July`10 In Jewish History
48
BCE
: In his war with Pompey, Julius Caesar barely avoids defeat at the Battle of Dyrrhachium. A month later, after regrouping his forces, Caesar defeated Pompey at the Battle of Pharsalus. While neither of the Roman leaders were candidates for humanitarian of the year, Caesar was the better of the two; certainly from a Jewish point of view. Pompey had shown his contempt for the Jews when he desecrated the Holy of Holies. Caesar, on the other hand, took a benevolent attitude towards the Jews and did not mistreat them.
138: The Roman Emperor Hadrian died. From a Jewish perspective, Hadrian would have to rank as one of the worst of the Roman Emperors. He triggered the Bar Kochbah Revolt with his anti-Jewish decrees that included a ban on circumcision and the announcement that he was going to build a Temple to Jupiter in Jerusalem thus turning the sacred city of the Jews into a pagan shrine. The three year long rebellion was a savage one at the end of which over half a million Jewish rebels were killed. Furthermore so many towns and villages were laid waste that home of the Jews became a veritable wasteland. While the Romans may have one the victory must have been a hollow one since, when making his report to the Senate, Hadrian omitted that standard victory statement, “I am my army are well.” Hadrian took his vengeance on the Jews. He had a Torah scroll burned on the Temple Mount. He renamed Jerusalem Aelia Capitolina and changed the name of the country from Judea to Syria Palestina. We are reminded of Hadrian’s evil each year at the High Holiday season when we remember the martyrs who slain by him for continuing to teach the Torah. Ironically, Hadrian’s handpicked successor would repeal many of Hadrian’s anti-Semitic decrees. But the damage was one and the fate of the Jews of in Eretz Israel continued on a downward spiral.
988: The City of Dublin is founded on the banks of the river Liffey. Since the earliest mention of Jews dates from 1079, there were no Jews among the founders. During the first half of the 20thcentury the Portobello section of Dublin was known as Little Jerusalem because it was the center of the Irish Jewish community. Ironically, the most famous Jewish “citizen” of Little Jerusalem never really lived there because he was “Leopold Bloom, the fictional Jewish character at the heart of the James Joyce novel Ulysses, lived at 52 Clanbrassil Street Upper.”
1290: King Ladislaus IV of Hungary died. His reign was not one of the high points in the history of Hungarian Jewry. The Synod of Buda which was held during his reign decreed that every Jew appearing in public should wear on the left side of his upper garment a piece of red cloth; that any Christian transacting business with a Jew not so marked, or living in a house or on land together with any Jew, should be refused admittance to the Church services; and that a Christian entrusting any office to a Jew should be excommunicated.
1391: As news of the Spanish riots reached
Majorca
, riots broke out all over the island. Despite the efforts of Francisco Sa Garriga, the local viceroy, in many towns the entire Jewish community was destroyed and its inhabitants either converted or murdered. Over 110 families converted; the remnants fled to
North Africa
. Although the following year a number Jews were again invited to reside there, a blood libel 40 years later ended the 800-year old Jewish community.
1509: Birthdate of Protestant religious leader and theologian John Calvin. According to at least one commentator, Calvin “generally had a more benevolent view of the Jews” than did other Protestant reformers such as Martin Luther. “Although at times his remarks could be acerbic, he nevertheless taught that the Bible indicated a time when
Israel
would be restored by coming to faith in their Messiah. In speaking about the Jews, Calvin said, "I extend the word Israel to all the people of God, according to this meaning, When the Gentiles shall come in, the Jews also shall return from their defection to the obedience of faith; and thus shall be completed the salvation of the whole Israel of God, which must be gathered from both; and yet in such a way that the Jews shall obtain the first place, being as it were the first born in God's family.” “As Jews are the firstborn, what the Prophet declares must be fulfilled, especially in them: for that scripture calls all the people of God Israelites, it is to be ascribed to the pre-eminence of that nation, who God had preferred to all other nations...God distinctly claims for himself a certain seed, so that his redemption may be effectual in his elect and peculiar nation...God was not unmindful of the covenant which he had made with their fathers, and by which he testified that according to his eternal purpose he loved that nation: and this he confirms by this remarkable declaration, that the grace of the divine calling cannot be made void." One of the issues confronting Christians was the determination of the proper age for Baptism. Calvin believed in the baptism of infants. He saw baptism as analogous to circumcision – a rite by which the child is sealed in the faith of his fathers. Since God had ordained circumcision for Jewish infants, it was obvious that He intended for Christian to undergo their version of the ritual as infants as well.
