Jewish refugees to land in the United
States. He was successful in having
those on board the SS St. Louis returned to Europe. However, Mrs. Roosevelt was
able to thwart Hull’s desire to have the Jewish refugees on board the SS Quanza turned away from the shores of
the United States.

1941:
“Heinrich Himmler wrote to Arthur Greiser, the Gauleiter in Warthegau (the
areas of Poland annexed by Nazi Germany), about Adolf Hitler’s desire to have
all Jews in German areas moved to the East.”

1941:
The Nazis massacred the Jewish community of Shirvint, Lithuania.

1941:
Birthdate of Highland Park, Illinois native University of Missouri journalism
graduate Eric Jon Enberg, the longtime CBS news correspondent and husband of
Judith Ann Klein.

1942:Food rations are dramatically reduced for
Jews throughout Greater Germany.

1942:
Sixty-year-old Polish gentile Adam Rafalowicz was murdered in Radom by the
Nazis today for helping Jews in the Ghetto

1942:
Himmler stated in a letter to Autur Greiser that Hitler was demanding that the
original Reich and the Protectorate be cleaned out from west to east and be rid
of Jews as quickly as possible.’

1942:Reich Minister of Justice Otto Thierack
and SS chief Heinrich Himmler agree that Jews and selected other camp inmates
will be transferred to SS custody for Vernichtung durch Arbeit
(extermination through work); i.e., hard labor until death.

1943:
Two thousand Jews were deported to Sobibor where all but 12 die.

1943:Two thousand Jews in Minsk, Belorussia,
are deported to the Sobibór death camp; 80 are selected for forced labor and
the rest are gassed.

1943: The Nazis begin the deportation of theJews of Lida,
Belorussia to the Majdanek death camp

1943:
Hitler orders the deportation of Danish Jews.

1944(1st
of Tishrei, 5705): Rosh Hashana

1944:
As Anglo-Jewish paratroops wait to board planes that will fly them to Arnhem
will they jump into hell, some of them stand under the wing of their aircraft
and daven the Rosh Hashanah

1944:
Five hundred Jews participated in Rosh Hashanah services at the Naval Air
Station Keflavik in Iceland. The sefer
torah for the service had been flown from the United States.

1944:Fourteen hundred Jewish boys at Auschwitz
are taken from their barracks to the children’s block and are later gassed.

1944:
Bernhard Bästlein an anti-Nazi resistance fighter was executed today at
Brandenburg-Görden Prison.

1944:
Birthdate of Richard Danzig an American lawyer who served as the 71st
Secretary of the Navy and was a political advisor to Barak Obama.

1945:
Birthdate of New York native Philip Gary Schlein, the California raised son of
a druggist who changed the family name to Sloan which led to him gaining fame
singer, songwriter and producer P.F. “Flip” Sloan.

1946:One portion of Emanuel Ringelblum’s
Warsaw Ghetto diary, which was secretly buried by Ringelblum, was discovered in
a ruined house at 68 Nowolipki Street in Warsaw. Born in 1900, Ringelblum was a
trained historian having received his doctorate in 1927. He spent many years before the war working in
Jewish communal activities especially with those Polish Jews who were exiled
from Germany in the 1930’s. After the
Warsaw Ghetto had been built Ringelbaum was head of the cultural affairs
section of the underground Jewish government.
He created an archive unit known as Oneg Shabbat which would turn out to
be the most complete record of the life of Poland’s Jews under the Nazis. Ringelblum hid his archival treasure trove
including his diaries in three large metal containers. Ringelbaum took part in
the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and later escaped from Trawniki labor camp. Unfortunately, his hideout was discovered,
and he and his family were murdered on March 7,
1944. According
to some literary critics, Ringelblum was the inspiration for the main
protagonist in John Hersey’s The Wall .

1946(22nd
of Elul, 5706): Seventy-three-year-old Ogdensburg, NY native, Yale graduate and
NYU trained realty lawyer, James Frank the husband of the former Adele
Morgenthau with whom he had a son and a daughter and a director of the Seixas
Corporation who “was one of the foudr of the Educational Alliance’s Surprise
Lake Camp for Boys and a member of the Free Synagogue of New York” passed away
today.

91625638.pdf
(nytimes.com)

1947:
Hank Greenberg played in his last major league baseball game.

1948:
Ralph J Bunche was confirmed as acting UN mediator in Palestine. Bunche would win the Nobel Prize for Peace so
successfully negotiating the armistice agreements between Israel and the Arab
states that had attacked her.

1949:
“The Israeli pound was devalued tonight to $2.80” which “put the Israeli
currency on a parity with the pound sterling.”

1950:
A meeting of the Mixed Armistice commission is held in the Jerusalem No-Man’s
Land along the Green Line.

1950:
In what appears to be a change of heart, a Jordanian spokesman denied reports
that it would withdraw it complaint over what it considers the Israeli invasion
of Jordanian territory above the confluence of the Yarmuk and the Jordan
rivers.

1950:
The Village I Knew, choreographed by
Sophie Maslow, was performed for the first time.

1951(15th
of Elul, 5776): Sixty-nine-year Dr. Israel Abraham Rabin, the husband of Dr.
Ester Else Rabin and native of the Ukraine who was a historian specializing in
the study of ancient Hebrew literature passed away today in Haifa.

1951:
“The Day the Earth Stood Still,” a science fiction classic co-starring Sam
Jaffe and music by Bernard Herrmann was released today in the United States.

1951:
The film version of “A Streetcar Named Desire” produced by Charles K. Feldman
and with music by Alex North. was released today in the United States.

1952:
The Jerusalem Post reported that a
wide range of Israel-designed gowns, dresses, blouses, shirts and coats was
flown to the US for a roving exhibition, arranged by the Bonds Drive, to
promote Israeli exports. In the early
days of the state of Israel, products marked “made in Israel” were
not always of the highest quality. After
all, it was a pioneer state. In those
days, American Jews made a point of buying things stamped “made in
Israel” as a way of showing solidarity and support for the infant nation.

1953(9th
of Tishrei, 5714): Erev Shabbat; Kol Nidre

1953:
In Philadelphia, PA, Miriam and Ephraim Bloch, the owner of Perfect Fit
Industries, gave birth to Lawrence “Larry” Clifford Bloch who built the
Wetlands Preserve in TriBeCa into an influential rock club and a hub of
environmental activism (As reported by James C McKinley, Jr.)

1954:
In Montreal, Roslyn and Harry Pinker gave birth to psychologist Steven Prinker
who was named one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world
in 2004

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/19/science/steven-pinker-future-science.html?action=click&module=Discovery&pgtype=Homepage

1955(2nd
of Tishrei, 5716): 2nd day of Rosh Hashanah

1955:
An interfaith congregation, the Community Church of New York, was called upon
by its minister, Donald Harrington to “join spiritually in observance of the
Jewish High Holidays” saying “that the period falling between the holidays of
Rosh ha Shanah and Yom Kippur was significant for Christians as well as Jews
because it gave an opportunity for deep soul-searching.”

1955:
“Wing Commander Gamal Salem, the Deputy Premier of Egypt arrived today” in
Karachi, Pakistan “for a two week state visit during which he will pursue the
policy of Premier Nasser who “is said to be seeking more active support from
Pakistan in the Egyptian dispute with Israel in exchange for Arab League backing of Pakistan’s bid for
leadership in the Moslem world.”

1957:
In Tel Aviv, as athletes began another day of competition in the Maccabiah
Games, “the United States trailed Israel in the team score 106 to 73.”

