September 28 In Jewish History
48 B.C.E.: Pompey the Great was assassinated on orders of King Ptolemy of Egypt after landing in Egypt. While many Roman leaders get low marks in terms of Jewish History, Pompey rates at a very low level. He was the Roman who desecrated the Holy of Holies and then mocked the Jews for praying to nothing. Besides which, his rival, Julius Caesar, had comparatively positive relations with the Jews.
351:The Eastern Roman army led by Constantius II defeated the western forces supporting the usurper Magnentius at the Battle of Mursa Major. The Jews might have been better off if Magentinus had won since, as can be seen by his treatment of pagans, he was not a creature of Christianity. They certainly could not have been worse off since Constantius II vigorously pursued the anti-Jewish policies begun by his father Constantine.
1066: William the Conqueror invaded England. The first verifiable Jewish presence in England began with William who, in spite of opposition from the Church, allowed Jews from Rouen, France, to settle in his newly won kingdom.
1197: The Holy Roman Emperor, Henry VI, died. During his reign outbreaks of violence aimed at the Jews took in an area that included the districts along the Rhine and in Vienna itself. Henry was also the Emperor who held King Richard I of England for ransom after the Third Crusade. The Jewish community in England “was forced to contribute toward the king's ransom 5,000 marks, more than three times as much as the contribution of the City of London.” In other words, Henry not only would not protect the Jews in his own realm, his greed played a key role in bankrupting the Jews living beyond the boundaries of his power.
1238: King James I, of Aragon, conquers the Kingdom of Valencia. This is the same King James who presided over the debate Pablo Christiani and Nachmanides. In a departure of from the norm, Nachmanides won the debate and King James awarded Nachmanides a prize and declared that never before had he heard "an unjust cause so nobly defended."
1251: King Jaime I declared, "No Jews will hold office in the Kingdom of Valencia." The following year Jews were banned from office in all of Catalan and Aragon.
1494: Bernardino da Feltre passed away. Born Martin Tomitano in 1439, he became a priest in 1463. In his religious fanaticism, he railed against the Jews who deemed them the murderers of Christ, and was among those that caused the most deaths in the Italian Jewish community of the time. In 1475, in Trento, he reportedly delivered a series of anti-Jewish sermons that led to 15 members of the local Jewish community being sentenced to death. The Jews were falsely accused of the death of Simon, a boy found dead in the Jewish Quarter. He was recognized as a saint by the Catholic Church for his alleged martyrdom in 1588. In 1965, the beatification process was canceled because of the unfounded historical accuracy of the story.
1577: The Sultan ordered a census of the Jews of Safed for the purposes of raising taxes.
1634: Comus, John Milton’s work dealing with the struggle between good and evil appeared for the first time. He would tackle the topic again in his more famous work, Paradise Lost. In the mean time, Milton joined other writers of his time including John Locke in writing in support of a Jewish state. This was in line with Christian views about the conditions needed for the Second Coming.
1791(29thof Elul, 5551): Erev Rosh Hashanah
1791: France became the first country in Europe to emancipate its entire Jewish population
1794(4thof Tishrei, 5555): Tzom Gedaliah
1810(29thof Elul, 5570): Erev Rosh Hashanah
1810(29thof Elul, 5570): Abraham Goldsmid passed away. Born in Holland in or around 1756 he went to England with his father where he joined his brother Benjamin in a series of financial transaction that led to the creating of the banking house Baring Goldsmid. He lost his fortune in currency manipulation involving the East India Company.
1812(22ndof Tishrei, 5573, Shemini Atzeret1823: Pope Leo XII was chosen to lead the Catholic Church. Leo was a reactionary seeking to do away with the lingering effects of the French Revolution and the wave of liberalism that it had unleashed. He did pass harsh laws aimed that made life in the ghetto even more miserable for the Jews than it had been. But he also attacked other forces that he connected with heresy, modernity or any deviation from accepted conservative Catholic doctrine. According to some commentators, his death was not an overly mourned event in the Christian world.
1839(20th of Tishrei, 5600): Shabbat Chol Ha Moed Sukkoth
1839(20th of Tishrei, 5600): Manis (Morris) Jacobs passed away. Born in 1782 at Amsterdam he made his to New Orleans where he as the founder and first President of Congregation Shanagarai Chesed. Although he did not have smicha, he also served as the congregation’s first “rabbi."
