OCTOBER 25 In History
732: Christian forces led by Charles Martel clash defeat the invading Moors at the Battle of Tours which is near Poitiers in modern day France. The victory at Tours ensured that Western Europe would be Christian. For Jews, it also meant that the Sephardic culture would flourish for several centuries to come.
1147: The armies of the Second Crusade (1147-49) were destroyed by the Saracens at Dorylaeum (in modern Turkey). The Crusaders went on with fruitless campaigns against Damascus, Syria. The Jews were bystanders during the Crusades. Unfortunately they fell victim to the wrath of the Islamic and Christian combatants at various times throughout this tumultuous period. Furthermore, one cannot understand what is happening in the part of the world best described as the “Islamic/Arab Arc” if one does not have a sense of the period of the Crusades.
1154: King Stephen of England died. Stephen was an inept monarch who reigned during a period of turmoil and civil war. The first blood libel took place in during his rule in 1144. Unlike the nobles and monarchs of France and Germany, Stephen protected his Jewish subjects from the kind of suffering that the Crusaders were inflicting on their European co-religionists. Stephen reportedly did burn the house of Jew living in Oxford but that was because the Jew refused to contribute to the maintenance of the monarch. While the act is inexcusable it is consistent with the greed of many of European nobles who were in constant need of money and saw the Jews as a cash-cow to be milked to death.
1268: Jucef ibn Astrug Ravaya, a Jew, was appointed bailiff of Besala (modern day Spain). Jucef later became chief bailiff in Aragon and Valencia. Jucef and his brother were the chief administrators in the government of King Pedro
III
. Under Jucef's administration, he and his brother were able to raise funds from within the Jewish community to finance an invasion of Sicily.
1400: The English poet Geoffrey Chaucer passed away. Born in 1340, Chaucer is view as one of the great pre-Shakespearian writers. From a purely Jewish perspective, the author of The Canterbury Tales is slight bit on the flawed side. This is remarkable when you consider that the Jews had been expelled from England almost a century before Chaucer lived. In the “Prioress’s Tale” Chaucer tells of an eight year old hymn signing Christian boy who is murdered as he passes through the Jewish section of his town. The boy is seized by “this accursed Jew” who cuts “his throat and casts him into a pit.” In the end the Jewish community is wiped out as punishment for the crime. This version of the blood libel proves that you did need Jews around to preach anti-Semitism, that anti-Semitism was part of the fabric of Christian civilization and that Jews are not the cause of anti-Semitism.
1408: In Spain, The Council of Regency, under the inspiration of the apostate Paul de Santa Maria, reinstituted all previous anti-Jewish legislation of Alphonso the Wise of Castile (1252-1284).
1541: The Jews of Algeria escaped capture by the Spanish Army which gave rise to Purim Edom
1742: Birthdate of Giovanni Bernardo De Rossi, the Christian native of Parma who was a noted Hebraist. After being named Professor of Oriental Languages at the University of Parma, he delivered “His inaugural lecture on the causes of the neglect of Hebrew study.”
1760: King George III assumes the throne of Great Britain. The Jews of the 13 colonies would adopt the view of their non-Jewish neighbors and see George as a modern day Pharaoh.
1765: A group of Philadelphia merchants gathered in the State House to sign the non-importation agreement to fight the hated Stamp Tax of the British government. The merchants and other citizens of Philadelphia agreed "not to have any goods shipped from Great Britain until after the repeal of the Stamp Act.” “The first man to step forward to sign his name was the president of Mikve Israel Congregation, Philadelphia's only synagogue, Mathias Bush.”Other Jewish signers included Benjamin Levy, David Franks, Samson Levy, Hyman Levy, Jr., Moses Mordecai, Michael Gratz, and Barnard Gratz.”
1822(10th of Cheshvan, 5583: Abraham Touro died today in Boston at the age of 48. Born in 1774, he was the “oldest son of Isaac Touro, Abraham was born in Newport, Rhode Island. After the death of his father in Jamaica, he lived with his mother and siblings in the home of his uncle Moses Michael Hays in Boston, Massachusetts. As an adult, Abraham lived in Medford, Massachusetts. He entered into the merchant trade and insurance business with his cousin, Judah Hays, taking over the family business when his uncle died. Like his brother Judah, Abraham was known for his philanthropy, contributing to, among others, the Massachusetts General Hospital, the Boston Female Asylum, and the Boston Asylum for Indigent Boys. It was his caring and concern for the synagogue and cemetery in Newport, however, that he truly is remembered. In addition to the maintenance of the synagogue, he also contributed funds and oversaw the erection of a fence around the cemetery, the sidewalk from the cemetery to the synagogue, and maintenance and repair of the street that would one day bear his family name.”
