December 1 In History
500: (Kislev 4428): This is the traditional date of the closing of the Talmudic era and the beginning of the Saboraic era. Saboraim is “the title applied to the principals and scholars of the Babylonian academies in the period immediately following that of the Amoraim. The Saboraic Era lasted for approximately 200 years.
800: Charlemagne judges the accusations against Pope Leo III in the Vatican. Fourteen years later, with the crown firmly on his head Charlemagne would issue his Capitulary for the Jews.
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/814capitul-jews.asp
During his papacy, Leo III “introduced public disputations between Jews and Christians, resulting in forced conversions to Christianity.”
1081: Birthdate of Louis VI of France. “During his reign jurisdiction over the Jews (and their revenues) gradually passed from royal control to the hands of the Church. The Abbey of Saint-Denis, in 1112, obtained from the king judicial control over the Jews in the town. In 1119 Louis ceded half his income from the Jews of *Tours to the Abbey of Saint-Martin there; and in 1122 he granted five houses belonging to Jews to Abbot Suger of Saint-Denis.” (As reported by Bernhard Blumenkranz)
1135: Henry I of England passed away. During Henry's reign (1100–1135) a royal charter was granted to Joseph, the chief rabbi of London, and all his followers. Under this charter, Jews were permitted to move about the country without paying tolls, to buy and sell goods and property, to sell their pledges after holding them a year and a day, to be tried by their peers, and to be sworn on the Torah rather than on a Christian Bible. Special weight was attributed to a Jew's oath, which was valid against that of 12 Christians, because they represented the King of England in financial matters. The sixth clause of the charter was especially important: it granted to the Jews the right of movement throughout the kingdom, as if they were the king's own property (sicut res propriæ nostræ). Henry died without a direct male heir. The result was civil strife that was bad for England in general and the Jews in particular. Peace would only come when Henry’s grandson, Henry II, took the throne.
1145: Pope Eugene
III
sent a papal bull to the French King, Louis
VII
, proclaiming the Second Crusade. Led by Louis and Emperor Conrad
III
from 1147 to 1149, the crusade failed to accomplish its goal.
1516: Jerusalem surrendered to Selim I, the Ottoman Sultan
1521: Pope Leo X passed away. Leo was one of those Italian Popes whose pursuit of other interests left him “no time to think of torturing Jews.” Bonet de Lates, a Jew from Provence served as Leo’s physician and unofficial advisor. He was more of an aristocrat than man of the cloth who was more concerned about navigating among the competing temporal powers than matters of religion. His leniency towards the Jews may have stemmed from an attitude summed up by his statement that “It is well known how useful this fable of Christ has been to us and ours!”
1652: Manuel Fernando de Villa-Real, a distinguished Marrano who "conducted the consular affairs of the Portuguese court at Paris" was seized in Lisbon, gagged and executed.
1573(Kislev, 5334): This date marks the death of Solomon Luriawho was born in 1510 at Brest-Litovsk. Luria is known as the "Rashal" or the Maharshal. A contemporary of Salomon Shakna, he represented an opposing view in Talmudic study, believing in plain but lucid methods. He was also the author of the Yam Shel Shlomo (Sea of Solomon), a commentary on several volumes of the Talmud, and Chokmat Shlomo (Wisdom of Solomon) in which he corrected many faulty readings in the Talmud, Rashi and the Tosophot.
1626: Ibn Farukh (Governor of Jerusalem) was deposed after harshly persecuting the Jews.
1652(Tevet, 5413): Portuguese Jewish statesman Manuel Fernando de Villarreal was executed by the Inquisition.
1742: The Jews living in “Great Russia” were expelled by order of Empress Elizabeth.
1742: Suleiman Pasha of Damascus ended the siege of Tiberias
1820(25thof Kislev, 5581): Chanukah
1825: Czar Alexander I passed away. This anti-Semitic Russian monarch’s death coincided with a temporary cessation of the forced re-settlement of Jews in the Pale of Settlement. The cruel re-settlement policy would be quickly reinstituted by his son and successor, Nicholas I. Prayer for the Czar: May the Lord keep the Czar…far away from the Jews.
1843: Birthdate of Leopold Lowenstein a German rabbi born from Gailingen, Baden. The son of a rabbi, he would eventually serve as the Rabbi for three districts located in his native Baden.