1840: Birthdate Karl Bettelheim, the Hungarian born Austrian born physician whose area of expertise was “the pathology of the heart and blood vessels.”
1841: Birthdate of French statesman Georges Clemenceau. The world remembers him as the Tiger who served as Prime Minister of France in the last years of World War I, providing the French with the will to fight on against the Germans. Along with Britain’s Lloyd George and America’s Woodrow Wilson, he dictated the terms of the Versailles Treaty. But Jews remember him as a defender of Alfred Dreyfus when the Jewish Colonel and the Jews of France stood charges as traitors.
1848(1stof Tishrei, 5609): Rosh Hashanah
1850(22nd of Tishrei, 5611): Shemini Atzeret
1850: The United States Navy abolished flogging as a form of punishment. One of America's early Jewish naval officers played a key role in this change. Uriah Phillips Levy had abolished flogging aboard his ship back in the 1830's, an action that led to his court martial. However, the decision was overturned by President Tyler and he was reinstated. Levy commanded the Mediterranean Squadron of the U.S. Navy and reached the rank of Commodore (in the old Navy, this was rank just below Admiral). Levy passed away in 1862. He was an in awe of President Jefferson. Monticello, Jefferson's home, had been sold to pay off his debts. Levy purchased the home with intent of restoring it as shrine to Jefferson. The Levy family maintained Monticello until it was turned over the Jefferson Memorial Associate in the 1920's.
1857(10th of Tishrei, 5618): Yom Kippur;
1857: New York Times reported today on the observance of Yom Kippur saying that, “the custom among the Jews” is to meet together, “confessing with penitence their transgressions, fasting for many hours and refraining from all manual labor…Today is also the day of reconciliation…between those whom occasion of ill-filling may have arisng during the year and of the renewing of fraternal relations.” The observance will last all day until the “first three stars of evening show themselves” at which time the fasting comes to an end “and the reign of feasting and rejoicing” follows.
1858:An article published today entitled “Charge of Bigamy” reported that a 30 year old Hebrew named Samuel Morris has been arrested on charges of “stealing wearing apparel from the boarding houses of Mrs. Schrimer and Mrs. Wardell. He had lived at both of these locations and his wife was found wearing a silk vest which was part of the stolen property. Mr. Morris may also be guilty of bigamy.
1858: The "Personals" column published today reported that the Jews of Boston have adopted a series of resolutions thanking Parliament for the admission of Mr. Rothschild.
1860: An article entitled “On Visiting Barnum’s Little Theatre” published today shows the impact of the Bible on popular American culture as it reported that “the earliest dramatic efforts of the middle ages, which were always taken from Scriptural subjects, not unnaturally passes across the mind, as the title of the piece to be represented is announced, -- "Joseph and his brethren." A portion of the Scripture narrative is mingled with the numerous other events which succeed each other with startling rapidity, and are purely imaginative. There are Babylonians -- including the King -- by the score among the dramatis personae, and a corresponding number of Jews and Egyptians. The piece is placed on the stage in a gorgeous manner, and evidently gratifies, not only the children, but the parents also.”
1862(4thof Tishrei, 5623): Tzom Gedaliah
1863(15thof Tishrei, 5624): For Jews living in the Union, the great victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg giving them something to celebrate as they observe the thanksgiving festival of Sukkoth
1867: Toronto became the capital of Canada. At this time Toronto had a Jewish population of about 200 people. The community supported one synagogue called Toronto Hebrew Congregation-Holy Blossom Temple. Holy Blossom was Orthodox but would later join the Reform movement. The Jewish community has grown to over 150,000 and, along with Montreal, is one of the two leading centers for Jewish life in Canada.
1870(3rdof Tishrei, 5631): Tzom Gedaliah
1873: Establishment of Temple B'nai Jeshurun. It is the oldest of Des Moines' synagogues. Many members of this congregation are buried in Des Moines' oldest Jewish cemetery, Emanuel Jewish.