1960(26th
of Elul, 5720): Sixty-eight year old Chicago native and Kent College of Law
graduate Benjamin Kahane who entered the motion picture industry as general
counsel for what became RKO studios, after which he served as vice president of
Columbia Pictures and president of the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and
Sciences while being married to Mildred Kahane with whom he had two children –
Shirley and Benjamin, Jr – passed away today.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1960/09/19/99804729.pdf

1960: In “Response to a Challenge,” published today
Robert Gordis reviewed What It Means To Be A Jew by Charles Shulman.

1962(19th
of Elul, 5722): Seventy-two-year-old New York native Cornell University Medical
College trained gastroenterologist Dr. Jacob Buckstein, the husband of Estelle
Schwartz Buckstein who served as president of the 42nd Street Beth
David Hospital and serviced as an “assistant professor of clinical medicine at
his alma mater “for more than 25 years” passed away today.

https://www.abebooks.com/book-search/author/JACOB-BUCKSTEIN?cm_sp=brcr-_-bdp-_-author

1962(19th
of Elul, 5722): Seventy-three-year-old “dairy executive,” the nephew of Isaac
Breakstone, the founder of Breakstone Brothers,” dairy and the husband of the
former Sadie Karsik with whom he had two children, passed away today.

1963:
“X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes” a scifi-horror movie featuring Don Rickles and
Harold J. Stone was released today in the United States.

1964(12th
of Tishrei, 5725): Tillie Asnis the mother of Dr. Moss Bart, Dr. Saul T. Asnis
and Mrs. Gladys Levi, passed away today.

1964:
Funeral services are scheduled to take place for Merry Abel Barg, the wife of
Dr. Peter Barg, who passed away yesterday.

1964:
ABC broadcast the first episode of “The Addams Family” created by David Levin
and produced by Nat Perrin.

1964(12th
of Tishrei, 5725): Samuel Abramowitz, the husband of Lillian Cohen Abramowtiz
and the father of Judyth A. Weisser and Marcia A. Aronson passed away today

1965(21st
of Elul, 5725): Parashat Ki Tavo; Leil Selichot

1965(21st
of Elul, 5725): Forty-six-year-old Mildred Elizabeth Tarlow Woolridge, the
daughter of Audra and Solomon Tarlow passed away today.

1966:
Funeral services are scheduled to take place today in New York for Jess
Bernheim, the husband of Beatrice Bernheim, a member of the board of Temple
Israel which is led by Mrs. William May,

1967:
CBS broadcast the first episode of “Love Is a Many Splendored Thing” a soap
opera created by Ima Phillips who also served as the head writer – a
combination that was very unusual at the time.

1967:
A bomb destroyed a significant portion of Temple Beth Israel’s new synagogue
building

1967:
U.S. Premiere of Arthur Hiller’s “The Tiger Makes Out” the movie version of
Murray Schisgal’s play co-starring Eli Wallach, featuring Dustin Hoffman and
filmed by cinematographer Arthur J. Ornitz/

1969:
It was reported today that sixty-year-old Max Alperin, who has been president
of Avnet, Inc., succeeded Lester F. Avnet as CEO of the “big electronics
corporation.”

1970:
American music icon Jimi Hendrix who was managed by Shep Gordon the subject of
the 2014 documentary “Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon” passed away
today.

1970:
The following story documents how Israel saved the Kingdom of Jordan from
coming under the control of Syria, as President Assad pursued his goal of
creating Greater Syria that would include Lebanon, Jordan and Israel.

Today
Syria, through the Palestine Liberation Army’s (PLA) Syrian branch, whose
headquarters were located in Damascus and which was controlled by the
government, tried to intervene on behalf of the Palestinian guerrillas. The PLA
sent in armored forces equivalent to a brigade, with tanks, some of them
allegedly hastily rebranded from the regular Syrian army for the purpose. Other
Syrian units were the 5th Infantry Division (with the 88th and 91st Tank
Brigades and the 67th Mechanised Brigade with over 200 T-55 tanks) and
Commandos. They were met by the 40th Armored Brigade of the Jordanian army. The
Syrian air force, under orders of Defense Minister Hafez al-Assad, never
entered the battle. This has been variously attributed to power struggles
within the Syrian Baathist government (pitting Assad against Salah Jadid), and
to the threat of Israeli military intervention. As King Hussein dealt with
threats by both Palestinian refugees in his country and Syrian military forces
crossing Jordan’s border, the king asked “the United States and Great
Britain to intervene in the war in Jordan, asking the United States, in fact,
to attack Syria, and some transcripts of diplomatic communiques show that
Hussein requested Israeli intervention against Syria.” Timothy Naftali
said. “Syria had invaded Jordan and the Jordanian king, facing what he
felt was a military rout, said please help us in any way possible.” A
telegram indicates that Hussein himself called a U.S. official at 3 a.m. to ask
for American or British help. “Situation deteriorating dangerously
following Syrian massive invasion…,” the document said. “I request
immediate physical intervention both land and air… to safeguard sovereignty,
territorial integrity and independence of Jordan. Immediate air strikes on
invading forces from any quarter plus air cover are imperative.” Israel, which found the move undesirable,
performed mock air strikes on the Syrian column at the Americans’ request.
Possibly alarmed at the prospect of an armed conflict with Israel, Syria’s
government ordered a hasty retreat. Its involvement at the time remained a
subject for historical debate. Assad told his biographer, Patrick Seale, that
Syria’s intention in invading northern Jordan was only to protect the
Palestinians from a massacre .Whatever the case, the swift Syrian withdrawal
was a severe blow to Palestinian hopes. Jordanian armored forces steadily
pounded their headquarters in Amman, and threatened to break them in other
regions of the kingdom as well. The Palestinians agreed to a cease-fire.
Hussein and Arafat attended the meeting of leaders of Arab countries in Cairo,
where Arafat won a diplomatic victory. On September 27, Hussein was forced to
sign an agreement which preserved the right of the Palestinian organizations to
operate in Jordan. For Jordan, it was humiliating that the agreement treated
both sides to the conflict as equals.

1971:
Birthdate of Jada Koren Pinkett Smith an American actress, producer, director,
author, singer-songwriter, and businesswoman who is described as being of
Portuguese-Jewish, African-American, West Indian and Creole ancestry. (Only in
America)

1972(10th
of Tishrei, 5733): Yom Kippur

1972(10th
of Tishrei, 5733): Fifty-nine-year-old Ohio resident Martin Applebaum, “the son
of Rabbi Meyer and Rose Applebaum” and the husband of Jane Felicia Bruck passed
away today in Warrensville, OH after which he was buried at the Hillcrest
Cemetery in Bedford Heights, OH.

1972:
“One hundred fifty Jews from Russia who have settled in Israel” are visiting
the United States will have “their first opportunity today to observe Yom
Kippur under the guidance of Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, the Talmudic scholar
and lead of the worldwide Lubavitcher movement of Hasidic Jews.”

1972:
Among the thousands of people attending services this morning in the Crown
Heights section of Brooklyn “are 600 Jews from various parts of the world who
will” then be returning home.

1972:
Jews recite special prayers of mourning for those who were murdered at the
Munich Olympics.

1972:
In New York, “because of the Jewish holy day, Yom Kippur, the city’s public
schools and the Board of Education headquarters and decentralized district
offices will be closed today.”

1972:
A crowd of over 10,000 people filled the plaza in front of the Wailing Wall
where at “a few minutes after 6 p.m. the shofar…was blown marking the end of
Yom Kippur” following which “he sober atmosphere gave way to bursts of singing
and dancing.”

1972:
Rabbi Menachem Schneerson was quoted today as saying that “only after
self-analysis ‘can one positively influence fellow Jews for improvement.’”