1548: Eighteen hundred marranos were released from the prisons of the Portuguese Inquisition
1733: George Frederick Handel conducted the premiere performance of “Athalia” at the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford, UK. This was one of many times that the German born British musical giant used Jewish Biblical tales as the theme for his musical masterpieces. In this case, his work was based on the literary masterpiece by Racine which is fairly accurate depiction of this Jewish Lady Macbeth.
1778: The French King, Louis XVI, allies his nation with the American revolutionaries and declares war on Great Britain. French support of the newly created United States was a decisive factor in the success of the American Revolution which gave birth to a nation that has provided Jews with unparalleled opportunities for success and safety. At the same time, the king’s support of the American cause helped to bankrupt France; a bankruptcy which was a key element in bringing about the French Revolution which changed France into a land where Jews were able to flourish during the 19thand first half of the 20th century.
1829: Birthdate of Filosseno (Philoxene) Luzzatto, an Italian scholar, who devoted himself to the study of Sanskrit and Semitic Languages. A native of Trieste, he was the son of Samuel David Luzzatto
1830: Birthdate of Camille Pissarro. Of Sephardic extraction, he became an important Impressionist painter and teacher. He mostly painted the busy streets of
Paris
and landscapes. He was associated with Monet and Corot. In the last years of his life he achieved recognition, and although suffering from an eye ailment painted 160 works in the last three years of his life.
1849: The United States Department of the Interior is established. Joel D. Wolfsohn who served as Assistant Secretary of the Department from in the final months of the Truman Administration appears to be the highest ranking Jew to have served at the Department of the Interior. He served from July 10, 1952 through February 20, 1953.
1850: Millard Fillmore is inaugurated as the 13th President of the United States upon the death of President Zachary Taylor, 16 months into his term. In 1851, Fillmore expressed his opposition to ratifying a treaty with Switzerland that would allow the Swiss to discriminate against American Jews. The Senate did not ratify the treaty. In 1852, Fillmore became the first President to try and appoint a Jew to the Supreme Court when he offered the position to Judah P. Benjamin, the U.S. Senator from Louisiana. Benjamin declined the offer.
1855: Birthdate of Isaac Newton Seligman, the New York born son of Joseph Seligman who was an “American banker and communal worker.” Educated at Columbia Grammar School and Columbia College, from which he graduated in 1876, Seligman was one of the crew which won the university eight-oar college race on Saratoga Lake in 1874. In 1878, after having finished an apprenticeship in the firm of Seligman & Hellman, New Orleans, he joined the New York establishment, of which he became head in 1880, on the death of his father. A trustee of nineteen important commercial, financial, and other institutions and societies, including the Munich Life Assurance Company, St. John's Guild, and the McKinley Memorial Association, and he has also been a member of the Committee of Seventy, of Fifteen, and of Nine, each of which attempted at various times to reform municipal government in New York; of the last-named body he was chairman. He has served as a trustee of Temple Emanu-El, the Hebrew Orphan Asylum and the United Hebrew Charities. (From the Jewish Encyclopedia)
1857: The correspondent for the New York Times writes from London today that the House of Lords will vote tonight on the “Jew Bill” and if it is rejected, Rothschild will resign immediately.
1865: An article published today entitled “Miscellaneous: The Jews In the Papal States” reported that “The Vicar-General of Velletri has issued an order permitting Jews to remain ten days in that town upon lawful and honest business. During that time they must net return to their lodgings later than 1 o'clock in the morning, or leave before dawn. They are forbidden to approach all monasteries, academics and other pious places under episcopal jurisdiction, and in their intercourse and conversation with Christians they are to refrain from familiarity. The violation of any of these dispositions is to be punished by imprisonment and a fine of five crowns, to be applied to pious establishments.”
1865: The party under the command of Captain Charles Wilson that had made the most recent and most accurate survey of Jerusalem arrived in England.