1874(17th of Tishrei, 5635): Third Day of Sukkoth
1874: An article published today entitled “Feast of Tabernacles” described the observances on the second day of Sukkoth, including the fact that the Reform only observe the first and last days of the festival while the Orthodox observe the second day in the same manner as the first day. According to the story, the entire service was “conducted in accordance with the command found in the 23rd chapter of Leviticus. The congregants were dressed in white, recited the Hallel and waved the branches of palm, myrtle and willow as well as the citron.
1876(10th of Tishrei, 5637): Yom Kippur
1877(21st of Tishrei, 5638): Hoshana Rabah
1877: Reverend T. De Witt Talmage delivered a lecture in the Brooklyn Tabernacle entitled “The Admission of Jews Into Gentile Society” and “the Death of the Mormon.” He began by discussing the tempest created last summer by the Jewish being banned from one of the leading hotels. He presented an argument that Gentiles were no better than Jews and Jews were no better than Gentiles. The decision to ban the Jews was based on business and should be left to stand as a business matter. He then went on to condemn Brigham Young and the Mormons.
1877: Today was market day in Bayard Street in NYC. Reportedly, throngs of Polish Jews were busy buying geese and chickens from one of a multiplicity of buildings that have signs saying “Kosher” their windows.
1878(1st of Tishrei, 5639): Rosh Hashanah
1878: Four thousand worshippers attended services today Temple Emanu-El on New York’s Fifth Avenue. Rabbi Gustav Gottheil led the service and delivered a sermon in English. The sermon was based on a verse from Genesis, “So he sent his brethren away, and they departed, and he said unto them, see that you fall not by the wayside.” Professor Davis served as organist as well as music director for the service.
1878: It was reported today that several agencies in New Orleans were soliciting funds to aid those suffering from Yellow Fever including the Hebrew Benevolent Association.
1881: Forty-eight Jews who had arrived at Castle Garden yesterday will be sent to Chicago and Toledo today by a recently formed committee of New York Jews that is charged with meeting their initial needs in the United States. The group includes ten families and most of the workers are tailors and farmers.
1882(15th of Tishrei): Sukkoth
1884(9th of Tishrei, 5645): Erev Yom Kippur
1884: It was reported today that Austrian Emperor is prepared to raise Herr Hirsch, the Chief Rabbi of Prague “to noble rank.”
1884: The case of Abraham Jacobs and Jacob Jacobs, two Jews who had charged each other with assault was heard at the Tombs Police Court today. Since there were no other witnesses and each person’s story had equal weight, charges were dismissed.
1887(10th of Tishrei, 5648): Yom Kippur
1888(23rd of Tishrei, 5649): Simchat Torah
1891: Minister Smith leaves for St. Petersburg where he will present President Harrison’s concern about Russian treatment of their Jewish population. This represents a reversal of the behavior of American officials posted to the Czar’s government. Secretary of the Legation Wurtz has exerted pressure against any move to improve the conditions of Russian Jews and “other oppressed classes with whom the great-hearted American people really sympathize.
1899: Birthdate of Boris Yefimov, a Russian cartoonist who would “despised by Hitler and beloved by Stalin” and “who for 70 years and 70,000 drawings” would wield “his talent as a keen sword to advance the goals of his country.”
1901(15th of Tishrei, 5662): Sukkoth
1901: Birthdate of William S. Paley. Paley took control of the fledging CBS radio network in the 1920's. He would make it a competitor of the dominant NBC before shifting CBS to television where it would be the dominant network for several decades. Under Paley, CBS represented the gamut of American culture from the lowbrow of I Love Lucy to the highbrow of Edward R. Murrow. One thing that it never did was become a Jewish media outlet, despite what anti-Semitic critics might have said.
1902: Emile Zola passed away. Zola was a French novelist, journalist and social critic. He was a leader in the fight to get justice for Captain Alfred Dreyfus. J’Accuse, his attack on the French military, gave rise to a libel case the forced many of the issues out into the open. In speaking about Franco-Judaeo Relations, one must never lose sight of those like Zola who defended the rights of their Jewish countrymen.