1845: A fire broke out at Constantinople which had consumed the greater part of the Jewish quarter, and destroyed several Synagogues. "Distress, starvation, and misery of all kinds prevail among the unfortunate Jewish population."
1848: In Galcia, Dr. and Mrs.Heinrich Franzos gave birth to author Karl Emil Franzos.
1853: 23rd of Tishrei, 5614):Simchat Torah
1853: The Five Academies comprising the Institute of France held their annual meeting today. Among the presenters was M. Holely of the Academy of Fine Arts, composer of the "Wandering Jew" who read "an interminable discourse on Frohberger, a German organist whom no ever heard of, and whom the writer himself acknowledge was snuffed out by Handel.
1858: In his role as President of the London Committee of Deputies for the Jews, Sir Moses Montefiore sends a letter to the leaders of the American Jewish community asking that they join “with the Jews in England, Holland and France” in seeking the support of their respective governments to take whatever action is possible to ensure the return of Eduardo Mortara to his parents after he had been seized by Catholic authorities so that he could be raised in their faith.
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1858: Today Sir Moses Montefiore, the President of the London Committee of Deputies for the Jews wrote a letter the President of the Hebrew Congregation in the United States and others that urged the American Jewish community to join its co-religionists in England, Holland France in seeking the support of their government in having the Mortara child returned to his parents and to avoid any such future seizures. It summarized the threat that the seizure Edgardo Mortara posed to Jews and “every other denomination of faith” except the Roman Catholics. Montefiore reiterated that this was not just a matter of religious freedom. The behavior of the Catholic Church placed “in peril, personal liberty, social relations and the peace of families.”
1860: An article published today based on information from the Beirut correspondent of the Boston Traveler entitled “Affairs in Syria,” reports that "The Anglo-American Committee, while it retains its original name, has now among its members leading men from the Greek, the Roman Catholic and the Jewish persuasions, and relief is extended to men of every creed irrespective of any peculiarity of faith…It will perhaps interest your readers to know that Dr. Nathan Marcus Adler the Chief Rabbi of the Jews, who resides in London, has issued an address to the Jews throughout Europe, calling upon them for liberal contributions for the poor in Syria, and that the Rothschilds and other eminent and wealthy Israelites are feeling much interest in the subject. Dr. Adler bases his appeal upon the ground that Syria and Palestine is the land of their fathers, and that as it is a land so full of holy associations connected with the past, and so replete with hope for the future, they must rally to the aid of their Christian brethren in the East, who are children of the same Almighty Father, and calls upon them to give liberally as they hope to be restored to the land to which their traditions, prophecies, and hopes, point as their future home."
1862: The New York Timesspecial correspondent traveling with the Army of the Potomac reported that the recent order relating to sutlers have, to a great extent, cleared out the "Jews" as well as "Gentiles," who had turned Bolivar Heights into a Chatham-street. Bolivar Heights was the site of the Union Army’s camp. Chatham-street was a reference to a street of that name in NYC which was the site of much of the second-hand clothing business; a business allegedly dominated by Jews who were rumored to always taking advantage of their Christian customers.
1863: A writer for the Richmond Examiner proposes a plan for stowing the population of the entire Confederacy in Richmond, and supplying them with food. While the article is allegedly a satire, the paragraphs about the Jews have the whiff of anti-Semitism. Now “we approach naturally enough the Jews, a class which includes not only the unworthy Israelites, but all who indulge the alleged Hebraic propensity for exacting the pound of Christian flesh and amassing riches at the expense of the life-blood of their fellow-citizens. Such are Yankee tradesmen of whatever denomination, restaurant keepers, confectionery and apple sellers, oyster-cellar men, proprietors of hotels and boarding-houses, and the like. All these come under the same head, and are to be disposed of in the same manner…I am told that the Jews, in addition to the shop in which they are now reduced to the unprofitable business of selling lead pencils at a dollar apiece, meerschaum pipes made out of plaster of Paris, empty pocket-books, and rotten shoe-strings, at similar rates, own a vast number of the best houses in the city, purchased by their honest gains, and now filled with flour, bacon, sugar, salt, coffee, tea, corn, meat, oats, hay, fodder, shucks and other necessaries of life. If this be true, not a moment is to be lost in ousting them, in order to save the army and the people from starvation. They are said to have packed away in their cellars and garrets enough clothing, made and unmade, to furnish every respectable man, woman and child in the Confederacy with two complete Winter suits, besides whisky, brandy and wine enough to keep the taro-banks, cannal-pockets, Congress and Governor Letcher supplied for nearly three months to come. These must be obtained without delay or regard to law or peril to life or limb. My neat and simple plan for effecting this with the required promptness, is to detail the provost-guard, city battalion, night watch, Col. Bronner's cavalry, and any other force that may be needed, to seize Jews, restaurant men and chattels, expose the same to sale -- not at Yankee auction, but at a ladies' fair, to be conducted exclusively by the poor women of the city, assisted by some honest hospital steward (if such can be found,) and in the meantime to lodge the said Jews, restaurant, confectionery, oyster, hotel and boarding-house men in the exceeding capacious and patriotic flour mills of the metropolis, which are now lying idle for lack of the wheat and confidence of our long-headed, good-memoried country gentlemen. If the several mills do not suffice to contain them all, plenty of room can be found in the various tobacco warehouses, which are to be emptied in pursuance of my plan, as will be shown further on. Having packed the Jews, foreign or native born, everyone in the mills and warehouses, it would be cruel to forget that they have been accustomed to active, industrious life, and to leave them a prey to idleness and their own villainous imaginations. I propose to be guilty of no such inhumanity, but to give them constant and laborious employment during the whole term of their incarceration. With this view I have consulted Adjt.-Gen. Richardson, and find that he has now in the Virginia Armory something above one thousand tons of old flints, which he has kindly placed at my disposal. These flints must be carefully skinned by the imprisoned Jews, and the hides thus obtained are to be sold to the Navy Department...”