1871: Birthdate of French author Marcel Proust. The following excerpt from “Marcel Proust” provides an interesting insight into Proust’s Jewish origins and his literary treatment of his ancestors on his mother’s side. “Marcel Proust was the son of a Christian father and a Jewish mother. He himself was baptized (on August 5, 1871, at the church of Saint-Louis d'Antin) and later confirmed as a Catholic, but he never practiced that faith and as an adult could best be described as a mystical atheist, someone imbued with spirituality who nonetheless did not believe in a personal God, much less in a savior. Although Jews trace their religion through their mothers, Proust never considered himself Jewish and even became vexed when a newspaper article listed him as a Jewish author. His father once warned him not to stay in a certain hotel since there were "too many" Jewish guests there, and, to be sure, in Remembrance of Things Past there are unflattering caricatures of the members of one Jewish family, the Blochs. Jews were still considered exotic, even "oriental," in
France
; in 1872 there were only eighty-six thousand Jews in the whole country. In a typically offensive passage Proust writes that in a French drawing room "a Jew making his entry as though he were emerging from the desert, his body crouching like a hyena's, his neck thrust forward, offering profound `salaams,' completely satisfies a certain taste for the oriental." Proust never refers to his Jewish origins in his fiction, although in the youthful novel he abandoned, Jean Santeuil(first published only in 1952, thirty years after his death), there is a very striking, if buried, reference to Judaism. The autobiographical hero has quarreled with his parents and in his rage deliberately smashed a piece of delicate Venetian glass his mother had given him. When he and his mother are reconciled, he tells her what he has done: "He expected that she would scold him, and so revive in his mind the memory of their quarrel. But there was no cloud upon her tenderness. She gave him a kiss, and whispered in his ear: `It shall be, as in the
Temple
, the symbol of an indestructible union.'" This reference to the rite of smashing a glass during the Orthodox Jewish wedding ceremony, in this case sealing the marriage of mother to son, is not only spontaneous but chilling. In an essay about his mother he referred, with characteristic ambiguity, to "the beautiful lines of her Jewish face, completely marked with Christian sweetness and Jansenist resignation, turning her into Esther herself"--a reference, significantly, to the heroine of the Old Testament (and of Racine's play), who concealed her Jewish identity until she had become the wife of King Ahasuerus and was in a position to save her people. The apparently gentile Proust, who had campaigned for Dreyfus and had been baptized Catholic, was a sort of modern Esther. Despite Proust's silences and lapses on the subject of his mother's religion, it would be unfair, especially in light of the rampant anti-Semitism of turn-of-the-century
France
, to say that he was unique or even extreme in his prejudice against Jews. And yet his anti-Semitism is more than curious, given his love for his mother and given, after her death, something very much like a religious cult that he developed around her. His mother, out of respect for her parents, had remained faithful to their religion, and Proust revered her and her relatives; after her death he regretted that he was too ill to visit her grave and the graves of her parents and uncle in the Jewish cemetery and to mark each visit with a stone. More important, although he had many friends among the aristocracy whom he had assiduously cultivated, nevertheless when he was forced to take sides during the Dreyfus Affair, which had begun in 1894 and erupted in 1898, he chose to sign a petition prominently printed in a newspaper calling for a retrial. The Dreyfus Affair is worth a short detour, since it split French society for many years and it became a major topic in Proust's life--and in Remembrance of Things Past. Alfred Dreyfus (1859-1935) was a Jew and a captain in the French army. In December 1894 he was condemned by a military court for having sold military secrets to the Germans and was sent for life to
Devil's Island
. The accusation was based on the evidence of a memorandum stolen from the German embassy in
Paris
(despite the fact that the writing did not resemble Dreyfus's) and of a dossier (which was kept classified and secret) handed over to the military court by the minister of war. In 1896 another French soldier, Major Georges Picquart, proved that the memorandum had been written not by Dreyfus but by a certain Major Marie Charles Esterhazy. Yet Esterhazy was acquitted and Picquart was imprisoned. Instantly a large part of the population called for a retrial of Dreyfus. On
January 13, 1898
, the writer Emile Zola published an open letter, "J'accuse," directed against the army's general staff; Zola was tried and found guilty of besmirching the reputation of the army. He was forced to flee to
England
. Then in September 1898 it was proved that the only piece of evidence against Dreyfus in the secret military dossier had been faked by Joseph Henry, who confessed his misdeed and committed suicide. At last the government ordered a retrial of Dreyfus. Public opinion was bitterly divided between the leftist Dreyfusards, who demanded "justice and truth," and the anti-Dreyfusards, who led an anti-Semitic campaign, defended the honor of the army, and rejected the call for a retrial. The conflict led to a virtual civil war. In 1899 Dreyfus was found guilty again, although this time under extenuating circumstances--and the president pardoned him. Only in 1906 was Dreyfus fully rehabilitated, named an officer once again, and decorated with the Legion of Honor. Interestingly, Theodor Herzl, the
Paris
correspondent for a Viennese newspaper, was so overwhelmed by the virulent anti-Semitism of the Dreyfus Affair that he was inspired by the prophetic idea of a Jewish state. In defending Dreyfus, Proust not only angered conservative, Catholic, pro-army aristocrats, but he also alienated his own father. In writing about the 1890s in Remembrance of Things Past, Proust remarks that "the Dreyfus case was shortly to relegate the Jews to the lowest rung of the social ladder." Typically, the ultraconservative Gustave Schlumberger, a great Byzantine scholar, could give in his posthumous memoirs as offensive a description of his old friend Charles Haas (a model for Proust's character Swann) as this: "The delightful Charles Haas, the most likeable and glittering socialite, the best of friends, had nothing Jewish about him except his origins and was not afflicted, as far as I know, with any of the faults of his race, which makes him an exception virtually unique." It would be misleading to suggest that Proust took his controversial, pro-Dreyfus stand simply because he was half-Jewish. No, he was only obeying the dictates of his conscience, even though he lost many highborn Catholic friends by doing so and exposed himself to the snide anti-Semitic accusation of merely automatically siding with his co-religionists.”