1906(9th of Tishrei, 5667): Erev Yom Kippur
1907: “A group of Poalei Zion members gathered at Yitzhak Ben-Zvi's unfurnished apartment in Jaffa apartment formed Bar-Giora, a Jewish self-defense organization named for Simon Bar Giora, one of the leaders of the Jewish Revolt against the Romans. The founding members were Israel Shochat, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, Mendel Portugali, Israel Giladi, Alexander Zaid, Yehezkel Hankin, Yehezkel Nissanov and Moshe Givoni. The goal of the organization was settling the land and guarding it from Arab attackers. Previously, Arab guards had been hired for protection. Many Jews refused to employ members of Bar- Giora fearing it would cause more friction with the local Arabs.. Bar-Giora chose a line from Yaakov Cohen's poem, Habiryonim as its motto. "In fire and blood did Judea fall; in blood and fire Judea shall rise." This was one of the mottos of the Jewish defenders during the pogroms in the Russian Empire. Members swore an oath of secrecy, discipline, selfless service, devotion to the cause and loyalty. All decisions had to be ratified by unanimous vote. All members were required to have least a year's experience in farming. Guarding was put off until the members of the organization had gained enough experience and knowledge of the land. When Hashomer was formed in 1909, Bar-Giora was absorbed into it
1909: Birthdate of Al Capp. Born in New Haven, Connecticut, the cartoonist gained fame with the creation of "Li'l Abner." Among the creatures that inhabited the world of Li'l Abner were the Shmoos, little ghost like creatures that when cooked, tasted like any food you would desire. Many said that the concept reminded them of the Biblical manna.
1913: Birthdate of psychoanalyst Albert Ellis a founder of the now widely practiced cognitive behavioral therapy. His blunt advice to patients included “forget god-awful pasts, face fears and change actions. He passed away on July 24, 2007 at the age of 93.
1915: Birthdate of Ethel Rosenberg. She would join her husband Julius as part of America’s most famous husband and wife spy team. They would both be executed in 1953.
1916:Birthdate of Yizhar Smilansky who was better known by his pen name Samech Yizhar He was an Israeli writer and a great innovator in modern Hebrew literature. His pen name S. Yizhar was given to him by the poet and editor Yitzhak Lamdan, when in 1938 he published Yizhar's first story “Ephraim Goes Back to Alfalfa” in his literary journal Galleons. From then on, Yizhar signed his works with his pen name. He passed away in 2006
1918(22ndof Tishrei, 5679): Shemini Atzeret
1918: Birthdate of comedian and comedic actor Arnold Stang. Stang gained early fame on the Milton Berle Show. His voice would become famous to later television generations in several animated series.
1923: Birthdate of Naphtali Kupferberg who would gain fame as Tuli Kupferberg, a poet and singer who went from being a noted Beat to becoming, in his words, “the world’s oldest rock star” when he helped found the Fugs,
1924(29thof Elul, 5684): Erev Rosh Hashanah
1924:Birthdate of Yekutiel (Kuty or Sulic) Sapir, the Ukrainian native married to Mina Arison Sapir the mother of Micky and Shari Arison.
1924: Birthdate of Rudolf Barshai, an orchestral conductor who built a prominent career in the West after defecting from the Soviet Union in the 1970s.
1926: Birthdate of Mordechai “Mottie” Hod, the sabra from Degania who commanded the Israeli Air Force during the Six Day War in 1967. If you did not know he was a real person you would have thought he was created Ian Fleming or Tom Clancy.
1927(1st of Tishrei, 5688): Rosh Hashanah
1928: Shortstop Jonah Goldman made his major league debut with the Cleveland Indians.
1929: Birthdate of General Mordechai “Mottie’ Hod, the commander of the Israeli Air Force during the Six Day War.
1933: Birthdate of Madeleine May Kunin, a Swiss born American diplomat and politician. She was the Governor of Vermont from 1985 until 1991. She also served as United States Ambassador to Switzerland from 1996 to 1999. She was Vermont's first female governor as well as the first Jewish governor of Vermont. She was also the first Jewish woman to be elected governor of a U.S. state.
1935(1stof Tishrei, 5696): Rosh Hashanah
1937(23rdof Tishrei, 5698): Simchat Torah
1937: Mussolini and Hitler gave speeches in front of 1,000,000 people in Berlin Italians would later try and portray themselves as victims after they had switched sides during World War II. The reality is that the Axis Alliance was seen by Hitler as a valuable tool in his plan to create a Third Reich that would be Jew-free.