1844: In an election for Chief Rabbi of the British Empire Jacob Adler received 121 votes, Hirsch Hirschfeld 12, and Samson Raphael Hirsch 2.
1848: Birthdate of Yosef Chaim Zonnenfeld, or Sonnenfeld, who was the Chief Rabbi and co-founder of the Edah HaChareidis, Haredi Jewish community in Jerusalem, during the years of the British Mandate of Palestine.
1852: A British ship, the Fitzjames under the command of Captain arrived at the Quarantine area in New York tonight. Among the passengers were two Jews – a man named Drestner from Poland and Augustine Behr from Germany. Apparently when the ship was about thirty miles from Sandy Hook (off the coast of New York) the two Jews had a discussion about religion that became so heated that Behr stabbed Drestner with his knife. Drestner was taken to the hospital on Staten Island. While the police are holding Behr in jail, U.S. authorities say they have authority in the case since the attack took place on British vessel in international waters. The British Counsel has been notified and may send Behr back to England for a hearing.
1860: The New York Times correspondent wrote from Jamaica that “an Anti-Jewish feeling is brewing in the community, and I am very much afraid that, politically -- that is, speaking daggers, but using none, for we can never come to that -- a war of races will have to be fought. The colored classes who constitute the education, the planters who represent the wealth, and the blacks who have the force of numbers, are not going to rest satisfied while the Government and the patronage of Government are given up to the Jews, who are clannish enough to employ them to their own use, and to the detriment of all other classes. This is the state of things at present; but the difficulty is far from being settled, and I am afraid the Governor will, at the long run, be forced to retire.”
1861: E. Delafield Smith, the U.S. District Attorney, wrote a letter of introduction to President Lincoln on behalf of Rabbi Fischell “who has been appointed by the Board of Delegates of the Israelites of the U.S. to urge the modification of the laws in relation to chaplains, so far as they affect the practice, though I doubt not unintended exclusion of clergymen of the Jewish faith from acting in that capacity, even in regiments composed of persons of that faith. This class of our citizens has evinced loyalty to the Government, and I need not say is entitled to at least a hearing on this subject. Dr. Fischell is a gentleman of great worth and intelligence.”
1868: Disraeli completed his first term as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and became the leader of the Opposition.
1870: It was reported today that the Hebrew Charity Fair had opened to a full house with a program that included a speech by the Governor of New York.
1870: Attendance at the second day of the Hebrew Fair for the benefit of Mount Sinai Hospital and the Hebrew Orphan Asylum was less than on opening night, but was robust enough to raise an additional $7,000. When this total is added to the over $51,000 raised the first night, it means that in only two days the fair has already raise almost $60,000.
1870: Professor Singler’s Orchestra provided the music at tonight’s second annual ball of the Hebrew Young Men’s Literary Association which was held at the Apollo Hall in New York.
1871: The Hebrew Young Men’s Literary and Benevolent Association is scheduled to host an evening of entertainment at the Irving Hall.
1871: It was reported today that children at the Hebrew Orphan Asylum enjoyed a “splendid” Thanksgiving meal filled with “holiday pleasure.”
1871: It was reported today that in Brooklyn all businesses were closed for Thanksgiving except for “saloons and Jew clothing-stores.”
1876: It was reported today that the Hebrew Charity Ball will be held on December 21 at the Academy of Music.
1876: It was reported that Rabbi George Jacobs delivered the invocation at yesterday’s ceremony in Philadelphia, PA during which a monument dedicated to Religious Liberty financed by the B’nai Brith was presented to the Centennial Committee chaired by A.L. Singer.
1877: The Hebrew Free School Association in New York is providing services to 701 students.
1878: The annual meeting of the Hebrew Free School Association was held today at the schoolhouse located at Number 96 Bowery. As of this date, the association operates five schools, employs 17 teachers and serves 1,045 students.
1893: Birthdate of German expressionist playwright Ernst Toller who would be memorialized by W. H. Auden's poem "In Memory of Ernst Toller."
1907(25thof Kislev, 5668): Chanukah
1909: The first Kibbutz, Degania, was established in pre-state Israel. Aaron David Gordon (1856-1922), one of its founders, was considered the "Apostle" of the kibbutz movement. Each colony was independent and democratically governed. Membership was voluntary and all earnings and expenses were shared.
1913: Crete, having obtained self rule from Turkey after the First Balkan War, is annexed by Greece. “The Jews of Crete are first mentioned in 2 Maccabees and appear to have had a community at Gortys.” “Toward the end of the 19th century, Crete was made into an independent republic under a Greek prince regent. A parliament was established, with several Jewish representatives, who managed to claim their constitutionally guaranteed seats with great difficulty. After Crete was formally annexed to Greece in 1913, Jewish emigration continued until, by 1941, there were only 364 Jews in Hania, 1 in Rethymnon, and 7 in Herakleion.”
1915: First night of a “fete” held for the benefit of the Spanish and Portuguese Sisterhood which is chaired by Mrs. Mortimer M. Meken.
1916: Italian government declares an Italian, and not a native, be appointed as rabbinate in Tripoli. Arabs are in charge of local courts of justice and deal unjustly against Jews.
1917: A fund raising campaign led by Jacob Schiff is scheduled to begin today in New York City.
1917: The Bolshevik Armistice Commission, with two Jews, Adolf Jofee and Leo Kamenev (Trotsky’s brother in law) as chief negotiators left Petrograd for peace talks with the Germans at Brest-Litovsk.
1918: Following the incorporation of Bessarabia and Bukovina, Transylvania united with Romania to form what will become known as Greater Romania. Greater Romania gained its legitimacy as a result of the Versailles Peace Conference that end World War I, during which 882 Jewish soldiers died defending Romania (and 825 were decorated). This enlarged state had an increased Jewish population. Based on treaties signed after the war, the government of Romania agreed to change its policy towards the Jews, promising to award them both citizenship and minority rights, the effective emancipation of Jews. The 1923 Constitution of Romania sanctioned these requirements, meeting opposition from Cuza's National-Christian Defense League and rioting by right-wing students.
1918: The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later known as the Kingdom of Yugoslavia) is proclaimed. The redrawing of the map of Europe by the Allied Powers following WW I was intended to break up the old European imperial system recognizing the aspirations of a variety of nationalities throughout central and eastern Europe. The process may have looked very tidy in the drawing rooms of London and Paris. But it was quite messy for those having to live it out and this very true for the Jews of the Balkans. For a primer on the early days of the Sephardic and Ashkenazic communities in the political invention called Yugoslavia read the following: http://www.ceu.hu/jewishstudies/pdf/02_goldstein.pdf
1918:Iceland becomes a sovereign state, yet remains a part of the Danish kingdom. Jews were not officially allowed to reside in Iceland until 1855 when the parliament complied with the request of the Danish king to allow Jews to enter the little island and trade under the same terms as had been adopted in Denmark. By the end of 19th there were a small number of trading agents which represented firms owned by Danish Jews but there is no record as to how many of them, if any were Jewish. A Jewish Danish merchant named Fritz Heyman Nathan moved to Iceland and pursued a successful business career in Reykjavik in the first two decades of the twentieth century. He moved returned to Copenhagen to pursue his business interest, having found that Iceland was a hard place to follow a Jewish way of life. Today, the Jewish population of Iceland is miniscule.
1921: Following an investigation into Sir Edgar Speyer's wartime conduct held in camera by the Home Office's Certificates of Naturalization (Revocation) Committee, his naturalization was revoked by an order issued today.
1925: Mr. and Mrs. Abraham J. Cahan arrived in New York today aboard the SS Majestic. Mr. Cahan is editor of the Forwards. They were returning from a month long visit to Palestine where Mr. Cahan had spent most of his time investigating the growth and development of the newly created city of Tel Aviv
1925: Birthdate of Martin Rodbell. Dr. Rodbell was an American biochemist who was awarded the 1994 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his discovery in the 1960s of natural signal transducers called G-proteins that help cells in the body communicate with each other. He shared the prize with Alfred G. Gilman, who later proved Rodbell's hypothesis, by isolating the G-protein, which is so named because it binds to nucleotides called guanosine diphosphate and guanosine triphosphate, or
GDP
and GTP. Prior to Rodbell's research, scientists believed that only two substances--a hormone receptor and an interior cell enzyme--were responsible for cellular communication. Rodbell, however, discovered that the G-protein acted as an intermediate signal transducer between the two. [Ed. Note: I have note a clue as to what this really means.]
1927: Birthdate of Mordkhe Schaechter, a leading Yiddish linguist who spent a lifetime studying, standardizing and teaching the language.
1927: Birthdate of Abby Mann, American film writer and producer. Born as Abraham Goodman, he grew up in East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He was best known for his work on controversial subjects and social drama. His most famous work is the drama Judgment at Nuremberg, which was initially a television drama aired in 1959. Stanley Kramer directed the 1961 film adaptation, for which Mann received the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. In his acceptance speech, he said: "A writer worth his salt at all has an obligation not only to entertain but to comment on the world in which he lives."Mann later adapted the play for a 2001 production on Broadway, which featured Maximilian Schell from the 1961 film in a different role. Working on television, he most notably created the television series Kojak, starring Telly Savalas. Mann was executive producer, but was credited as a writer also on many episodes. His other writing credits include the screenplays for the television films The Marcus-Nelson Murders, The Atlanta Child Murders Teamster Boss: The Jackie Presser Story, and Indictment: The McMartin Trial, as well as the film War and Love. He passed away in 2008 at the age of 80
1930: Birthdate of Joachim Hoffmann, the German military historian, who contended that the number of Jews killed during the Holocaust, was in the thousands and not the millions and who testified on behalf of Holocaust denier Germar Rudolf.
1933: Birthdate of Sir James David Wolfensohn the Australian who was the ninth president of the World Bank Group.
1935: Birthdate of Woody Allen
1937: This date marks the seventh anniversary of the Palestine Post, which would later become the Jerusalem Post.
1937: The Palestine Post reported that two members of a police patrol, a British sergeant and an Arab constable were killed by an Arab terrorist gang at Wadi Malak, near Haifa. A Public Works Department store was sabotaged and burnt out at Tulkarm.
1938: Reichsbank President Hjalmar Schacht travels to London to propose to George Rublee, of the Intergovernmental Committee for Political Refugees, an extortionate scheme: German Jews could emigrate if they put up cash assets that would be transferred to the Reich upon emigration. This Schacht-Rublee plan will be abandoned in January 1939, when Schacht will be dismissed by Hitler after Schacht objects to the high cost of Germany's rearmament.
1938: The British Cabinet allows 10,000 unaccompanied Jewish children into Britain in an action called the Kindertransport. (Britain, however, refuses to allow 21,000 more Jewish children into Palestine.) The rescued children come from Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia with the help of British, Jewish, and Quaker welfare organizations. Because of the Holocaust, most of the children will never see their parents again, and many of the Jewish children will be converted to Christianity.
1939: This date marked the final deportation of Jews from Poland to the Soviet Union. The Jews had been marched from Chelm to Hrubieszow, Poland. Then 1800 Jews set off marching from Hrubieszow, Poland to the Soviet border. More than 1,400 were killed on December 4 on or near the Russian border.
1939: German Field Marshal Johannes Blaskowitz, commander-in-chief of the German Army Group East, reports that many Jewish children in transport trains are arriving at their destinations frozen to death.
1939: The Lipowa camp at Lipowa Street in Lublin, Poland, is established. It is initially an assembly point for Polish-Jewish POWs, and it will later be a Jewish work camp.
1939: Lódz (Poland) Ghetto administrator Friedrich Übelhör notes that ghettoization of Jews is only temporary. The final goal is to clean Jews out of Lódz, to "utterly destroy this bubonic plague."
1940: Inside the Warsaw (Poland) Ghetto, Polish-Jewish historian Emanuel Ringelblum begins work on a secret diary of ghetto life.
1941: The German Ministry of Occupied Eastern Territories decrees that the destruction of Jews shall continue irrespective of economic considerations; i.e., the allure of unpaid Jewish labor will be ignored.
1941: During the murder of 5000 Jews at Novogrudok, Belorussia, 200 Jews resist and kill 20 Nazis before being gunned down.
1941: Ten thousand Jews deported from Odessa, Ukraine, are murdered at camps at Acmecetka, Bogdanovka, and Domanevka, Romania.
1941: Mass murders of Jews in the Ukraine and Volhynia region of Poland are slowed when the frozen ground prevents the digging of execution pits.
1941: Fur coats belonging to Jews in eastern Germany are confiscated by the Nazis. They'll be used by German soldiers on the Eastern Front.
1941: The Jesuit journal Civiltà Cattolica, published in Rome under strict Vatican supervision, reminds Catholics that the Jews are supposedly those primarily responsible for murdering God and that the Jews repeat this crime by means of ritual murder "in every generation."
1941: For the next three days and nights, seven thousand Jews from Novogrudok, Belorussia, are forced to stand all day and night in frigid temperatures outside the municipal courthouse. Five thousand are taken away to their deaths on the 6th; the remaining 2000 are impressed into forced labor at suburban Pereshike
1941: According to an Einsatzkomando Report only 15% of Lithuanian Jews were left alive less than six months after the Nazis had invaded the Soviet Union.
1941: The German established a ghetto in Losice forcing all the Jews from surrounding areas to move there.
1942: Ayn Rand, novelist and creator of Objectivism, delivered the completed manuscript of her novel The Fountainhead to her publisher
1942: Four hundred laborers were killed at Karczew a town near Warsaw
1942: Members of the Siemiatycze (Poland) Group of Jewish resisters kill a Polish peasant and his entire family as retribution for the peasant's capture and betrayal to the Nazis of three Jews.
1942: Nazis lock 1000 Gypsies in a Lithuanian synagogue until the prisoners starve to death.
1942 Ghetto resistance is organized at Czestochowa and Kielce, Poland.
1942: At Brody, Ukraine, Jewish resistance is led by Solomon Halberszstadt, Jakub Linder, and Samuel Weiler.
1942: Jewish resistance at Chortkov, Ukraine, is led by Heniek Nusbaum, Mundek Nusbaum, Reuven Rosenberg, and Meir Wasserman.
1942: Jewish Resistance leader Dr. Yeheskel Atlas, a young Polish physician, is mortally wounded by Nazi troops in a battle at Wielka Wola, Poland.
1942: The Jewish ghetto at Lvov, Ukraine, is liquidated.
1942: The SS shuts down extermination activities at Belzec.
1942: A Sonderkommando plan to escape from Auschwitz is discovered, and the inmates are gassed.
1942: A forced-labor camp is established at Plaszów, Poland.
1942(22nd of Kislev, 5703): Partisan leader Hirsch Kaplinski, survivor of an August 1942 massacre of Jews at Diatlovo, Belorussia, is killed in combat during a German attack on the Lipiczany Forest.
1942: Roosevelt and Churchill issued a joint public statement revealing the dire facts of the Nazi extermination program aimed at the Jews and issuing a solemn warning that individuals engaged in it would ultimately would be tried as war criminals.
1943: Mussolini ordered the arrest of "all Jews living on the national territory." As a result Italian police and carabinieri arrested thousands, who were promptly delivered to the Germans and deported to Auschwitz. Within Italy, 200 Jews were murdered by German Nazis and their Italian Fascist collaborators. “However, by now, many Italians did not follow Il Duce's bidding and 40,000 Italian Jews survived the war while another 8,000 died.
1943: United States Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau instructs assistants Randolph Paul and John W. Pehle to investigate the State Department's handling of the Jewish refugee issue.
1944: After three months' work at Lieberose, Germany, Nazis suspend slave labor on a vacation complex for German officers. They instead evacuate the Jewish workers 100 miles on foot northwest to the concentration camp at Sachsenhausen, Germany. Of the 3,500 who began the march, only 900 arrived at the destination. Several hundred sick inmates who were unable to begin the march were shot in their beds.
1944: Birthdate of Eric Bloom of “Blue Oyster” fame.
1944: American pollster Elmo Roper warns that anti-Semitism has infected the U.S., most strongly in and around cities.
1945: Anti-Semitic Poles murder 11 Jews in the town of Kosow-Lacki, Poland, which is located less than six miles from the site of the Treblinka extermination camp.
1945: Oliver Cox, an American sociologist, concludes that Christians in the United States regard the Jew as "our irreconcilable enemy within the gates, the antithesis of our God, the disturber of our way of life and of our social aspirations."
1945: Birthdate of singer, actress and comedian Bette Midler. Midler was born in Honolulu to Jewish parents from New Jersey. After graduating from the University of Hawaii, she got her start singing in the Continental Baths, a New York City bathhouse. Her piano accompanist at the time was Barry Manilow. Manilow produced Midler first hit album entitled The Divine Miss M.
1947: In response to the partition vote, the Arab High Committee declared that November 29 was henceforth to be “a day of mourning” and that it marked the beginning of the struggle against the Partition.
1947: The Arab League plans to meet and discuss ways to resist the partition of Palestine into two states.
1947:Emanuel Neuman, President of the Zionist Organization of America, sought formal recognition of the Jewish volunteer defense units as being the Jewish militia in Palestine.
1948: The Arab Congress names Abdullah of Trans Jordan, King of Palestine. Abdullah earned this title because the Jordanian Army (known as the Arab Legion) had successfully crossed the Jordan River and seized what is now called the West Bank and the eastern section of Jerusalem. Under the partition plan, the area of the West Bank should have been part of an Arab State. Apparently the Arabs saw things differently since they awarded it to Abdullah as “spoil” for his part in the war against the Jewish state. Since it now held land on both sides of the Jordan, Trans-Jordan would officially change its name to Jordan. Please note, there was no attempt to create an independent Palestinian state on this land for the almost twenty years it was occupied by the Jordanian Army.
1948: Riots break out in Damascus in response to King Abdullah of Transjordan being proclaimed king of Palestine at a meeting of central Palestinian Arabs in Jericho and Syrian premier Jamil Mardam Bey and his cabinet resign.
1949: The UN General Assembly's Political Subcommittee recommends an international Jerusalem despite objections of Israel and Jordan.
1956: The Dutch Kingdom officially recognized the Jewish community of Aruba.
1966: In response to competition from W & S an automated bagel factory that had begun operating in metropolitan New York, “the bagel bosses” presented baker’s union with a list of “radical demands,” including a 40% pay cut, a decrease in the number of paid holidays and a 50% cut in the number of bakers on each shift.
1968: It was reported today that “Tel Aviv is building a huge five-level bus terminal with local and out-of-town platforms, shops and movie theatres. The terminal will be the world’s largest surpassing even the Port Authority Terminal in New York City.”
1970: In Manchester, NH, Beth Ann O'Hara and Donald Silverman gave birth to Sarah Kate Silverman of SNL fame.
1988: As Israeli politicians struggle to form a new government after the elections which were held on November 1, Shimon Peres signed a coalition agree with Agudat Israel even though his Labor Party and this Orthodox political party held different views on attempts to redefine who is Jewish under the Law of Return.
1973(6th of Kislev, 5734): David Ben-Gurion, First Prime Minister of Israel, passed away. There is no way that a short blurb can do justice to one of the greatest Jewish leaders in modern times. Regardless of what one might think of his flaws, and he did have them, without Ben-Gurion there would have not been a modern state of Israel. He was a walking contradiction: an idealist and a pragmatist; a secular Jew who was an expert on the Bible and biblical history; a man whose hands were hardened from manual labor on a kibbutz who taught himself English and classical Greek; a seemingly autocratic political figure who believed in democracy even when the process when against him. No matter how the revisionists work at it, nobody can take away his most monumental achievement – the Jewish homeland. To paraphrase what was said about Maimonides, from David (the king) to David (Ben-Gurion) there was none like David.
1977: Birthdate of guitarist Bard Delson.
1977: Three weeks into the Sadat peace initiative, the Carter administration had offered only the faintest approval for the Egyptian president’s visit to Jerusalem, and had not yet abandoned its support for Geneva in favor of the bilateral Egyptian-Israeli process that Sadat, Begin and Dayan were actively proposing.
1983(25thof Kislev, 5744): Chanukah
1985: In an article entitled “First A State, Then A Nation,” Paul Johnson reviews Israel The Partitioned State: A Political History Since 1900 by Amos Perlmutter.
1988: Birthdate of Zoe Kravitz, daughter of Lisa Bonet and Lenny Kravitz.
1988:Israeli and American women joined together and attempted to pray as a group at the Western Wall for the first time today.
1991: Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory by Lawrence L. Langer, Maus: A Survivor's Tale II. And Here My Troubles Began by Art Spiegelman and Wartime Lies by Louis Begley are among the ten books chosen by the New York Times Book Review as the best books published in the country during the preceding year
1993(17thof Kislev, 5754): Shalva Ozana, age 23, and Yitzhak Weinstock, age 19, were shot to death by terrorists from a moving vehicle, while parked on the side of the road to Ramallah because of engine trouble. Weinstock died of his wounds the following morning. Iz a-Din al Kassam claimed responsibility for the attack, stating that it was carried out in retaliation for the killing by Israeli forces of Imad Akel, a wanted HAMAS leader in Gaza
1994(28th of Kislev, 5755): An ax-wielding Islamic militant killed an Israeli soldier in a northern Israeli town today, officials said. Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, vowing that his peace efforts with the Palestinians would continue despite a surge of guerrilla attacks, said the killer belonged to the Islamic resistance movement Hamas. The Prime Minister said no responsibility for the attack could be attached to Palestinian self-rule authorities because the guerrilla had come from a part of the West Bank still under Israeli control. "He did not have an entry permit into Israel," Rabin said. "We have to investigate how he managed to get to Afula." "We shall continue on our road to peace and to fight those who oppose it," Rabin said. The army identified the soldier as Liat Gabai, 19, an Afula resident. The police identified the attacker as Wahib Abu Alrub, 25, from the occupied West Bank, and said he was in custody. The police commander in Afula, Rami Rahav, said the guerrilla, from a village near the West Bank town of Jenin, attacked the soldier near a police station, striking her on the head with an ax. Speaking at Tel Aviv airport, where he welcomed the two-millionth tourist to visit the Jewish state this year, Mr. Rabin told reporters that Mr. Alrub was a Hamas member who had been detained several times by Israel in the past.
1995:Yigal Amir, the confessed assassin of Yitzhak Rabin, today denied suggestions that he had acted with the approval of a rabbi, and insisted that he had decided on the killing alone after careful deliberation.
1995: It was reported today that Alfred Lerner, the son Russian-Jewish immigrants and one of America's wealthiest men, with a net worth of $1 billion gained in real estate and banking has donated 25 million dollars to Columbia University in New York City
1996: In an article entitled “Shulberg Tackling Fitzgerald Play Anew” Meryl Spiegel described his interview with Budd Schulberg in this last of “the living links to F. Scott Fitzgerald, talked about ''The Disenchanted,'' his fictional tale of their cataclysmic collaboration on a film script. Having lost favor with the literary world of the 1930's, the ''laureate of the Jazz Age'' was a shadow of his former self, Mr. Schulberg recalled. Deeply in debt, physically ill and desperately trying to stay sober, Fitzgerald grabbed the screenwriting job just to pay his bills and finance a return to his own work. The film, called ''Winter Carnival,'' was written in 1939, two years before the writer died nearly penniless at the age of 44. ''The Disenchanted'' was first written as a novel, published in 1950, and was later transformed into a play that opened on Broadway in 1958. Mr. Schulberg, 82, is probably most famous today for writing the screenplay for ''On The Waterfront,'' starring Marlon Brando, and for his first novel, ''What Makes Sammy Run?'' He has published many other novels, however, several works of nonfiction, and has seen his plays produced on Broadway.”
2001(28th of Kislev, 5755): Two suicide bombers blew themselves up in back-to-back explosions at a downtown Jerusalem pedestrian mall, killing 11 bystanders.
2002: The New York Times featured books by Jewish authors and/or about subjects of Jewish interest including One World: The Ethics of Globalization by Peter Singer, The Conquerors: Roosevelt, Truman and the Destruction of Hitler's Germany, 1941-1945by Michael Beschloss and Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World by Margaret MacMillan. The last two may seem like general history texts but they deal with events that had a unique impact on the Jewish people
2002: Maxine Frank Singer, a leading biochemistry researcher and advocate of science education, stepped down, after 15 years as the president of the Carnegie Institution, a major national scientific research center.
2004(18th of Kislev, 5765): Dr. Jonathan A. Goldstein, former professor at the University of Iowa passed away. Among his scholarly works were his translations and commentaries on the Books of the Maccabees as part of the Anchor Bible. He will be missed by all those who knew him.
2005: A new defense system designed for civilian planes passed it its final test. The new anti-missile protection system is designed to defend passenger jets from shoulder-held missile attacks. El Al will begin installing the systems as early as next week. The development of the systems came as a result of attacks on Israeli civilian airliners flying in Africa by terrorists armed with shoulder held missiles.
2005: The Maryland/Israel Development Center and The Trendlines Group co-sponsored a conference in Tel Aviv on raising money for Israeli homeland security companies One hundred fifty executives and entrepreneurs of Israeli homeland security technology companies came to learn how to raise funds and break into the American homeland security market. MIDC Executive Director spoke about the new Maryland/Israel Development Fund and opportunities for Israeli companies to partner