1876: The New York Times featured a review of Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land a two volume American epic poem by Herman Melville, “Clarel,” the longest poem in American literature, is divided into four parts – Jerusalem, The Wilderness, Mar Saba, Bethlehem – and epilogue.
1877: According to reports circulating on Wall Street today, Mr. Gabriel Netter “of the Jewish banking house of Netter & Co…had received a letter from Saratoga signed ‘Wilkinson,’ saying that the Grand Union Hotel proprietors would be happy to extend all the accommodations the hotel affords to Mr. Netter and his family.” Mr. Netter refused to confirm or deny if he had received such a letter. But, if he had, he had no intention of responding.
1877: The fourth council of the Union of American Hebrew Congregation opened this morning at St. George’s Hall in Philadelphia. As the first order of business, B.F. Peixotto was elected President.
1878: Approximately 300 people attended a banquet at the Plankinton House given by the Jews of Milwaukee in honor of the delegates of the Hebrew Council meeting here.
1879:Mr. William B. Hackenburg, President of the Sixth Council of the Union of American and Hebrew Congregations, called the morning session of the Council to order at 9:30 A. M. today. Dr. Samuel Hirsch of Philadelphia delivered the opening prayer. Among other matters of business, the delegates debated whether or not to fund a project that would raise money for the purchase of land so that Jewish immigrants could become farmers.
1879: Delegates to the Sixth Council of the Union of American and Hebrew Congregations hold a banquet at Delmonico’s for which “a competent Jewish caterer has been engaged to supervise the preparation of the dinner.”
1881: The New York Times published an extensive review of Poems and Ballads of Heinrich Heine translated by Emma Lazarus. The reviewer does not see any irony in the work of the apostate Jew being translated by a leading American Jewish poetess.
1881: It was reported today that Sir Edward Poynter is about to begin another of his larger than life historical paintings which is titled “Visit of the Queen of Sheba to Solomon.” The canvas will be 8 feet by 5 feet depicting the queen ascending the steps to the throne of the Jewish monarch. [Note – Poynter had already drawn on Jewish themes when he painted “Israel in Egypt” in 1867.
1881: “German Army Volunteers” published today provided a detailed account of the recruiting and service paradigms in the Kaiser’s military including the fact that “the sons of Jews, seldom, if ever compete for commissions because they know they could not get them.”
1881: It was reported today that Tavistock House, the home for many years of Charles Dickens, has been purchased by Jews’ College a twenty-five year old day school in London that was established as a day school for training rabbis.
1882: This morning, 250 Jewish exiles arrived in St. Louis, MO. These European refugees, who have terrible tales to tell about their treatment in the Old World, are destitute so they are being cared for by a local committee of their coreligionists.
1882: It was reported today that the first free excursion-boat trip of the season sponsored by the Sanitarium for Hebrew Children will take place later this week.
1883: The SS Lydian Monarch arrived in New York from London. Among the passengers were five Jewish families from Poland. According to these passengers, their tickets had been paid for by either the Hebrew Society in London or the Hebrew Ladies’ Society of London. While the English Jews had provided them with passage, they had not given them any more money which meant that they were destitute. The new arrivals have no one in the United States to sponsor them.