1972:
Sally J. Priesand, the 25-year-old assistant spiritual leader of the Stephen
Wise Free Synagogue, the first woman ordained to the rabbinate in the United
States, preached her first Yom Kippur sermon today.

1972:
In his sermon today, “Rabbi Louis Bernstein of the Young Israel of Windsor Park
hailed the United States delegation to the United Nations for its veto in the
Security Council of a resolution that would have censured Israel for its raids
in Lebanon and Syria without at the same time condemning the acts of terrorism
in Munich and elsewhere.”

1972:
At Shearith Israel in New York “Rabbi Louis C. Gerstein called on the Jewish
community to intensify its efforts in behalf of the Soviet Jews who wanted to
find a new life in Israel and to give moral and spiritual support to Israel.”

1973:
Today, after “his agent told him that it was time to leave New York and explore
possibilities in California” and “he had
earned enough money through his work in commercials to try Hollywood for one
month” Henry Winkler who parents Ana Marie Hadra and Harry Irving Winkler
escaped from Nazi and whose Uncle Helmet was murdered in the Holocaust, traveled to California he was hired for his
first television gig – “a small part on the Mary Tyler Moore Show.”

1974(2nd
of Tishrei, 5735): Rosh Hashana II

1974(2nd
of Tishrei, 5735): Eighty-four-year-old Leo Cherniavsky, the Kiev born son of
Rosa Magaziner and Abraham Cherniavsky who “made his first public appearance at
the age of six,” toured Russia as member of the Cherniavsky Trio who settled in
New York where he recorded exclusively for Columbia Gramophone Company passed
away today.

https://adp.library.ucsb.edu/index.php/mastertalent/detail/107670/Cherniavsky_Leo

1974:
Sovietskaya Rossiya reported a
general decline in immigration to Israel because of the country’s high taxation
to support the arms industry.”

1974:
“Mendel Bodnya, one of the defendants in the 1970 Leningrad trial, arrived in
Israel.”

1975(13th
of Tishrei, 5736): Eighty-five-year-old Edith Harris Proskauer, the widow of
NYSE member Richman Proskauer, who has been president of the Sunshine Day
Nursery, vice president of the Lexington
School for the Deaf and “founder of the women’s division of the American Jewish
Committee passed away today.

https://www.nytimes.com/1975/09/19/archives/edith-h-proskauer-active-in-charities.html

1975(13th
of Tishrei, 5736): Sixty-four-year-old Jerome Morton Comar “the chairman of the
executive committee of the Maremont Corporation and leader of the Jewish
community as can be seen by his service as “director of the Chicago Young
Men’s Jewish council and president of the Jewish Federation and Jewish United
Fund of Metropolitan Chicago passed away today,

1975:
The Soviet Union ratified the Helsinki Accords

1977:
Two days after he had passed away, seventy-six-year-old General Frank L.
Lazarus, the West Point graduate and WW II veteran turned New York realtor and
politician who was the father of Linda Lowenthal and Laura Hirsch is scheduled
to be buried today at the Beth-El Cemetery.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1977/09/17/76639154.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0

1977:
ABC broadcast “Young Joe, the Forgotten Kennedy” starring Peter Strauss in the
title role.

1977:
The Jerusalem Post reported from
Washington that US President Jimmy Carter had once again denied that his
country supported the concept of a separate Palestinian state. When you
consider the general acceptance of this by Israelis today, this item seems like
a tempest in a long-forgotten teapot.

1977: The Post reported that Foreign Minister
Moshe Dayan who was originally scheduled to fly to the US returned unexpectedly
from Brussels to Israel, giving rise to rumors that he had held secret
important talks with Egypt.

1977: The Post reported that Moshe Shamir,
Professor of Islamic History at the Hebrew University, was appointed Prime
Minister Menachem Begin’s adviser on Arab Affairs at a time when Israel’s Good
Fence aid to South Lebanon was well known and highly appreciated, according to
Archbishop Maximos Saloum.

1977:
Meshulam Riklis, a 54-year-old Israeli businessman, married 23 year old Pia
Zadora.

1978:
Camp David Accords were signed between Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, Israeli
Prime Minister, Menachem Begin and US President Jimmy Carter. The accords were
based on the principal of total withdrawal for total peace including diplomatic
ties, open borders, and trade relations. The agreement led to the formal peace
treaty. In recent years there has been criticism of the accords and the treaty
which after Sadat’s assassination became a “cold peace”. Regardless
of the criticism, the accords changed the equation in the Middle East. Three decades of violence including three
wars, have been replaced by a quarter of a century of peace along the border
between the Sinai and the Negev. Without
Egyptian support, general war against Israel became unthinkable, even for those
states that did not want to make peace.
No matter how cynical one might be, one should never forget the courage
of Sadat for making the peace. Nor
should one forget that Begin took a big gamble.
What would have happened if he had given back the Sinai and then the
Egypt’s had reneged on the deal the way they had after the Sinai Campaign of
1956?

1978:
CBS begins the broadcast of the fourth season of “One Day At a Time” starring
Bonnie Franklin.

1979(26th
of Elul, 5739): Sixty-three-year-old Riva T. Bressler, the daughter of Abraham
(Abe) Nachman Bressler and Anna Bressler and the sister of Elya Bressler passed
away today.

1980(18th
of Tishrei, 5741): Seventy-year-old Alice May Guinzberg, the Philadelphia born
daughter of Carrie and Emile Reizenstein, the wife of “Harold K. Guinzburg, the
publisher and co-founder of Viking Press” and the mother of Thomas Guinzburg,
an editor and publisher who helped create The Paris Review, and who later
became president of Viking Press, the publishing house founded by his father
passed away today.

1980:
In Bloomington, IN, Israeli classical violinist Miriam Fried and violinist Paul
Biss gave birth to pianist Jonathan Biss.

1980:
Eighty-one-year-old Rose Vallard the French art historian and museum curator
who protected art, much of it owned by Jews, from being stolen by the Nazis and
then worked with the “Monument Men” including James Rorimer to retrieve the art
passed away today.

1981:
“Continental Divide,” a comedy written by Lawrence Kasdan and co-starring Allen
Goorwitz was released today in the United States by Universal Pictures.

1981(19th
of Elul, 5741): Ninety-two-year-old “a New York real-estate executive and dress
manufacturer, Abraham Gevirtz, the Ukraine born “son of Harry Leib Gevirtz and
Gittel Gevirtz, the husband of Ida Gevirtz and father of Harriet Marion
Gevirtz-Mnuchin; Ruth Gevirtz and Allen Maurice Gevirtz” passed away today in
Miami Beach.

1982(1st
of Tishrei, 5743): Rosh Hashanah

1982:
CBS broadcast the first episode of “Gilligan’s Planet,” a cartoon show created
by Sherwood Schwartz.

1982(1st
of Tishrei, 5742): Sixty-six-year-old Frederick Belsky, the Holyoke, MA bon son
of Charls and Esther Cohen Belsky and the bother of Gloria and Abraham Belsky
passe away today in Miami after which he was buried in the Rodeph Sholom
Cemetery, Chicopee, MA.

1983:
Forty-two-year-old Susan Harris (née Spivak) the creator of numerous television
shows including the long running “Golden Girls” and the mother Sam Harris
married for a second time today.

1985(3rd
of Tishrei, 5746): Tzom Gedaliah

1985:
The funeral of Julian Beck, founder of the Living Theatre, was scheduled to be
held today in Manhattan

1986:
NBC broadcast the first episode of “Crime Story” co-starring Joseph Wiseman and
Ted Levine, a self-described “Hill-Billy Jew.”

1989:
Birthdate of Daniel DeClue, a bright talented student and musician. A proud, practicing Jew, he is a kind,
caring, decent human being.