1937: It was reported today that John M. Schiff, the grandson of the late Jacob M. Schiff, will head the campaign to raise $250,000 for The Henry Street visiting Nurse Service. Schiff is a partner in Kuhn, Loeb & Co.
1938: The Munich Conference is attended by French Premier Edouard Daladier, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, and Hitler. Climaxing the Allies' appeasement policy, France and Great Britain permit Germany to illegally annex the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia. Most of Europe breathes a sigh of relief because war is averted. Daladier, observing the huge crowds awaiting him at the Orly airport near Paris, fears that they will tear him apart for betraying France's Czech ally. After he lands, he is relieved when his people throw roses at him.
1938: The Czech representatives to the conference, who had been forced to wait helplessly in the corridor outside the conference hall, break down into sobs after hearing the news of the Allied concessions to Germany. Also at the conference, Chamberlain signs a Friendship Treaty with Germany without informing his French ally. Arriving home, he triumphantly holds this scrap of paper up to the crowd that surrounds his airplane and promises "peace in our time."
1939(15thof Tishrei, 5700): Sukkoth
1939: Germany and the Soviet Union partitioned Poland. The result was a sudden mass expulsion of Jews during which thousands were robbed and hundreds murdered.
1939: Warsaw surrenders to Nazi Germany during World War II. The Holocaust comes to the Polish capital. In the mean time, the French army, which could have attacked Germany on its western border thus providing real help to the Poles, remained, for all intents and purposes, inactive.
1939: The SS selects the start of the weeklong Jewish festival of Sukkoth to forcibly deport more than 8000 Jews from Pultusk, Poland.
1941(7th of Tishrei, 5702): The Massacre at Babi Yar continued for its second and final day. In Kiev, 2000 notices had been posted around Kiev ordering all Jews to appear with documents warm clothes and valuables. Rumors had been rife that they were going to be sent to a labor camp. Instead they would be massacred at Babi Yar. According to German records, 33,771 Jews were slaughtered in a Ravine outside of Kiev. The massacre is immortalized in Yevgei Yevtushenko's poem Babi Yar. The monument placed on the site by the Soviet government did not mention the victims were Jews.
1942: The Nazis activated a new train schedule that included the following daily direct transports: one train a day from Radom to Treblinka, one train a day from Cracow to Belzec, and one train a day would go from Lvov to Belzec. Each train would consist of 50 cars and carry 2,000 Jews. By November two more direct connections would be established: Lublin to Sobibor and Chlemno to Sobibor.
1943:After secretly making sure Sweden would receive Jewish refugees, Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz, a German diplomat, leaked word of the plans for the operation against Denmark's Jews to Hans Hedtoft, chairman of the Danish Social Democratic Party. Hedtoft contacted the Danish Resistance Movement and the head of the Jewish community, C.B. Henriques, who in turn alerted the acting chief rabbi, Dr. Marcus Melchior.
1943(28th of Elul, 5703): Todays marks the two-day slaughter of the Jews from the community from Split, Yugoslavia, the concentration camp in Sajmiste, Yugoslavia,.
1943: Over a forty-eight hour period Roman Jews deliver 50 kilograms of gold to the Gestapo in Rome, as ordered. Pope Pius XII had offered to lend the Italian Jews 15 kilograms of gold if they could not collect the full amount themselves. In the end, it does not matter. The Germans lied, taking the gold and the Jews.
1943:A convoy of taxis and private cars pulled up to the Gestapo headquarters in Rome carrying the ransom of fifty kilograms in gold which was the payment demanded to avoid the deportation of two hundred Jews.
1943: The Last Nazi "Action taken" took place in Amsterdam. Two thousand Jews were deported. This meant that almost 110,000 Jews, which was 95% of Holland's former Jewish population, would not survive the war.
1944(11th of Tishrei, 5705): Boys deemed too short by Auschwitz's Dr. Josef Mengele are gassed.
1944: After a four month hiatus, the Nazis resume deportations from Theresienstadt, to Auschwitz. Among the 2499 prisoners deported on this day is teenager Petr Ginz, a Czech of Jewish background who was the guiding light behind Vedem (In the Lead), a secret "magazine" created and distributed throughout Theresienstadt. More than 1000 of these 2499 prisoners are gassed immediately.
1944(11th of Tishrei, 5705): One thousand of the 2,499 Jews sent to Birkenau from Theresienstadt were gassed.