1883: An announcement was made today in Nyreghhaza, Hungary at the trial of the Jews who have been charged with murdering a Christian girl, that a coachman who was an important witness for the defense has committed suicide.
1883: Lipman Levi presided over the opening session of the 10th annual council of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations. Two hundred and fifty delegates representing approximately 125 congregations filled Eureka Hall in Cincinnati, Ohio where the first order of business was to choose permanent officers to serve the Union in the coming year.
1887(18thof Tammuz, 5647): Fast of Tammuz observed since the 17th fell on Shabbat
1887: It was reported today that the Sanitarium for Hebrew children has raised $1,779 so far this year so it can provide free boating excursions for poor children and their mothers living in the tenements of the Lower East Side.
1889: A spirited debate took place this morning at the Hebrew Union Convention in Detroit over whether or not there should be a special Jewish celebration of the upcoming 400th anniversary of the discovery of America which is to take place in 1892. Josiah Cohen of Pittsburgh spoke on behalf of the eastern delegates, most of whom favored a uniquely Jewish celebration. Israel Cohen of Chicago spoke on behalf of the western delegates, most of whom favored participation in the celebrations planned by the secular society and saw no need for a special Jewish event. In the end, the convention voted to adopt the report of a committee that had been formed to study the matter and had state that a uniquely Jewish celebration was “inexpedient,” “unnecessary” and “would be entirely out of place.”
1889: In an article “Need Hebrews Apply?” the New York Times described the on-going controversy surrounding the nomination of state Senator Jacob A. Cantor for membership in the exclusive Harlem Club. Robert Bonynge, the member who had asked Cantor to join the club, expressed the opinion that if the members could vote on the nomination a majority would support Cantor. But enough of the members supported the sentiment that “in this club we draw the line at Hebrews” that there were more than enough “blackballs” available to defeat Cantor’s nomination.
1890:
Wyoming
becomes the 44th state to join the
Union
.
Wyoming
had granted women the right to vote in 1869 while it was still a territory. When it joined the union, it was the first state to give women the right to vote. Two of those who took advantage of this political power and the “freer ambiance” were Bertha Frank Myers of
Cheyenne
and her daughter Elsie. Bertha Myers was a native New Yorker who came to
Cheyenne
in 1873 as the bride of a prominent merchant, William Myers. Bertha was known as an expert horsewoman, bicyclist and the first motorist in Cheyenne. The mother of four was active in civic and Jewish communal fairs. She was a driving force in the fundraising for
Cheyenne
’s first
Reform
Temple
. She also started the local Sunday School in which she and her daughter served as teachers for twenty years.
1908: In Denver, CO, the Democratic National Convention which Samuel Untermyer had attended as a delegate from New York came to an end to after nominating William Jennings Bryan for President of the United States. This was Bryan’s third and final run. When he ran for the first time in 1896 he said of the Jews “I do not know of any class of our people who, by reason of their history, can better sympathize with the struggling masses in this campaign than can the Hebrew race." In 1920, Bryan was one of a 100 leading citizens who signed “The Perils of Racial Prejudice, a statement that urged "all those who are molders of public opinion" to "strike at" The International Jew, which it characterized as "un-American, un-Christian agitation." The International Jew was a notorious anti-Semitic work published by automobile make Henry Ford Sr. (As reported, in part, by the Virtual Jewish Library)
1912: Four hundred public school teachers, educators and New York notables were among those attending funeral services for educator Julia Richman at Temple Ahawath Chesed Shaar Hashomayim, Rabbi Isaac Moses delivered a eulogy in which he praised Ms Richman for her many contributions while that the role of the teacher is both important yet thankless.
1914: The Government of Greece abolished office of the Chief Rabbi of Salonica and placed the Jews of Salonica under the jurisdiction of the Chief Rabbi of Athens. At this time, the position of Chief Rabbi of Athens was vacant.
1914: Birthdate of Rabbi Aharon Zelig Epstein who served as Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshiva Shaar HaTorah-Grodno in Queens, New York.
1915: Birthdate of Saul Bellow. Born in
Quebec
to Russian-Jewish immigrants, Bellow was educated in the
United States
. A Nobel Prize winning author (1976) some of Bellow’s more famous works include Herzog, The Adventures of Augie March and Humboldt’s Gift. It was this last work published in 1975 for which he earned the Pulitzer Prize for Literature in 1976.