1990:
Frank Rich’s review of Linda Lavin’s performance in “Gypsy” was published
today.

http://www.nytimes.com/1990/09/18/theater/review-theater-linda-lavin-takes-her-turn-as-mama-rose.html

1991(10th
of Tishrei, 5752): Yom Kippur

1991:
NBC broadcast the first episode of season three of the sitcom Seinfeld.

1992:
CBS broadcast the first episode of “The Golden Palace,” a spin-off from the
“Golden Girls,” starring Estelle Getty with theme music composed by Andrew
Gold.

1992:
“Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s wife said today that a car rented for her use
in Berlin had been replaced after vandals scratched a swastika on it. Leah
Rabin, who fled Nazi Germany with her family in 1933 at the age of 5, said a
rise in racism and anti-Semitism in Germany was evident on her three-day visit
with her husband. She said she had not seen the swastika because the car was
replaced immediately.”

1993(3rd
of Tishrei, 5754): Shabbat Shuva

1993(3rd
of Tishrei, 5752): Sixty-seven-year-old Bernard Ehrenreich, the “son of Simche
and Reizel Ehrenreich passed away today.

1995(23rd
of Elul, 5755): Eighty-eight-year-old Sir Rudolf Ernst Peierls, the award
winning “Jewish German-born British physicist who played a major role in the
Manhattan Project and Tube Alloys, Britain’s nuclear program” who was described
as “a major player in the drama of the eruption of nuclear physics into
world affairs passed away today.

http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/history/Biographies/Peierls.html

https://www.atomicheritage.org/profile/rudolf-peierls

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-sir-rudolf-peierls-1602308.html

1996:
The Drisha Institute for Jewish Education graduated its first class.

1998(27th
of Elul, 5758): Ninety-six-year-old Frances Shohl Peiser, the widow of Rabbi
Walter Gilbert Peiser passed away today after which she was buried at the
Jewish Cemetery in Baton Rouge, LA.

1998:
The Times of London reviews “Via
Dolorosa” a new play about Israel by Sir David Hare.

1998:
“A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries” co-starring Barbara Hershey was relased in
the United States today.

1998:
“Rush Hour” a “buddy film” directed by Brett Ratner, produced by Roger Birnbaum
and Jonathan Glickman, with music by Lalo Schifrin and filmed by
cinematographer Adam Greenberg was released in the United States today by New
Line Cinema.

1999(8th
of Tishrei, 5760): Shabbat Shuva

1999(8th
of Tishrei, 5760): Eighty-six-year-old film editor Harold F. Kress, the Pittsburgh
born son of Sophie Siegelman and Hollywood restaurant owner Samuel Kress, the
husband of Zelda Raphael and father of Academy Award winning film editor Karl
Kress who got his start working for
Irving Thalberg ad who was nominated for
six Oscars and won two – in 1962 for “How the West Was Won” and in 1974 for
“The Towering Inferno” passed away today.

2000:
Israeli and Palestinian negotiators are scheduled to meet tomorrow,

2001(1st
of Tishrei, 5762): Rosh Hashanah

2001(1st
of Tishrei, 5762) Future Oakland A’s first baseman Nate Freiman attended
services at Temple Beth Elohim, in Wellesley, MA, a service of which he said, “It was
packed—the most people I ever saw there.” (As reported by Hillel Kuttler)

2001:
In “The Miracle of Improvising” published today Michael Robinson examined the
life and career of “Lee Konitz, our greatest living jazz artist.”

2002(12th
of Tishrei, 5763): Palestinian Islamic Jihad claimed credit for today’s bombing
at Umm al-Fahm, a city in the Haifa District which is predominately populated
by Arab citizens of Israel.

2002:
Effi Eitam began serving as Minister of Energy and Water Resources.

2002:
In “A Quest for a People Who May No
Longer Exist,” published today Richard Bernstein examines the possible
existence of one of “the ten lost tribes.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/18/books/books-of-the-times-a-quest-for-a-people-who-may-no-longer-exist.html


About 1,100 years ago, a Hebrew-speaking man named Eldad Ha-Dani appeared
before the Jewish community of Tunisia and gave it the remarkable news that he
belonged to the biblical tribe of Dan, one of the fabled 10 lost tribes of
Israel. He lived, he said, in “the fertile and gem-rich `land of Havilah’
near `the seven kings of Cush’ — the biblical name for Ethiopia” —
alongside three other lost tribes, Naphtali, Gad and Asher. For Hillel Halkin,
author of “Across the Sabbath River,” which is also an amazing tale
of a lost tribe, Ha-Dani was the first to give the lost tribes a geographical
identity, even if he himself was probably an impostor and the tribes he claimed
to live among did not exist. In the centuries that followed, as Mr. Halkin
shows in some fascinating background chapters, the lost tribes generated an
enormous wealth of claims and speculation. But near the end of the 19th
century, critical scholarship put to rest the notion that any of the tribes —
sent into exile by the Assyrian king Shalmaneser in the eighth century B.C. —
still existed. “Where are the 10 Tribes?” the Jewish Orientalist
Adolf Neubauer asked in a book in 1889. “We can only answer,
Nowhere.” Not so fast, says Mr. Halkin, an American-born Israeli
journalist and translator who in his way is a latter-day Ha-Dani, though
clearly no impostor and also thoroughly imbued with the spirit of Western
skepticism. In this learned book, rich in both geographical and intellectual
adventure and spiked with wry wit, Mr. Halkin argues, contrary to his own
expectations, that an actual lost tribe might really still exist. The people
who deserve this designation — and who energetically claim it for themselves —
are the Kuki, a Tibetan-Burmese group that lives in Manipur State in the arm of
India between Bangladesh and Myanmar. In fact, the Kuki are one of several
groups in Manipur and neighboring Mizoram — the Mizo and the Chin are the main
others — who not only believe themselves to be descendants of the biblical lost
tribes but believe themselves to be Jews as well. They have a first ancestor,
Manasia, whose name, they say, derives from the tribe of Manasseh. They arrived
in what is now northeast India after long peregrinations that took them first
to China, where, they believe, the emperor forced them to work on the Great
Wall and burned their Torah scroll. In recent years, having decided to assert
their historical identity, they have built synagogues in which they conduct
Hebrew prayers. They have formed organizations with names like Chhinlung Israel
People Convention, which has 100,000 supporters and chapters in 280 villages,
says its president, Lalchhanhima Sailo. The group has petitioned the United
Nations to recognize its lost-tribe status. It also has a spiritual leader, an
Israeli rabbi from Jerusalem, Eliahu Avichail, who has spent decades searching
remote corners of Asia for descendants of the lost tribes. Mr. Halkin himself
started seeking them in 1998 when he accompanied Rabbi Avichail on an
expedition to southwest China and northern Thailand, a trip that allows him to
demonstrate his flair for evocative travel writing. Continuing with the rabbi
to northeast India, Mr. Halkin discovered the communities that have attached
themselves to Rabbi Avichail as their mentor and lawgiver and that fiercely
long to be accepted as Jews and to enjoy the right of return to Israel. A year
later, Mr. Halkin, still reflecting on the people he met in northeast India,
went back to write a book about them. “Either a Tibeto-Burmese people in a
remote corner of Southeast Asia had a mysterious connection with ancient
Israel, or they were the victims of a mass delusion,” he writes.
“Either way, there was a story to be written.” For the most part, Mr.
Halkin believes more in the mass-delusion explanation than in any historical
connection to biblical Israel. He methodically interviews community leaders and
elders trying to see if there is any more than a coincidental similarity
between old tribal rites and Judaism. The task is made difficult because 50 or so
years ago, most of the Mizos and Kukis were converted to Christianity, so the
old rites, belonging to what the local people call the old religion, have
fallen into abeyance. Mr. Halkin finds some of the most active purveyors of the
lost-tribe idea to be little more than charlatans, and for many of its pages,
“Across the Sabbath River” is more a tale of desperate identity
search than it is about real lost tribes. For example, he meets with the
argument that in Kuki folklore there is a great bird of prey identical to the
roc of the “Arabian Nights,” and since the roc is not native to
Manipur, Mr. Halkin’s interviewee maintains, this proves his people come from
the Middle East. “As it stood,” Mr. Halkin writes well along in his
investigation, “I was one more unsuccessful Lost Tribe hunter.” Then,
when he was about to give up, he met Khuplam Lenthang, a doctor who had spent
decades collecting local folk tales and collating them into a single volume
called “The Wonderful Genealogical Tales of the Kuki-Chin-Mizo.”
Reading that book in translation, Mr. Halkin realized that Dr. Khuplam was an
extraordinary figure who had carried out extraordinary ethnograhic research. No
“Arabian Nights” rocs here, but rather, strong evidence of old
religious practices and terms that seemed unexplainable except by recourse to a
lost-tribes theory. But let Mr. Halkin himself provide the persuasive and
closely examined details, which come at the end of a book that has many
delights, a variegated cast of characters and a conclusion stimulating many
thoughts about the persistence of ancient behavior and belief.