1871: An article published today compared the methods of Irish men and Jews who are engaged in the second-hand clothing business. The Irish rely on a network of their fellow country men and women who work as servants in the homes of the wealthy. “The Jewish old-clothes man” works in the street relying on his ability to trade and barter as opposed to using cash for the purchase of items
1872(23rd of Tishrei, 5633): Simchat Torah
1875: William F. Kintzing, the defense attorney for the three man charge with the murder of a Hebrew peddler in the woods at Westchester (NY) opposed the district attorney’s motion to transfer the case from the Court of General Sessions to the Oyer and Terminer, the court with criminal jurisdiction. Judge Sutherland ruled that since this was a capital case, the transfer was proper and he approved the motion. The three would eventually be convicted of the immigrant Jewish peddler who was supporting his children still living in Europe.
1877: It was reported today that New Yorker Abraham S. Isaacs, an editor of the Jewish Messenger, plans to publish a work on Hebrew literature.
1877: It was reported today that a volume written by Helen Zimmern on the life and works of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing will be published in London this fall. Lessing was the close friend of Moses Mendelssohn and wrote “Nathan the Wise.”
1879: It was reported today the Senate in Bucharest has passed a bill that would revise the Romanian Constitution to allow for the emancipation of the Jews by a large majority.
1882: “Mordecai Lyons,” a new play by Edward Harrigan is scheduled to open at the Theatre Comique in New York City. The three act plays includes scenes in a pawnbroker’s shop and a chop-house on Houston Street.
1881: Birthdate of Pablo Picasso. Picasso befriended the Italian-Jewish painter Amedeo Modigliani. He posed for a portrait by Modigliani and tried to help him be a commercial success. According to a 2004 film featuring the relationship between these two artistic giants. Picasso painted a portrait of Modigliani. Picasso reportedly uttered Modigliani’s name on his death bed
1882: It was reported today that “Jew” Rosa was among the confederates of the “notorious counterfeiter” Van Rensselaer Abrams. (It has not been ascertained if Rosa’s appellation was indicative of his religious origins.)
1883: “Celebrating A Fest Too Well” published today described a Simchat Torah celebration that a group of Polish Chassidim held in room above the crockery store owned by Bernard Levy. When Levy heard furniture and windows breaking, he attempted to control the group. But the abundance of liquor and beer prevented this and Levy was forced to call the police.
1884: In New York City, Jess Seligman delivered the opening remarks at the Young Men’s Hebrew Association “ Montefiore Centenary Celebration” which the Anglo-Jewish leader’s one hundredth birthday
1884: Baltimore’s Lloyd Street Synagogue was the scene of special ceremonies marking the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Sir Moses Montefiore
1885: “The Strength of Ideas” published today contends that “No race has ever been affected by its wars as the Jews have been affected by the single idea that it was their duty to remain a separate people.”
1886: It was reported today that Tommy Grady, who is running against Tim Campbell for in the 8thCongressional District gave an hour-long address to the Tenth Ward Hebrew Citizens’ Association during which he tried “to impress his listeners that he was a friend of the” Jews. (This “courting of the Jewish vote, is yet another example of what differentiated the Jewish American experience from life in Europe, Asia and/or Africa)
1889:It was reported today that Dr. Joseph Silverman and Judge Richard O’Gorman addressed the meeting of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association held at Chickering Hall. The speeches were followed by a musical event featuring soprano Isabelle Rockwell and tenor Hugo Distlehurst.
1889: In New York City, The American Hebrew reports that Dr. Abraham Neumark "...will hold regular discourses on the Talmud and lectures in German every Saturday afternoon." at Orach Chaim.