1919(12th of Tamuz, 5679): Abraham Jacobi passed away. Born in 1830, he was a pioneer of pediatrics, opening the first children's clinic in the United States. To date, he is the only foreign born president of the American Medical Association.
1928: Birthdate of Moshe Greenberg – author, teacher and recognized expert in the field of Biblical Studies. Greenberg earned his PhD at Penn and did post-doctorial work at the Jewish Theology. He is on the faculty at Hebrew University and has taught at several American schools including JTS and UC-Berkley. He is a Guggenheim Fellow and a recipient of the Israel Prize. He was editor in chief for the Ketuvim (Writings) sections of the new JPS translation of the TaNaCh. He was also the editor of the Book of Ezekiel in the Anchor Bible series.
1928: The New York Times describes the reaction of various Jewish newspapers in Palestine to the recently published report of the Non-partisan Survey Commission. Based on press reaction, readers may wonder how “non-partisan” the Survey Commission really is. Doar Hayom, a Jerusalem daily, praised the report since it agreed with the conclusions about the need for “private initiatives and private holdings. Haaretz was critical of the reports lack of support for communal agriculture settlements and the land purchases of the JNF. Davar, a paper published by the General Jewish Labor Federation was highly critical of the report seeing it as an assault on all of the growth that has been accomplished under adverse conditions including violent opposition from some Arabs.
1931: Birthdate of Jerry Herman “an American composer and lyricist, known for his work in Broadway musical theater” including the “scores…Hello, Dolly!, Mame, and La Cage aux Folles.
1932: The foundation stone of the Oscar Straus School was laid at Nathanyah. The event was attended by several many Jewish and Arab notables. The project is being sponsored by the Naotaiah Colonization Agency (Palestine Settlers Service of NYC.)
1934: The Polish anti-Semitic organization Oboz Narodowo-Radykalny(ONR- NATIONAL Radical Camp) is banned by Polish leader Marshal Jozef Pilsudski, three months after its formation.
1936: The Second International Conference on Jewish Social Work has its final session in London. Among those attending the conference was Professor Maurice Karpf who had written “The Jewish Community Organization” for presentation at the conference.
1936: The Palestine Post reported that Joseph Katz, 16, was killed and four quarry workers seriously injured when their bus was ambushed on a side road off the Castel bends on the Jerusalem-Jaffa road. Senior Arab public servants submitted a memorandum to the high commissioner recommending a total stoppage of Jewish immigration. Four dunams of fruit-bearing trees were destroyed near Hadera.
1936: The Palestine Post reported that the body Yehiel Goldstadt, a young halutz from Poland, who tried to smuggle himself into Palestine on a coal transport ship, and apparently had been killed by sacks of coal falling on him was discovered.
1938: National and State leaders paid tribute to Associate Justice Benjamin Nathan Cardozo of the United States Supreme Court at brief and simple funeral services held at Beth Elohim Cemetery in Brooklyn. Justice Cardozo, who was known for his modesty, had expressly requested that he be buried without eulogy.
1938: Government soldiers and police shot it out with a band of Arabs near Dabbuyria, killing three of the terrorists. A Jewish policeman serving with the government forces was killed during the action and three British soldiers were wounded.
1940: The French government was established at Vichy. The French had surrendered after a mere six weeks of fighting against the Germans. While the French soldiers had acted with courage and fortitude, the French military establishment behaved in a most craven and inept manner. The government at Vichy was headed by Pierre Petain, hero of the Battle of Verdun in World War I. Pierre Laval was the political engine that drove this fascist , collaborationist government. Vichy was so riven with anti-Semites and wished to become part of the New German World order so badly, that the French government actually began rounding up Jews before the Nazis even for them to do so. After the war, Laval was executed for his role. Petain was spared the death sentence because he was an old man whom DeGaulle remembered as a giant from the First World War.
1941(15th of Tammuz, 5701): At Vilna 1,600 Jews are tortured then driven into a barn and burned alive.
1941: The Jewish residents of the Polish town of Jedwabne are accosted by their Polish neighbors and by peasants from outlying areas, and are marched to the central market. In a day-long ordeal, the Jews are tortured and subsequently herded into a barn, which is set ablaze with kerosene. The massacre is not carried out by the Germans, who maintain only a token presence in Jedwabne on this day. The Polish role in the massacre only recently became common knowledge, much to the shame of those living in
Poland
today. For more details about this read Neighbors by Jan T. Gross
1942: The first Medical Experiments take place at
Auschwitz
. 100 Women are taken from their barracks and sterilized through a series of hideous experiments.
1943(7th of Tammuz, 5703): Thousands of Jews from Lvov, Ukraine, are murdered at Kamenka-Bugskaya
1943: In Warsaw, the search for Jews continued weeks after the Warsaw Ghetto had been destroyed. Thirty men were shot in the Pawiak prison.
1944: In
France
, U.S. Army Lt. Bert Katz is hit in shoulder and left hand by German shrapnel. The wound gets him a Purple Heart but not a ticket home which in this case is
Cedar Rapids
,
Iowa
. Katz did return home after the war where he became a successful businessman, a noted philanthropist and a pillar of the Jewish community.
1948: During Operation Dekel, the 7th Armored Brigade, a battalion from the Carmeli Brigade along with some elements from the Golani Brigade captured Kuwaykat, Jiddin and Khirbat.
1948: With the end of the truce, a company of sixteen and seventeen year old boys under the command of twenty-one year Oded Chai set out to take the high ground west of Jerusalem. Chai, who was a veteran of the Jewish Brigade died almost as soon as the attack had begun, the victim of a sniper’s bullet. The new commander, Elaihu Lichtenstein rallied the troops with a new battle cry, “For Oded” and reached the summit of the hill. That hill is now known as
Mount
Herzel
. [Editors note: The source for much of the information about the War of Independence comes from
Israel
by Martin Gilbert. Events like these remind us that every inch of
Israel
was watered by the blood of Jewish fighters, many of whom never made it out of their teens.]
1948: Israeli forces attacked a bridgehead that the Syrians had established on the west bank of the
Jordan River
. The Syrians had seized the bridgehead during what was supposed to be the Four Week Cease Fire. The Syrian air force dominated the sky above the battlefield. The Syrian artillery outraged the Israeli guns. Despite ten days of see-saw fighting, the bridgehead would remain in Syrian hands.
1948: An Egyptian Spitfire (yes the same Spitfires that had won the Battle of Britain) “dropped a number of bombs on the Jewish sector of
Jerusalem
killing three children.”
1948: Two attempts by the Arab Legion to break into the
New City
(
Jerusalem
) were thwarted.
1948: Hortense Calisher's award-winning short story "The Middle Drawer" was published in the New Yorker Magazine.
1950: “Israeli authorities released two British planes detained since last week for landing at Lydda Airport without permission.”
1951: The Jerusalem Post reported that the government had decided to subsidize the import of hides in order to keep shoe prices at their present level.
1951: The Jerusalem Post reported that the Ministry of Labor investigating the cause of the Castel quarry disaster in which seven workers lost their lives resolved to issue strict regulations on the handling of explosives and to impose severe penalties to discourage workers from violating specific instructions.
1951: The Jerusalem Post reported that electricity consumption restrictions were eased throughout the country.
1951: The Jerusalem Post reported that one thousand newcomers arrived from Romania.
1952: Joel D. Wolfsohn began serving as Assistant Secretary of the Department of Interior in the final months of the Truman Administration. Up to that time, he appears to be the highest ranking Jew to have served at the Department of the Interior. He served from July 10, 1952 through February 20, 1953.
1957(11th of Tammuz, 5717):Sholem Asch, a Polish-born American Jewish novelist, dramatist, and essayist in the Yiddish language passed away.
http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Asch_Sholem
1962(8th of Tammuz, 5722): Rabbi Yehuda Leib Maimon passed away. Born in 1875 in what was then a part of the Russian Empire, he was one of the founders of the Mizrachi movement in 1902. He would later help develop the movement in the U.S. during WW I after he had been expelled from Palestine by the Turks. He returned to Palestine in 1919 where he worked to develop the Jewish home during the inter-war years. The highpoint of his career may have come when he helped draft Israel’s Declaration of Independence, a document of which he was a signatore.
1966: The new Israeli Parliament building, the Knesset was inaugurated.
1969: The body of the lone Israeli captured by Egyptian commandos when they raided an Israeli tank depot on
June 9, 19
69
is found. From the evidence, he had been summarily executed by his captors. The attack and the execution set the stage for the subsequent Israeli commando raid on
Green
Island
, an Egyptian fortress in the
Gulf of Suez
.
1971: Ed Rendell, future Mayor if Philadelphia and Governor of Pennsylvania marries Marjorie Rendell in what is the most common form of inter-marriage – a Jew marrying a Catholic.