1944: German forces defeat British airborne troops at the Battle of Arnhem in the Netherlands. This marked the end of Operation Market Garden, Field Marshall Montgomery’s poorly planned, poorly executed “plan” to defeat Germany with a single “masterstroke.” This ego-manical mission meant fuel and supplies were defeated from Patton’s hard charging Third Army and that the war would be prolonged which of course meant more Jews perishing in the Holocaust.
1944: Soviet troops liberate Klooga Concentration in Kalooga, Estonia.
1945(21st of Tishrei, 5706): Sukkoth
1946(1st of Elul, 5706): Rosh Chodesh Elul
1946: Birthdate of rock star Helen Shapiro. Born in the East End of London she was the granddaughter of Polish Jewish immigrants and the daughter piece-workers in the garment industry.
1947: HUAC subpoenaed 24 "friendly" (some had previously testified during HUAC's closed sessions in L.A.) and 19 "unfriendly" witnesses (mostly Jewish), summoning them to Washington. The self-styled hunt for Communist, as can be seen from HUAC’s activities took a definite anti-Semitic tinge.
1950: Too late for the opening ceremonies, but just in time for the start of the first day’s athletic competition, thirteen athletes and four officials fly in from the Netherlands to compete in the Maccabiah.
1950: Jewish athletes from around the world begin playing in the elimination rounds for soccer, tennis and basketball as the Maccabiah games get under way in stadiums in nine Israeli cities including Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Rehovoth and Petah Tikva.
1951: “Israel's waterfront, its only border now open to the rest of the world, is being rapidly improved to handle its increased shipping activity and expanding young merchant marine, Raphael Recanati, general manager here of the Israel-America Line,” said here today. Mr. Recanati spoke glowingly of the improvements that have been made at the Port of Haifa and plans to improve conditions at the underutilized facilities at Tel Aviv. He also reported that the Israel-America line will add another freighter to its fleet, bringing to eight, the number of vessels plying the waters between the east coast of the United and the ports of Haifa and Tel Aviv.
1956: An Israeli delegation headed by Golda Meir that included Moshe Dayan, Moshe Carmel and Shimon Peres left Lod airport for a secret trip to Paris, the purpose of which was to explore the possibility of coordinating an attack on
1959: In what is turning out to be a season for baseball miracles, Larry Sherry pitches the Dodgers past the Braves to take a one game lead in the National League playoff. Another victory will mean the Dodgers will make it to the World Series after having finished in 7th place in 1958.
1964(22nd of Tishrei, 5725): Shmini Atzeret
1964(22nd of Tishrei, 5725): Harpo Marx passed away at the age of 75. One of the famed Marx Brothers, Harpo was the one who did not speak.
1970: Gamal Abdel Nasser, President of Egypt died. Nasser had come to power as a reformer in the 1950's. The Israelis had hoped that Nasser would make peace with the Jewish state. However, Nasser saw himself as Pan Arab leader who would unite the Arabs/Moslems in one unified entity from Morocco to Indonesia while driving the Western Imperialists from this domain. (Yes, Osama is not the first person to have this idea.) Nasser was committed to the destruction of Israel. He did not hate the West because of Israel. As he said, he hated Israel because it was of the West. Nasser was replaced by Sadat who made history with his trip to Jerusalem and the Camp David Accords.
1973: In St. Johnsbury, VT, Congregation Beth-El celebrated the Bat Mitzvah of Amy Aronoff, daughter of Gene and Sheila. It was the first Bat Mitzvah to be held at the temple.
1975: Birthdate of Ukrainian born, American gold medal winning swimmer, Lenny Krayzelburg.
1978: The Israeli Knesset endorsed Camp David Accord moving Egypt and Israel one step closer to a peace treaty that has held for over a quarter of a century.
1981:In St. Johnsbury, Vermont, Congregation Beth-El, held its first services in its new building.
1988: The funeral of Paul Cowan is scheduled to take place today at 9 A.M. at Ansche Chesed synagogue, at West End Avenue and 100th Street.
1993: Outfielder Shawn Green made his major league debut with the Toronto Blue Jays.