1891(23rdof Tishrei, 5652): Simchat Torah
1891: Birthdate of Charles Coughlin. He was an American Roman Catholic priest in Detroit and a vicious anti-Semite. In October, 1938 he began his weekly anti-Semitic broadcasts over national radio. The program was very popular, to say the least. He also formed the Christian Front in New York City which carried out anti-Semitic street meetings and boycotted Jewish businesses. Those who are critical of Roosevelt’s policies regarding European Jewry and the apparent passivity of American Jews in response to the menace Hitler posed to the Jews, would do well to read about American during the 1930’s when anti-Semitism was both public and acceptable.
1895: Birthdate of Levi Eshkol. Everybody knows the names of the glamorous Israeli leaders – Ben Gurion, Moshe Dayan, Golda Meir, Menachem Begin, etc. But few know the name of Levi Eshkol. This little known Israeli political leader succeeded Ben Gurion as Prime Minister of Israel in 1963. He was a compromise candidate of whom little was expected. Yet he was the Prime Minister in 1967 when Israel won its great victory over the Arab states and Jerusalem was re-united. Born in Kiev, Eshkol moved to Palestine in 1914. He served in the Jewish Legion during World War I was active in the Labor Zionist movement during the inter-war period. His major accomplishment was the establishment of what would become Israel’s water authority. In a parched land, this was work of major importance. Eshkol joined the Haganah serving as a recruiter and later as the “chief supply officer” for it and its successor, the IDF. As should be obvious, Eshkol’s biggest accomplishment was to serve successfully in a variety of unglamorous positions that were vital to the establishment and growth of Israel. He died of heart attack in 1969.
1905: British Major-General Sir Charles Wilson passed at Tunbridge Wells (UK). Born in 1836, Wilson received his first commission in the Royal Engineers in 1855. In 1864, at the instigation of George Grove, Baroness Angela Burdett Coutts helped finance the Ordnance Survey of Jerusalem. Volunteers were called for from the Royal Engineers to carry out the work and Wilson who had just been promoted to the rank of Captain was selected. The aim of the work was to lay the basis for the improvement of the water supply of Jerusalem, which at the time was severely polluted. In addition to producing a topographical map of the city and its immediate environs, in 1865 the survey party carried out a series of levels from the Mediterranean to the Dead Sea, which established the relative levels of the two bodies for the first time. While Wilson was still in Palestine engaged on the Survey, the Palestine Exploration Fund was founded. On Wilson’s return to England, the PEF Committee engaged him to carry out a 'feasibility study' for proposed Survey of Western Palestine and to identify suitable sites for future exploration. In November 1865, Wilson and his party landed in Beirut and surveyed their way south to Palestine, planning the Great Mosque of Damascus along the way. From January to April 1866, Wilson carried out reconnaissance and survey work in Palestine, paying particular attention to the archaeology and ancient synagogues of the region. In the same year, Wilson was appointed to the Ordnance Survey of Scotland and, in 1867, acted as Assistant Commissioner on the Borough Boundary Commission. In this year, also, he became a member of the Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund. In 1868, he volunteered to take part in the Ordnance Survey of Sinai, along with Capt. H.S. Palmer. The report of their work contains Wilson’s chapters on the route of the Israelites and the prehistoric and Byzantine archaeology of the region. In recognition of Wilson’s work in Jerusalem, he was awarded the Diploma of the International Geographical Congress in 1871. Throughout his military career Wilson remained in touch with the Palestine Exploration Fund, serving as its Chairman during the period from 1901 to 1906. (As reported by the Palestine Exploration Fund)
1910(22ndof Tishrei, 5671: Shemini Atzeret
1906: Installation of Rabbi Jacob Meir as Hahambashi of Palestine. Six months later In April he was deposed by the Sultan of Turkey, and Eliahu M. Panigel was put in the position instead to oversee the orthodox community. Jacob Meir went on to become Chief Rabbi of Salonica.
1913: Birthdate of Avraham Yoffee, the native of Yavne’el who served as a general during the Six Day War and as a member of the Knesset.
1918: The funeral of Julius M Guinzburg, of blessed memory, the brother of Edwin, Adolph, Fernando, Eleanor and Flora Buchbinder is scheduled to take place at the West End Synagogue in New York City.
1919: Winston Churchill “wrote a memorandum for the Cabinet proposing that the Ottoman Empire should not be divided among the victorious powers, but preserved intact, and placed under the authority of the League of Nations. Such a plan would bring an end to the British Mandate in Palestine, and would have led to the abandonment of the Balfour Declaration pledge of a Jewish National Home.”
1924: The Zinoviev Letter is published in the Daily Mail, wrecking the British Labour Party's hopes of re-election. This document, which was a forgery, called for increased Communist agitation in Great Britain. Zinoviev was Grigory Zinoviev, the son of Jewish dairy farmers, who was head of the Comintern.
1929: Arthur Ruppin wrote in his diary describing the devastation the Arabs had wrought on the settlement of Hulda in Palestine. In 1930, Hulda was resettled as a Kibbutz by a group of young Zionist pioneers known as the Gordonia, followers of A.D. (Aaron David) Gordon.
1930: Birthdate of American Jewish author Harold Brodkey.
1930(3rd of Cheshvan, 5691): Seventy year old Russian-Jewish bacteriologist Waldemar Mordecai Wolff Haffkine passed away.
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/7016-haffkine-waldemar-mordecai-wolff
1930: Several thousand people gathered in Tel Aviv to protest the “British government’s new…policy on Palestine.” The demonstration turned violent when the protestors marched passed the city’s main synagogue which was surrounded by a guard of mounted officers. Several of the people in the group who were identified as being Orthodox resorted to violence over what they considered was a desecration of the Sabbath by having the Jewish guards mounted on horses, a violation of halachah. At the same time a picture of Lord Passfield was ripped to shreds by the mob.
1935: A Zionist Committee in Locarno signed a contract with a steamship company that would provide transportation to Palestine during 1936 for 80,000 Jews who will be settling in Tel Aviv.
1936: Peter and Miriam Gilbert give birth to their son, Martin, in London. Martin Gilbert, grandson of Eastern European immigrants, became Sir Martin Gilbert, the official biographer of Sir Winston Churchill. As the author of over 80 volumes, he is one of the most prolific historians of our time. As anybody who has read his works knows, he is also one of the most reliable authorities who turns works of history into works of literature.
1936: The Berlin-Rome Axis was formed. This was the alliance between Hitler and Mussolini that helped paved the way to World War II and the Holocaust.
1936: At Comiskey Park, home of the White Sox, “a successful penalty kick by Gauol Machlis…enabled the touring Maccabee soccer team from Tel Aviv to defeat the Illinois All Stars 1 to 0…” in front of a crowd of 20,000 ran soaked fans. The receipts from the game will be shared by various Chicago charities.
1939: Mayor La Guardia praised the Youth Aliyah Fund which is providing financial support to send Jewish children to Palestine. At the same time, New York’s mayor warned the members that they must be vigilant in guarding the rights of all minorities.
1940(23rdof Tishrei, 5701): Simchat Torah
1940: General Government (the Nazi government of Poland) ended the granting of any more visas to Polish Jews.
1941(4th of Cheshvan, 5702): Romanian soldiers massacred 26,000 Jews in Odessa, which was part of the Soviet Union. The Romanians were allies of the Germans and participated in their crimes.
1941: Jews at Tatarsk in Soviet Russia revolt against murderous peasants and SS killing squads. The rebellion is put down by regular German Army units, artillery, and air power. All Jews in Tatarsk are murdered.
1941: Einsatzgruppen report to Berlin complains the local population of White Russia was not being helpful in the various actions. “Actions” was the expression for rounding up and murdering Jews. Therefore the Germans themselves would have to step up efforts.
1941: In what is described as “The Birth of the Gas Chamber,” in Germany Dr. Viktor Brack rolled out the new plan for mass execution with "the installation of the necessary buildings and gas plants." Eichmann approved of this method. Such a procedure would assure a systematic method of extinguishing the Jews and reduce incidents of public killings.
1942: Germans demand that Oszmiana, Lithuania, give up 400 of its 1000 Jews. The selection of the victims is assigned to the Jewish police in the nearby city of Vilna. Vilna Ghetto leader Jacob Gens decides to hand over Oszmiana's elderly Jews in order to save the others.
1942: Male Jews in Norway are arrested and sent by sea to Szczecin, Poland, then by railcar to Auschwitz;
1943(26th of Tishrei, 5704): In Birkenau, 2,500 girls from Salonica, Greece, held in Block 25 were all gassed. They sang Hatikvah as they were marched to the death chambers.
1943: The Germans begin the liquidation of the corpse-burning squad at the labor camp in Janówska, Ukraine.
1943: SS chief Heinrich Himmler orders the destruction of the collection of Jewish skulls and skeletons at the Reich Anatomical Institute at Strasbourg.
1944: The Romanian Army liberates Carei, the last Romanian city under Axis Powers' occupation. During the 1920, Joel Teitelbaum had served as a rabbi in Carei. Teitelbaum would later be named Grand Rabbi and head of the Satmar. Liberation came too late for most of the Jews of Romania. Over 264,000 Jews perished in Nazi death camps during World War II. Most of the survivors fled postwar communism and emigrated to Israel or the United States. Only 14,000 Jews, most aged over 60, live in Romania today.
1945: Jews are attacked in Sosnowiec, Poland. Yes, the war and the Holocaust ended in May of 1945. But Polish anti-Semitism seems to have a life of its own.
1945: A Haifa military court sentenced 21 year old Joseph Morakh to five years in prison for possession of 23 hand grenades, 20 bombs and assorted other ammunition.
1945: Representative Andrew L. Somers, a Democrat from New York, challenged the British Ambassador to find out the “true facts” surrounding the sentencing of twenty “boys and girls” in Tel Aviv. Members of the group, who range between the ages of 15 to 20, will be sentenced tomorrow to a total of 118 ages on weapons possession and other charges despite the fact that, according to the Congressman, “twenty six prosecution witnesses had failed to establish the connection between the children and the arms.”
1945: Lee Krasner married Jackson Pollack. Krasner was Jewish – Pollack was not.
1946 Twenty-three former Nazi doctors are tried at Nuremberg on charges of conducting unethical experiments on camp inmates. The various experiments included the drinking of seawater, bone grafting, exposure to mustard gas, and other atrocities. This is the so-called "doctors' trial";
1947: The Irgun threatened to fight a “civil war” with Haganah following recent clashes between the two organizations.
1948: A new road to S’dom was opened during the Israeli War for Independence. In November a military contingent made up of new immigrants would move through the Negev and break the six month long siege of S’dom. Yes, this is the same place as mentioned in Genesis.
1955(9th of Cheshvan, 5716): Edward “Eddie” Jacobson, the Man from Missouri who helped convince that other Man from Missouri, Harry Truman, to support the creation of the state of Israel, passed away in Kansas City, Missouri.
1956: In preparation for the Sinai Campaign, the Israeli government begins to mobilize its reserves and orders a battalion of paratroops to be ready to go into action within four days.
1959(23rdof Tishrei, 5720): Simchat Torah
1965(29th of Tishrei, 5726): Eduard Einstein, second son of Albert Einstein passed away at the age of 55.
1973:After the official end of the Yom Kippur War, General IsraelTal, serving as commander of the southern front, received an order from Chief of Staff General David Elazar and Defense Minister Moshe Dayan to attack Egyptian forces. Tal refused to follow the order, insisting that it was an unethical order and requesting authorization for the requested attack from the prime minister and the Supreme Court. Such authorization never came. Tal won the argument, but his refusal to follow the illegal order as a practical matter eliminated the chances of his being nominated for the position of Chief of Staff to succeed General Elaza (As reported by Haazretz)
1974: An Arab summit at Rabat Morocco put an end to Jordanian involvement in the lands west of the Jordan River which it had seized in 1948 and held until 1967. The Arab governments agreed that the PLO, fresh from the murder of the Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics, was designated as the “sole representative’ of the Palestinian people. This ascendancy of extremism in the Arab world fueled Israeli support for the expansion of settlements on the West Bank and gave impetus to Right Wing politicians seeking to unseat the Labor Zionists.
1978: Israeli Cabinet approved "in principle," a draft compromise peace. This was a necessary step on the road to peace between Israel and Egypt.
1980: Barbra Streisand's "Guilty," album goes #1 for 3 weeks and her single "Woman In Love," goes #1 for 3 weeks.
1986(22nd of Tishrei, 5747): Shemini Atzeret
1992: Latvia adopts its first constitution in the post Soviet period. There are approximately 11,000 Jews living among 2.5 million Latvians. Jews have lived in Latvia since the 17thcentury. There were approximately 90,000 Jews living in the Baltic republic at the outbreak of WW II. There were approximately 320 left on Latvian soil at the end of the war. The President of Latvia has publicly apologized for the role Latvians played in the decimation of the Jewish populace.
1995: In Washington, Prime Minister Rabin countered Arab slogans by declaring, “There are not ‘two Jerusalems.’ There is only one Jerusalem. For us, Jerusalem is not subject to compromise, and there is no peace without Jerusalem. Jerusalem, which was destroyed eight times, where for years we had no access to the remnants of our Temple, was ours, is ours and will be ours – forever.”
1996: The first community bar mitzvah is held in Beijing for Ari Lee, the son of community founders Elyse Silverberg and Michael Lee.
1998: The New York Times included reviews of two books by Jewish authors: Too Good To Be Forgotten: Changing America in the '60s and '70s by David Obst and King of the World: Muhammad Ali and the Rise of an American Hero by David Remnick.
2002(19th of Cheshvan, 5763): Senator Paul Wellstone was killed in a plane crash in northern Minnesota along with his wife, daughter and five others, just 11 days before Election Day. The anniversary of Wellstone’s death should serve to remind us that by the end of the 20th century Jewish political leaders were no longer confined to major metropolitan areas with significant Jewish populations. In Minnesota, the heart of the American heartland, there were actually Jewish senators who came from both the Republican and the Democratic Party. This achievement is all the more remarkable when one remembers that a United States Senator could use the word “Kike” in a speech on the Senate Floor in the 1940’s and get away with it.
2002: In an article entitled “Jews rank high among winners of Nobel, but why not Israelis?” published today, Shule Kopf examines reasons for Jewish over-representation among Nobel Laureates and the future of Jewish intellectualism.
In a short story by Philip Roth, a would-be talent scout sends a letter to Albert Einstein proposing that the renowned Nobel Prize- winner host a weekly radio show to help reduce anti-Semitism. "I would like them to know that the genius of all time is a Jew," he writes. "The world must know and soon…that when it comes to smart, we are the tops." The Nobel Prize is the most prestigious international award that exists. The anointed few who hit gold in this intellectual Olympics receive the coveted $1 million prize in a lavish ceremony presided over by King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden. "The odds are one in a million," gushes one of this year's winners for chemistry.nIn the 101-year history of the Nobel Prize, Jews have won in abundance, in percentages completely out of proportion to their numbers. The competition is fierce. If there were about a thousand active physicists in 1901, today there may be as many as 200,000. Just how many prizes have Jews won? And why is Israel lagging behind? Out of more than 720 prizes awarded since 1901, more than 130, or about 18 percent, have gone to Jewish laureates. Jews have won almost three times the number of awards won by either Germany or France (including their Jewish winners), and 10 times those won by Japan. Jews comprise only 0.3 to 0.5 percent of the world's population. "You'd think we are a superpower," quips one Israeli professor, a dean at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. This year's awards, announced two weeks ago, yielded a few more names to the long list of Jewish winners. *Daniel Kahneman, 68, an Israeli-educated psychologist, won the economics prize for a theory that explains idiosyncrasies in individual decision-making, research that helped incorporate insights from psychology into the discipline of economics. *Imre Kertesz, a 72-year-old Hungarian writer, whose fiction draws on his experience as a teenager in Auschwitz, won the Nobel Prize for literature, the first Holocaust survivor to do so. He joins the ranks of other Jewish literature prize-winners, including Boris Pasternak, Saul Bellow, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Nadine Gordimer and S.Y. Agnon. *H. Robert Horvitz, 55, one of three winners of the prize for medicine, received the award for work on how genes affect organs and the death of cells, shedding new light on the development of disease. Sydney Brenner, 75, founder of the Berkeley-based Molecular Sciences Institute, was also a winner. Jews have won 30 percent of the Nobel Prizes for medicine, more than Germany and Great Britain combined. "The reason for the disproportionate number of Jewish winners is the premium Jews have placed on learning and scholarship," says Uzi Arad, director of the Institute of Policy and Strategy at the Interdisciplinary Institute, Herzliya. "The tradition of reflection and scholarship has sharpened the inquisitive Jewish mind. It takes an inquisitive, nonconformist mind to break into new areas and make discoveries." There are three central theories given for Jewish academic achievement, according to Shulamit Volkov, professor of history at Tel Aviv University and author of "The Magic Circle: Germans, Jews and Anti-Semites." The first theory says that Jews are cleverer than others, a theory dismissed by Volkov and other serious academics. The second theory, proposed first by an American sociologist in 1919, holds that because Jews were on the margins of society they were forced to excel. The third and more common explanation, says Volkov, states that generations of Jewish Orthodox learning later translated brilliantly into secular learning. "In fact, very often the Jewish learning tradition stood in the way of going into science, keeping some of the best minds in the yeshiva," says Volkov. "We have autobiographies of scientists who talk about how difficult it was to break away from the Orthodox world." The dramatic rise of the United States as a hothouse for Nobel Prizes following World War II is attributed partly to the large number of Jewish scientists who fled there to escape Nazism. To date, counting Kahneman's prize for economics, Israel has won five Nobel Prizes: one for literature, by Agnon in 1966, and three for peace, with Menachem Begin in 1978 and Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres in 1994. That raises the question of why Israelis have not won Nobel Prizes in physics, chemistry and medicine, areas in which Jews have traditionally excelled. According to Dr. Michael Sela, a distinguished scientist and former head of the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, several Israeli scientists have been nominated for the Nobel Prize in the past few years, but to date none has received the coveted telephone call from Stockholm. It might comfort them to know that by the time Einstein won in 1922, he had been nominated 50 times. Alfred Nobel's will in 1896 made it clear that "no consideration whatsoever shall be given