1971: Hassan II of Morocco, a moarch who would a vital role in bridging the gap between the Jewish state and the Arab world and who later be described as "a friend to the governments of Israel in their voyage toward peace with the Arab people” survives an attempted coup d'état.
1973: The Commonwealth of the Bahamas gains full independence within the Commonwealth of Nations. There were probably between one hundred and two hundred Jews living in the Bahamas at this time. The Bahamas Jewish Congregation, a modern orthodox congregation is located in Nassau. The Community in Freeport, on Grand Bahama Island, the Freeport Hebrew Congregation, is somewhat lesser in numbers than in Nassau, and is affiliated to the Union for Reform Judaism. Its Synagogue, named the Luis De Torres Synagogue is named for a Luis De Torres, a Marrano who sailed with Columbus and who was the first person of Jewish heritage to reach the Bahamas.
1974: The second part of the Agranat Commission’s three-part report was released today. The Commission had been established to examine the failures before and during the Yom Kippur War. The report called for the dismissal of some senior officers and resulted in changes in basic military doctrine.
1975: Malcolm Toon presented his credentials as U.S. Ambassador to Israel.
1975: Birthdate of Roi Klein, the native of Raanan Israel, the son of Holocaust survivors who rose to the rank of Major in the Golani Brigade before being killed in the 2006 War with Lebanon.
1976: It was reported today that the Foreign Minister of Uganda has demanded UN condemnation of Israel’s raid on the Entebbe airport. Israel’s Chief UN delegate responded by telling the Security Council in no uncertain terms that that Preside Amin and others had collaborated with the hijackers. As the clash between the two diplomats came to a head, Herzog raised the issue of Dora Bloch a 75 year old hostage with dual Israeli and British citizenship who had been taken to a Ugandan hospital before the raid. The Foreign Minister said she had been returned to the plane before the raid. Herzog called this “a blatant untruth” because a British official had visited her in the hospital the day after the rescue mission.
1979(15th of Tammuz, 5739): Famed orchestra leader Arthur Fiedler passed away. Fiedler’s name is synonymous with the Boston Pops and the spirit of Americanism that is connected with it every Fourth of July.
1981: PLO units that had occupied southern Lebanon turning into “a state with a state” unleashed a massive rocket attack on northern Israel.
1989(7th of Tammuz, 5749): Mel Blanc passed away. Born Melvin Jerome Blanc on May 30, 1908, in San Francisco, where his parents managed a ladies' ready-to-wear apparel business he was known as "The Man of a Thousand Voices." At one point he supplied the voices for 90 per cent of the Warner Brothers cartoon characters. Generations know him as the voice of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Porky Pig. In talking about the Porky Pig role Blanc said they "called me in and asked me if I could do a pig -- a fine thing to ask a Jewish kid.”
1993(21st of Tamuz, 5753): Peretz Miransky, a member of an influential young Yiddish literary group in Poland between World Wars I and II, died today in a hospital in Toronto at the age of 85. “Mr. Miransky won the National Jewish Book Award in the United States in 1980 and twice won the J. I. Segal award of Canada for Yiddish poetry. He wrote fables and poetry as a member of Young Vilna, a group of writers from Vilna who adapted traditional Yiddish to express concerns of their generation. His early manuscripts were lost when he escaped the German invasion in World War II. He later recorded his early writings from memory in his first book, "A Light for a Penny." After resettling in Canada in 1949, he worked as a shipper for a store, then as a Canadian distribution agent for The Yiddish Daily Journal, which had headquarters in New York City. Later he became an agent for other Yiddish papers. After he retired in the mid-1970's, he wrote poetry full time and published three collections.
1998: In an article entitled “Hadera Journal; Jewish Family Heirloom: 15 Square Miles of Death,” Serge Schemann describes how Zypora Frank, Polish born Jew, who survived the Holocaust reacted when she learned that her family owned the land on which the infamous Auschwitz death camp had been built.
2001:
Australia
's entrants in the Maccabiah Games gathered in
Sydney
this evening to prepare for a return to
Israel
, their first since the disastrous bridge collapse killed four of their team members in 1997 and left many more fighting for compensation.
2005: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including Lion of Hollywood: The Life and Legend of Louis B. Mayer by Scott Eyman.
2006: Jews gather in major cities all over the world to show their solidarity for the immediate release of Cpl. Gilad Shalit, who was kidnapped two weeks ago from his army outpost.
2007:Tod