1995: In article entitled “Negotiators, Arab and Israeli, Built Friendship From Mistrust” Serge Schmemann reported from Jerusalem today that “There was a moment in the final, crisis-ridden hours of the negotiations on the West Bank that brought home to the heads of both the Israeli and the Arab teams what they had really achieved in their long months together. It had nothing to do with the bitterness in Hebron or positioning of a roadblock in Jenin.
1997: In a review entitled “The Return of the Schlemiel,” William Goodman examines The Complete Stories by Bernard Malamud whose “magic barrel overflows with schnorrers and schleppers, hustlers and gulls, down-at-the-heel rabbis and down-in the mouth students…”
1997: The New York Times book section included reviews by Jewish authors and/or about topics of Jewish interest including Kirk Douglas's Climbing the Mountain: My Search for Meaning' an extension of his 1988 best-selling autobiography, The Ragman's Son
2000: Al Aqsa Intifada began. While there are those who claim that the violence was a spontaneous response of Ariel Sharon to the Temple Mount, the reality differs from what politely be called an Urban Myth. The Al Aqsa Intifada was the orchestrated response of Arafat to the Camp David proposals of Ehud Barak and backed by President Clinton. Arab history is replete with using violence as a response to diplomatic negotiations.
2003(2ndof Tishrei, 5764): Second Day of Rosh Hashanah
2003(2ndof Tishrei, 5764): Marshall N. Rosenbluth, a pioneer in unleashing and taming nuclear fusion, the force that powers the sun and stars, passed away at the age of 76. A modest man whose insights were not as well known as those of more flamboyant colleagues, Dr. Rosenbluth as a young man helped invent the hydrogen bomb, was exposed to radioactive fallout in a nuclear test and soon thereafter devoted himself to trying to harness thermonuclear fire for peaceful ends. In 1997, he won the National Medal of Science, the nation's highest scientific honor, for contributions to nuclear fusion and plasma physics, the study of hot electrically charged gases like those in interstellar space and the atmospheres of stars. Known as the dean of plasma physics, Dr. Rosenbluth was a world leader in trying to turn the hot plasmas of nuclear fusion into nearly limitless electrical power. ''Marshall was a scientist of towering stature,'' said Dr. Marvin L. Goldberger, a former president of the California Institute of Technology and a former director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J. A warm, friendly person who liked opera and sometimes smoked a pipe, Dr. Rosenbluth won many friends among the physicists who came to dominate the nation's scientific life in the atomic era and won respect from them for his keen intellect. ''He was incredibly capable at analyzing problems and finding solutions to a great depth of understanding,'' said Richard L. Garwin, a physicist who worked with Dr. Rosenbluth on the hydrogen bomb. Born in Albany, Marshall Nicholas Rosenbluth graduated from Harvard in 1946 and went to graduate school in physics at the University of Chicago, where many of his teachers had recently helped to invent the atomic bomb. He liked to tell friends how Enrico Fermi and Edward Teller -- two stars of 20th-century physics -- got into an argument in 1949 while listening to him defend his doctoral thesis. ''It went on and on,'' recalled Harold Agnew, then a graduate student at Chicago, who eventually directed the weapons laboratory at Los Alamos, N.M. ''Finally, Fermi turned to Edward and said, 'O.K., you pass.' And then he turned to Marshall, who was just 22, and said 'O.K., you pass, too.''' In 1950, Teller recruited Dr. Rosenbluth to join the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where the young scientist did secret research that helped create the hydrogen bomb. Dr. Teller, considered the father of the bomb, credited Dr. Rosenbluth with important details of its design. In 1952, preparing for the bomb's first explosive test, Dr. Rosenbluth went to the South Pacific. One night he ate too much shrimp and had trouble sleeping, as recounted in Richard Rhodes's 1995 book ''Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb.'' Sleepless, Dr. Rosenbluth pondered the bomb's design and suddenly realized that the scientists had made a serious mistake that could result in a dud. The problem was soon acknowledged and fixed with a new explosive core. When detonated, the hydrogen bomb vaporized a mile-wide island with power 700 times as great as the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima. In 1954, again in the South Pacific, Dr. Rosenbluth was aboard a Navy destroyer when a hydrogen bomb test turned out to be unexpectedly strong and showered his ship with radioactive fallout. ''It was pretty frightening,'' he recalled in Mr. Rhodes's book. ''There was a huge fireball with these turbulent rolls going in and out. The thing was glowing. It looked to me