to the nationality of the candidates." Nevertheless, some say politics does play a role. "My impression is that many of the considerations made by the Nobel Prize committees are political," says Israeli writer Yehoshua Sobol. "For instance, Jimmy Carter was awarded the peace prize many years after he had finished his active life as a peacemaker because they wanted to stick it to [George] Bush. The Nobel Prize committee is made up of human beings and they are certainly not free of prejudices and political considerations. Maybe if Israel were more popular and more politically correct in the eyes of the world we would see more prizes going to Israeli scientists." Politics aside, Arad and other deans of Israeli schools of higher education take a bleak view of Israel's ability to compete with elite institutions worldwide. "You need an environment that is conducive to excellent research and Israel has not provided it," says Arad. "It is clear that the scientists and scholars who win the prizes are individuals who come from prestigious institutions. We have the individuals but not the institutions. We need a culture that would promote, challenge and reward excellence.' "Look at the sequence of Daniel Kahneman's career," says Arad. "To obtain his Ph.D. he had to go to the U.S. He came back to Israel to teach. Then he left for Berkeley and Princeton. Would he have won the prize had he stayed in Israel?" Not a chance, says Professor Ziva Shamir, head of the Rosenberg School for Jewish Studies at Tel Aviv University. "One day the Israeli ministers of education from all generations will have to answer to the charge of what happened to the collective Jewish genius in Israel," she says. "The whole system calls for the lowest common denominator. There is no striving for excellence." Arad points to some mitigating circumstances in Israel's poor Nobel Prize performance. "So much of our intellectual capital and our Jewish ingenuity is channeled to our defense needs rather than to things that are measured by the Nobel," he says. "The years spent under straining conditions in the army are the formative years. It takes a toll."
2003: Mikhail Khodorkovsky was arrested at Novosibirsk airport by the Russian prosecutor general's office on charges of fraud.
2004: Former ALP minister Barry Cohen describes his belief that the Australian Labor Party is becoming anti-Semitic in article appearing in The Age. Barry Cohen was arts minister in the Hawke government. The article is quoted in attempt to give American Jews a sense of the Jewish community “down under.”
It's a sepia-toned family portrait taken in the late 1930s of Mendel and Mindel Kozerwoder and their children Itzek, Charna, Malka, Mania, Yidel, Moishe and baby Faigele. There's nothing unusual about it but it is very precious to me, for they are all members of my family who, with one exception, perished in the crematoriums of Chelmno and Auschwitz. Clasped in the hands of my great-uncle is a photograph of my grandparents, Moishe and Zelda Kozerwoder. Itzek, the only survivor, gave me the photograph after I returned from a visit to Poland, during which I went to the villages of Pajcczno and Dzialoszyn, from which my grandparents departed in the late 1890s. Their travels took them to England, South Africa (where my father was born) and finally to Australia, just after the outbreak of World War I. The photo is the only image I have of the many members of my family who were murdered by the Nazis. When I look at it, my emotions range from gut-wrenching pain to seething rage. It has ensured that I belong to that school of Jewish resolve whose motto is "never again”. There is nothing special about what happened to me and my family. Many Jewish families suffered the same fate. I became aware of the Holocaust in 1944 as the Allied armies swept across Europe and liberated the death camps. I was only nine years old but I can still recall the pain I felt as I watched the newsreels of the emaciated survivors and the mountains of corpses. oon afterwards I was sent to boarding school to prepare for my bar mitzvah. There was a noticeable shortage of synagogues in the country town of Griffith, NSW, where I was born and where my father was the local dentist. My introduction to anti-Semitism commenced on my first day at school. The school sergeant refereed three fights between myself and classmates who called me "a dirty f---ing Jew". I was lucky. Bloody noses and black eyes were nothing compared to what happened to those members of my family who did not have the prescience to depart Europe as my grandparents had done. t didn't, however, make it easier to ignore the taunts and the occasional vicious remark that came at the most unexpected moments and from the most unexpected quarters. Like most Jews in a predominantly Christian society, I developed a defense mechanism to cope. Humor was one weapon. Knowing the history and roots of anti-Semitism was another. So, too, was the pride in seeing the survivors of the Holocaust recreating a Jewish nation for the first time in 2000 years. he survivors of the camps, a million Jews expelled from Arab countries and idealists from all over the Diaspora overcame the combined Arab military forces to ensure that not only did Jews have a haven, but one that was free and democratic. Israel has remained that way, in stark contrast to its Arab neighbors. ustralia is probably the least anti-Semitic country in the world, but what happened to my family made a deep impression on me. I became obsessive about discrimination; be it fighting for civil rights in the US, or against apartheid or the appalling treatment of our indigenous people was, however, an armchair critic mouthing off endlessly about what the government should do. Then a friend hit a sensitive nerve. "What are you doing about it?" he asked. It wasn't difficult to decide. I knew the enemy was on the political right: Nazis, fascists, conservatives, whe