2003
(21st of Elul, 5763): Rabbi Emil
Fackenheim passed away. He was born in Halle, Germany in 1916. He graduated from Hochschule für die
Wissenschaft des Judentums in 1939 and obtained Ph.D. from University of
Toronto in 1945. He was interned at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in
1938 and 1939. After becoming a Rabbi,
he left Germany for Great Britain, where he was interned as an enemy alien
after World War II began. He was sent to Canada in 1940, where he was a rabbi
(1943-48), then professor of philosophy (1948-84) at the University of Toronto.
He subsequently moved to Israel, where he was associated with the Hebrew
University of Jerusalem. Fackenheim
explored the problem of revelation and the relationship of the Jews with God,
believing that the Holocaust must be understood as an imperative requiring Jews
to carry on Jewish existence and that the existence of the state of Israel is a
rebuke to those who view the Jewish people as obsolete or dying. Among his
books are God’s Presence in History (1972) and To Mend the World
(1982). 2003: Emil Fackenheim, author of the 614th commandment – Thou shalt not
hand Hitler posthumous victories. To despair of the God of Israel is to
continue Hitler’s work for him.”- passed away.

2004
(3rd of Tishrei, 5765): Shabbat Shuvah

2004
(3rd of Tishrei, 5765): Seventy-four-year-old historian Norman F, Cantor, the
native of Winnipeg who specialized in the medieval period and whose sound
scholarship was embodied in an accessible style with narrative drive, which
made his major textbook, The
Civilization of the Middle Ages
the most widely-read overview of
medieval history, passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/21/obituaries/norman-f-cantor-74-a-noted-medievalist-is-dead.html?mcubz=0

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1473036/Norman-Cantor.html

2005:
Agudath Achim, the Orthodox Congregation in Little Rock, Arkansas, celebrated
its one hundredth anniversary with a gala dinner.

2005:
The Jerusalem Post reported that some
25 Torah scrolls in the New Orleans area, jeopardized by Hurricane Katrina,
were rescued by a number of Jewish groups acting in concert.

2005:
The 2005 Lasker Awards for medical research which Mary Lasker created the
awards in 1946 as a birthday gift to her husband, Albert, the Jewish
advertising man, in hopes of curing
cancer in 10 years are going to scientists who discovered stem cells, invented
genetic fingerprinting and developed a powerful technology that played a
crucial role in mapping the human genome.

2005: The
Washington Post Book Section
reviewed The Lost One: A life of Peter of
Peter Lorre
by Stephen D. Youngkin.
As the review points out Lorre was born Laszlo Loewenstein. He emigrated from his native Hungary to
Berlin from which he fled to Vienna in 1933 due to the rise in
anti-Semitism. If you can imagine, he
was on the same train with the actor Oskar Homolka, director Josef von
Sternberg and violinist Jascha Heifitz.
When things worsened in Austria, Loree was able to escape to England due
to a strange quirk of fate. He got a
paid ticket to England to act in Alfred Hitchcock’s first version of the
mystery film, The Man Who Knew Too Much.
You might want to read the book to find how Lorre, who spoke no English, got
the part.

2005: A weekend of events marking the dedication of the
Uriah P. Levy Jewish Center and Chapel at the U.S. Naval Academy comes to
climactic close a new chapel and student center on Sunday named for the
nation’s first Jewish flag officer, Commodore Uriah P. Levy, a man who fought
to serve his country while still observing his faith.

2006:
Media Matters for America hired Eric Alterman as a Senior Fellow and agreed to
host Altercation, effective today.

2006:
CBS broadcast the first episode of “The Class” a sitcom created by David Crane,
co-starring Lizzy Caplan, Jon Bernthal and Heather Goldenhersh whose father was
Jewish.

2006:
Israel’s Attorney General, Menachem Mazuz, stated that the likelihood of Moshe
Katsav being the victim of a plot was “fairly slim.”[

2006
Congregation Beth El, of Missouri City, Texas participated in celebrating the
High Holidays with Jewish residents from the Brenham State School and the
Richmond State School.

2006: The Winograd Commission – the committee appointed
to investigate the management of the war in Lebanon – begins its proceedings.

2006:
At a debate in Tysons Corner between Republican Allen and Democrat Webb,
WUSA-TV’s Peggy Fox asked Allen, the tobacco-chewing, cowboy-boot-wearing son
of a pro football coach, if his Tunisian-born mother has Jewish blood. The Forward, a Jewish newspaper,
reported that the senator’s mother, Etty, “comes from the august Sephardic
Jewish Lumbroso family” and continued: “If both of Etty’s parents
were born Jewish — which, given her age and background, is likely — Senator
Allen would be considered Jewish in the eyes of traditional rabbinic law, which
traces Judaism through the mother.” The Presbyterian Allen joins public
figures Madeleine Albright and John Kerry in discovering his Jewish roots.

2007:
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrives in Jerusalem for a round of
talks in Israel and the Palestinian Authority to prepare for the Middle East
peace summit scheduled for the second half of November. Rice is expected to
meet separately with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas,
who will report on the progress made in their talks over the past few weeks.

2007:
The Tenth Annual Israeli Music Celebration continues with a concert at The
Ben-Gurion University, Beersheba

2007:
In Bethesda, Maryland, Mitchell Bard holds a reading and autograph session to
promote his new book, Will Israel Survive?

2007(6
Tishrei 5768): St.-Sgt. Ben-Zion Henman was shot to death during operations in
Nablus.

2008:
Temple Judah’s Joshua Siegel plays Seymour in Little Shop of Horrors at
Kennedy High School.

2008:
In Washington, D.C., a joint reading with local writer Peter Manseau, author of the debut novel Songs for the Butcher’s Daughter,
and poet Janet R. Kirchheimer, author of the collection How to Spot One of Us.

2008:Dialects:
Israeli Jazz & Klezmer”, featuring Omer Klein is
the first of three
concerts being held in celebration of Israel’s 60th anniversary. The
concert features two of the best examples of the new face of American/Israeli
music. Trumpeter Frank London recovers the lost sounds of klezmer, taking the
music back to its 19th-century roots with the Klezmer Brass All Stars. And
pianist Omer Klein, a rising star in the Israeli/New York jazz movement, offers
a program of his deeply melodic, utterly original compositions, tinged with the
sounds of the Middle East. This concert is partially underwritten by the
America Israel Cultural Fund in celebration of Israel’s 60th Birthday.

2008:
A revival of “All My Sons,” “Arthur Miller’s 1947 Tony Award winning play was
previewed today at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre, a month before its scheduled
Broadway opening.

2008:
Mandy Patinkin starred as Propsero in a revival of The Tempest that opened
today in New York.

2008:
“Pilobolus in Israel,” a photography exhibition by Robert Whitman of the
dance troupe’s visit to Israel earlier this year, opens today at New York’s
Chelsea Market. This exhibit features 70 photographs of the dancers against
Israel’s iconic landscape, including the Dead Sea, the Tower of David, and
local marketplaces. This event, sponsored by the Consulate General of Israel in
New York, is a tribute to Israel’s 60th anniversary and will feature several
Israeli bands and Pilobolus.

2008:
On her first day as Kadima’s new leader, Tzipi Livni received a startling blow:
Shaul Mofaz, whom she ended up beating in Wednesday’s party primary by only 431
votes, announced that he was “taking a break” from political life.

A
shocked Livni tried to reach Mofaz to persuade him to reconsider, but he
refused to meet with

2009:
Israel plays Spain in the World Group, 2009 Semi-finals of the Davis Cup
competition.

2009:
Stephanie Pritzker received the 2009 Samuel A. Goldsmith Award for Outstanding
Young Professional in Jewish Communal Work.

2009:
29th of Elul, 5769): Erev Rosh Hashanah

2009:
29th of Elul, 5769): As Jews gather to mark the start of Rosh Hashanah at
Ahavat Olam in Miami, a 131 year old Torah was to be read tonight as part of
the congregation’s Rosh Hashanah observances. The sheepskin scroll was believed
to have been completed in 1878, the date of the inscription on its wooden
handle. The handle also bears the name of the couple who donated it to their
congregation in Moravske Budejovice, in what is now the Czech Republic. It was
kept in a warehouse with other Torahs and Judaica after Hitler came to power,
coming under the Nazis’ control. After the Nazis fell, the cache from the
Central Jewish Museum in Prague was controlled by communists who eventually
sold the scroll and 1,563 others to a London synagogue in 1963. The scroll came
to Miami after Marmorstein placed the synagogue’s name on a waiting list
several years back. Like all the trust’s scrolls, it remains the property of
the London organization, on indefinite loan to the temple. Congregations are
chosen, in part, based on their desire to incorporate the scroll into their
worship. The scroll came to Miami after Rabbi Danny Marmorstein placed the
synagogue’s name on a waiting list several years back. Like all the trust’s
scrolls, it remains the property of the London organization, on indefinite loan
to the temple. Congregations are chosen, in part, based on their desire to
incorporate the scroll into their worship. Already, the history of the Torah
has resonated with members. Bianca Lerner, 80, survived the Holocaust in part
by being taken in by the parents of a Christian friend and then hiding in a
Catholic orphanage. She remembers being forced with her parents from their
home. Her father was killed in a Polish ghetto. Her mother died at the
Treblinka extermination camp. “My parents just walked out of our
apartment, which was beautifully furnished with antiques and Oriental rugs and
we just walked out and that was it,” she said. “Since then, I’ve
thought material possessions don’t mean anything.” But a Torah, Lerner
said, is different: It’s not just the central symbol of her faith, but
something used in actual prayer and worship. Irving Whitman, 88, says he was a
young Army private from New Jersey when he helped liberate the Buchenwald
concentration camp. Those memories are seared in his mind. And he sees the
Torah as an extension of his wartime experience. “It’s all part of the
same story,” he said. “It’s all part of the same historical
moment.” Susan Boyer, the U.S. director of the trust, also heads the Czech
Torah Network in Sherman Oaks, Calif., which has helped reunite Holocaust
survivors with scrolls from their hometowns. When she thinks of the surviving
Torahs, she wonders what happened to the people from its synagogue, the people
who prayed with it. It is a sad story, she admits, but she says it is buffered
by hope, because the faith has lived on. If the Nazis had prevailed, Jews would
have faded away long before Ahavat Olam gained roots in South Florida five
years ago. Hitler’s army would have killed the men and women who bore its
congregants. And the Torah never would have left SS hands. Marmorstein knew he
wanted a Holocaust-surviving Torah since the congregation was born. He wanted
to pay tribute to the Jews who died and could think of no better way than
through the faith’s most prized possession. The 54-year-old rabbi shows a
black-and-white picture of 11 relatives, his great aunts and uncles,
grandfather and great-grandparents. Only two in the photo survived the
Holocaust: his father and an uncle who both were liberated from Auschwitz. When
asked why getting the Torah was so important, his eyes well with tears.
“It’s in my blood, this whole history is in my family,” he said.
“It’s easy for us to sit and talk about it. But when it was your own
father, your own uncle, when your grandfather was killed, it’s different.
That’s why.”

2009:
29th of Elul, 5769): Eighty-one-year-old Dr. Lawrence B. Slobodkin, author of
“The World is Green” and one of the founders of the modern ecology movement
passed away today. (As reported by Carol Kaesuk Yoon)

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/22/nyregion/22slobodkin.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

2009:
Last day of 5769; in the evening Erev Rosh Hashanah – 5770
לשׁנה טובה

2010(10th of
Tishrei, 5771): Yom Kippur

2010: A Yom
Kippur machzor which had been translated for the first time into Portuguese is
scheduled to be used by the Jews in Brazil’s Amazon

2010: As Jews prepare to break their Yom
Kippur fasts this evening, Israeli experts agree that the optimal way to end
the fast is to drink a couple of glasses of water or a sugared drink. The first meal of solid food should be a
light one. If you are still hungry, wait an hour or two after the light meal.
Eating too quickly or too much after a fast can cause abdominal pain and
sometimes even vomiting.

2010(10th
of Tishrei, 5771): Eighty-nine-year-old
Irving Ravetch, half of the husband wife screening team of Ravetch and
Frank passed away today. (As reported by Bruce Weber)

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/21/movies/21ravetch.html

2010(10th of
Tishrei, 5771): Seventy-four-year-old Chabad Chassid Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak
HaKohen Tauber passed away Yom Kippur morning at Sheba Hospital in the Tel
HaShomer Medical Center after a long illness.

http://lubavitch.com/news/article/2029680/Rabbi-Avraham-Yitzchak-Tauber-Holocaust-Survivor-Age-74.html

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/139687#.VBnxCZt0ypo

2010: In Israel
93 people were treated by emergency health workers for
falling ill as a result of fasting over the course of the Jewish High Holiday
of Yom Kippur on Saturday. =

2010: The
Twins’ Danny Valencia hit a game winning three run homer.

2011: In New
York, The Center for Jewish History the Leo Baeck Institute and the Skirball
Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at NYU are scheduled to present “A
Continuing Conversation: Moses Mendelssohn and the Legacy of the
Enlightenment,” day of discussion and debate devoted to exploring the thought
and legacy of Moses Mendelssohn, the 18th-century founder of modern Jewish
thought.

2011: “While Six Million Lived: America and the Jewish Refugee Crisis,
1933-1939,” the ninth national conference of The David S. Wyman Institute
for Holocaust Studies is scheduled to take place today at the Fordham
University School of Law in New York City.

2011: The Concert is scheduled to shown
in Davenport, Iowa, as part of the Jewish Federation of the Quad Cities’ Ninth
Annual Jewish Film Festival.

2011: The New York Times
featured a review of “Wonderstruck,” a children’s book written and illustrated by Brian Selznick, a cousin
of Myron and David O. Selznick.

2011: “Everything on It:
Poems and Drawings” by the late Shel Silverstein is one of the books that
the Los Angeles Times featured in an article about children’s books that
will be published this fall. The book featured numerous drawings and poems that
the author left behind when he passed away in 1999. The book, aimed at children
ages 8 and up “presents a perfect
combinations of pictures and stories that will appeal to young readers as well
as their parents, who probably first read these wonderful authors long ago.”

2011: David L. Ulin, Los Angeles Times Book Critic includes
“Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin,” in his Fall Book Preview.

2011:
The Tel Aviv District Court rejected a petition by
social justice protesters today against the municipality, which intends to
dismantle tent encampments in several parts of the city.

2011:
Norway will recognize a Palestinian state, Foreign
Minister Jonas Gahr Store said today as Palestinians prepared to seek statehood
recognition from the United Nations.

2011: The funeral of Suzy Eban, the widow of the late Abba Eban is
scheduled to take place today at the Kfar Shemariyahu cemetery.

2012(2nd of Tishrei, 5773): Second Day of Rosh Hashanah

2012(2nd of Tishrei, 5773): Sixty-nine-year-old Stephen
Douglas “Steve” Sabol, who along with his father Ed was one of the founder of
NFL Films passed away today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/19/sports/football/steve-sabol-creative-force-behind-nfl-films-dies-at-69.html

2012:
Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat today
referred to as “absolutely unacceptable,” comments by US Republican
presidential candidate Mitt Romney that the Palestinians are not seeking peace.

2012(2nd of Tishrei, 5773): Poet, songwriter, filmmaker and playwright Haim Hefer, one
of the icons of Israeli culture, died on the second day of Rosh Hashanah at
Sourasky Medical Center in Tel Aviv, after a long illness

http://www.jpost.com/NationalNews/Article.aspx?id=285448

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/21/world/middleeast/haim-hefer-israeli-songwriter-and-poet-dies-at-86.html?_r=0

2013(14th
of Tishrei, 5774): Erev Sukkoth

2013: Mark Alfred Dreyfus completed his term as Attorney-General
of Australia.

2013:
The Gesher Jewish Day School in Fairfax, VA, is scheduled to a song and story
hour in the Sukkah.

2013:
In London, The Weiner Library is scheduled to host a screening of “The Children
Who Cheated The Nazis” which “tells the story of how 10,000 children escaped
the Holocaust.”

2013:
“Signs of Life” with music by Joel Derfner, lyrics by Len Schiff, book by Peter
Ullian and directed by Lisa Portes “based on the true story of the Czech
ghetto, Terezin, is scheduled to open in Chicago.

2013:
According to remarks published today Yediot Aharonot, Major-Gernal Yair Golan,
the IDF commander on the Syrian border “Syrian President Bashar Assad could
cling to power for years despite having lost overall control of his country.”

2013:
“Enough Said,” a poignant little film starring Julia Lous-Dreyfus was released
today in the United States

2013:
US Vice President Joe Biden will address the upcoming J Street annual
conference, the organization revealed today

2013(14th
of Tishrei, 5774): Erev Sukkoth

2014:
The Phasa Morgana Festival is scheduled to open today in Timna Park.

2014:
UK Jewish Film is scheduled to host the final screening of “The Congress,” Ari
Folman’s “indictment of the film business and Hollywood.”

2014:
Friends and family celebrate the natal day of Daniel DeClue, Missouri’s
greatest band teacher and a mensch of the first order.

2014:
At the Weiner Library for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide Dr. Alexander
Watson is scheduled to speak on “Hell before the Holocaust: Jewish Communities
in the Eastern War Zone, 1914-1918.”

2014:
A 29-year-old Bethlehem resident was found to be carrying an axe after he was
arrested today by Border Polic when he approached officers stationed at the
checkpoint next to the tunnels on the Jerusalem-Gush Etzion Road. (As reported
by Yaakov Levi)

2014:
“In the wake of Australia’s counter-terrorism raids today that detained 15
people and foiled an alleged beheading plot by Islamic State jihadists, Jewish
community groups called on Australian Jews to remain vigilant during the High
Holidays.”

2014(23rd
of Elul, 5774): Eighty-year-old Guinter Kahn, “inventor of baldness remedy”
passed away today. (As reported by Douglas Martin)

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/20/business/guinter-kahn-inventor-of-baldness-remedy-dies-at-80.html?hpw&rref=obituaries&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=HpHedThumbWell&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

2014:
“Archaeologists have found what they believe to be the remains of a Byzantine
monastery outside the city of Beit Shemesh west of Jerusalem, the Israel
Antiquities Authority announced today.” (As reported by Ilan Ben Zion)

2014:
Larry Ellison announced he was stepping down as CEO of Oracle

2014:
Last week before the start of the Sabbatical Year.

http://hazon.org/shmita-project/overview/

https://www.adatshalom.net/spiritual-community-123/holidays/high-holy-days/13-cms-pages-2/264-shmita

2015: Lewis Black is scheduled to perform at the Kaaboo
Festvial at the Del Mar Racetrack & Fairgrounds in Del Mar, CA.

2015:
For the first time Jazz is scheduled to be performed in the Turkish Shuk at
Haifa.

2015:
In the evening start of Shabbat Shuvah

2016:
The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of
special interest to Jewish readers including Mischling by Affinity Konar, “a
novel that draw on the dark history of Josef Mengle,”

2016:
In Rockville, MD, Dr. Melvin Urofsky is scheduled to deliver a lecture on “The Brandeis
Legacy.”

2016:
During the Emmy Award ceremony, Jill Soloway, the creator of “Transparent”
compared Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler.

2016:
In Bethesda, MD, Gideon Amir is scheduled to deliver a lecture entitled “It
Ain’t Necessarily So”: Rereading Classical Bible Stories.

2016:
In Atlanta, the Breman Museum is scheduled to host the opening of “Curating
Your Family Story” a program co-created by the museum and Beit Hatfutsot.

2016:
The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Educational Center is scheduled to host a
lecture by Father Patrick Desbois the ‘French-Catholic priest recently featured
on “60 Minutes,” leading the
truly historic undertaking of identifying and locating the mass graves of Jews,
Roma, and other victims, killed by Nazi mobile killing units, Einsatzgruppen,
during the Holocaust in Eastern Europe.”

2016:
Rabbi Barry Cytron is scheduled to be the keynote speaker at the dinner
celebrating the 20th anniversary of Iowa Jewish Historical Society
in Des Moines, IA.

2016:
The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington and the National Museum of
American Jewish Military History are scheduled to host a lecture on basketball
in WW II by Douglas Stark, author of Wartime Basketball: The Emergence of a
National Sport during World War II
and The SPHAS: The Life and Times of
Basketball’s Greatest Jewish Team

2017:
Today, “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with Egypt’s President
Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi in New York in the first-ever public sit-down between the
two leaders.” (As reported by Raphael Ahren and Alexander Fulbright)

2017:
Today, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday adamantly defended
Orthodoxy’s religious monopoly in Israel…” (As reported by Raphael Ahren)

2017:
The Center for Jewish History is scheduled to host another session of “Proust
in Time: Swann’s Way” in which Rebecca Ariel Porte examines the writing of In
Search of Lost Time.

2017:
The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington is scheduled to host a tour
of “Jewish Downtown Washington” this evening.

2017:
This afternoon, as world leaders gather for the annual meeting of the UN
General Assembly, Prime Minister Netanyahu is scheduled to meet with President
Trump followed “by meetings with the president of Panama, Juan Carlos Varela;
the prime minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe; and Rwandan President Paul Kagame at
the UN.”

2018:
The government of “Israel has yet to comment” on Syrian claims that its “air
defenses had intercepted and downed missiles” aimed at several targets at
Latakia. (As reported by Daniel Salami and Liad Osmo)

2018:
As Israelis prepare for the observance of Yom Kippur, they are also prepared to
respond to another day of protests by residents of Gaza demonstrating “against
the blockade” being enforced by Egypt and Israel.

2018(9th
of Tishrei, 5779): In the evening, Kol Nidre

2019:
USCJ is scheduled to close nomination for the Shoshana S. Cardin Leadership
Awards named in memory of Shoshana S. Cardin as a way of inspiring “a new cadre
of leaders for Conservative Judaism.

2019:
In Alexandria, VA, Beth El Hebrew Congregation is scheduled to host “Janette
Muir, Associate Provost for Undergraduate Education / Associate Professor,
George Mason University” as she lectures on “The Evolving Role of a First
Lady,” from Martha Washington to Melania Trump.

2019:
In Foster City, CA, the Peninsula JCC is scheduled “Rabbis’ Roundtable” where
local rabbis, including Rabbi Lavey Derby, the Peninsula JCC director for
Jewish life, discuss “meanings and teachings for the High Holidays.”

2019:
As of this morning, following elections in Israel, no announcement of a
“winner” is scheduled to take place.

2020:
The Contemporary Jewish is scheduled to host Stephen Berkman, the artist behind
the CJM exhibit “Zohar Studios, The Lost Years,” talking with the author of
“Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonders,” about topics such as photography, Victorian
Kabbalists and the Lower East Side.

2020:
Deadline for applying to an ASF Sephardi Fellow.

2020(29th
of Elul, 5780): Erev Rosh Hashanah

2020:
In Cedar Rapids, which is still feeling the effects of the worst storm in
history, Temple Judah is scheduled to be hosting Erev Rosh Hashanah services
via zoom led by Rabbi Todd Thalblum who was out checking on the welfare of his
congregants as soon as the Derecho had passed.

2020:
The Riverway Project is scheduled to present online “Open Door Erev Rosh
Hashanah Services.”

2020:
The annual pilgrimage to the grave of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov scheduled to
begin today will not take place due to the coronavirus pandemic.

2020:
The Highgate United Synagogue is scheduled to host “a pre Rosh Hashanah event
from 6:00 pm to 7:00 pm.:”

2020:
As Israel prepares for a second coronavirus lockdown and all the ensuing
economic woes, many of the country’s elderly and in need fear that the new
restrictions will only make their lives worse” including “Volodymyr
Kantorovich, an 84-year-old Holocaust survivor from Beit Shemesh, who spent the
war in Stalingrad, where he lost much of his family.”

2021:
“Sukkah City x DC,” “a public display of creative sukkahs, designed by notable
architects, are scheduled to go on view at the National Building Museum’s West
Lawn and Edlavitch DC Jewish Community Center (EDCJCC) campus” today.

2021:
Friends and family celebrate the natal day of Daniel DeClue, Missouri’s
greatest band teacher and a mensch of the first order whose mother Carolyn
Simon is a major part of the glue that holds the Jewish community in Cedar
Rapids together.

2021(12th
of Tishrei, 5782): Parashat Ha’azinu;

2022:
Congregation Ner Tamid of San Francisco. Is scheduled to present Rabbi Moshe
Levin as he examines the likely Christian origins of Unetaneh Tokef’s “Book of
Life” metaphor, and how Fatalism emerged as the central theme of the High Holy
Days’ foremost prayer.

2022:
The Lappin Foundation is scheduled to present a lecture by Charlotte
Korchak on “Concepts and Misconceptions
About Israel, Zionism and Jews.”

2022:
(22nd of Elul): Yarhrzeit Joseph B. Levin, husband of Deborah Levin z”tzl,
father of Judy z”tzl, Mitchell and David without whom literally, this blog
would never exist and who prophetically told me that someday somebody would pay
me write “a simple declarative sentence

2022: The New York Times features reviews of books
by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including American Rascal: How Jay Gould Built Wall
Street’s Biggest Fortune
by Greg Steinmetz and People Loved dead Jews
by Dora Horn.

2022:
Ken Burns’ new three-part documentary, “The U.S. and the Holocaust,” is
scheduled to begin airing on PBS.

2022:
In Waterloo, IA, Sons of Jacob is scheduled hold a “special congregation
meeting for voting members” where “the topic of discussion will be approval of
an offer on our property.”

2022:
LSJS is scheduled to “Elul Day” with Senior Rabbi Joseph Dweck, Dr Avivah
Gottlieb Zornberg, Rabbi Dr Sam Lebens, Daniel Taub, Dr Tanya White, Rabbi Dr
Raphael Zarum

2022:
In honor of the Eldridge Street Synagogue’s 135th anniversary, the Museum at
Eldridge Street is scheduled to pay-as-you-wish admission today.

2022:
The Los Angeles run of “I’ll Have What She’s Having: The Jewish Deli” which was
supposed to end on September 4 is scheduled to come to an end today.

https://www.skirball.org/exhibitions/ill-have-what-shes-having-jewish-deli

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/18/dining/jewish-deli-exhibit.html?campaign_id=190&emc=edit_ufn_20220723&instance_id=67376&nl=updates-from-the-newsroom&regi_id=57747426&segment_id=99381&te=1&user_id=2c930c5636ea27f82410440938800f2f

2023:
At Agnon House in Jerusalem
Prof.
Rachel Elior
is scheduled to talk about the High Holy Days
and alternative memories that intersect through reading the Bible, the
Book of Jubilees,
and S.Y.
Agnon’s
Days of Awe.

2023:
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to leave early this morning for
a visit to the United States “that will feature a series of meetings with world
leaders at the United Nations General Assembly but will still be far from what
he’d hoped for.” (As reported by Lazar Berman and Jacob Magid)

2023:
Jessica Kirzane the assistant instructional professor of Yiddish at the
University of Chicago and Anita Norich, Collegiate
Professor Emerita of English and Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan
are scheduled to discuss Miriam Karpilove’s Yiddish-language novel A
Provincial Newspaper
translated by
Jessica Kirzane, as well as nineteen stories originally published in Forverts
in the 1930s, during Karpilove’s time as a staff writer at that newspaper.

2023(3rd
of Tishrei, 5784): Tzom Gedalia

2024:
The ADL, which based on the level of anti-Semitism in the United States has not
been successful, is scheduled to host a special Fighting Hate from Home
webinar, “Confronting Antisemitism on Campus: Student Testimony and Expert
Perspectives”

2024:
In Jerusalem, the Rambam Synagogue is scheduled to host a lecture by Rabbi
Yosef Sacks on “Terrible Days with Agnon.”

2024:
The Lillian and Albert Small Capital Jewish Museum is scheduled to host a
screening of “Ain’t No Back to a Merry-Go-Round,” which tells “the story of the
first organized interracial civil rights protest in U.S. history, with film
director Ilana Trachtman and Museum curator Sarah Leavitt.”

2024:
YIVO is scheduled to present Jessica Kirzane, the assistant instructional
professor of Yiddish at the University of Chicago and Anita Norich a Collegiate
Professor Emerita of English and Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan
as they lecture on “A Provincial Newspaper and Other Stories.”

2024:
As September 18th begins in Israel, an unprecedented wave of anti-Semitism that
has included Hamas supporters calling for Zionist passengers on a New York
subway to raise their hands, sweeps the United States and the Hamas held
hostages begin day 348 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)

This Day, September 18, In Jewish History by Mitchell A and Deb Levin Z"L #ourCOG (2024)
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