like a diseased brain up in the sky. It spread until the edge of it looked as if it was almost directly overhead. It was a much more awesome sight than a puny little atomic bomb. It was a pretty sobering and shattering experience.'' Around this time, Dr. Rosenbluth joined a small group of scientists who developed the Monte Carlo simulation, now a standard research tool in statistical mechanics, chemistry, biochemistry and other fields. It involves random sampling to simulate physical systems. Dr. Rosenbluth also turned his energies to the challenge of harnessing nuclear fusion for peaceful purposes. His dream was to find a way to compress fickle hot plasmas into stable configurations that generate excess power, a task that has been compared to using rubber bands to hold a blob of jelly. In 1956, he joined General Atomics, a San Diego company that sought to pioneer fusion energy. He also taught physics at the University of California at San Diego, joined the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and directed the Institute for Fusion Studies at the University of Texas. He retired in 1993 as an emeritus professor of physics at San Diego. In the cold war, Dr. Rosenbluth advocated science exchanges with the Soviet Union. ''The more interaction there is, the less paranoia,'' he said in 1985. ''The Russians certainly have shown a good deal of that.'' More recently, he worked to foster international teamwork in fusion and physics research. He was a central figure in the International Center for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy, and of the International Thermonuclear Reactor, a program to demonstrate the feasibility of using fusion to generate power. For more than half a century, Dr. Rosenbluth aided the federal government, serving on panels like Jason, which is composed of eminent scientists who advise security agencies on knotty scientific issues. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and received numerous awards, including the E. O. Lawrence Award, the Albert Einstein Award and the Enrico Fermi Award. With typical modesty, Dr. Rosenbluth made little fuss about his achievements on his faculty profile at San Diego. It was three sentences long. (As reported by William J. Broad)
2003:The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or about topics of Jewish interest including Act of Creation: The Founding of the United Nations: A Story of Superpowers, Secret Agents, Wartime Allies and Enemies, and Their Quest for a Peaceful World by Stephen C. Schlesinger and Real Jews :Secular vs. Ultra-Orthodox and the Struggle for Jewish Identity in Israel by Noah J. Efron
2005(24th of Elul, 5765): Ninety-seven year old Leo Henryk Sternbach, the chemist who created Valium passed away today. (As reported by Jeremy Pearce)
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/01/health/01sternbach.html?_r=0
2005: The Jerusalem Post reported two major archeological finds. First and foremost was a First-Temple period seal discovered amidst piles of rubble from Jerusalem's Temple Mount, The small - less than 1 cm - seal impression, or bulla, was discovered by Bar-Ilan University archaeologist Dr. Gabriel Barkay amidst piles of rubble from the Temple Mount This marks the first time that an written artifact was found from the Temple Mount dating back to the First Temple period. The 2,600 year old artifact, with three lines in ancient Hebrew, was discovered amidst piles of rubble discarded by the Islamic Wakf that Barkay and a team of young archaeologists and volunteers are sifting through on the grounds of a Jerusalem national park. The seal, which predates the destruction of the First Jewish temple in 586 BCE, was presented Tuesday night, September 27, to the press at an archaeological conference at the City of David sponsored by the right-wing Elad organization. Barkay said that the find was the first of its kind from the time of King David. He has not yet determined what the writing is on the seal, although three Hebrew letters -- thought to be the name of its owner -- are visible on one of its line. The seal was found amidst thousands of tons of rubble discarded by Wakf officials at city garbage dumps six years ago, following the Islamic Trust's unilateral construction of an mosque at an underground compound of the Temple Mount known as the Solomon's Stables. Secondly, in a separate major archaeological development in Jerusalem, a Jewish ritual bath, or mikva, dating back to the Second Temple period, and a First Temple Wall have been found in an underground chamber adjacent to the Western Wall tunnels. The announcement came from Jon, Seligman, Jerusalem regional archaeologist for the Antiquities Authority'.
2006:A state memorial ceremony is held at Babi Yar, near the Ukrainian capital of Kiev, where German and Ukrainian soldiers and policemen carried out the mass murder. The memorial is being held on the first day of what would be a two day massacre.<span style="mso-spacerun: