November 6 In History
355: Roman Emperor Constantius II promotes his cousin Julian to the rank of Caesar, entrusting him with the government of the Prefecture of the Gauls. Constantius II followed the pro-Christian and anti-Jewish policies of his father, Constantine The Great. Julian would follow his cousin as Caesar and enter history as Julian, the Apostate. Julian was a Pagan who sought to reverse the Christianizing policies of his two predecessors. He reversed the rules against the Jewish people and was reportedly planning to allow them to re-build the Temple; a plan that was aborted by his assassination.
1095: At the Council of Claremont, Pope Urban II summoned Christians to retake the Holy Land from the Moslems, alleging that they destroyed Christian holy places. A combination of religious, economic and social motives resulted in the overwhelming response that became known as the First Crusade. The Pope formed an army headed by special knights (i.e. Raymond, Godfrey, etc.). A "people's" army also joined, encouraged by Peter the Hermit and other local clerics. There would eventually be a total of eight Crusades, but only the first four were of any real significance. The Crusades meant death and destruction for the Jews of Europe and the Levant. The “People’s Army” would lay waste to the Jewish communities of Germany and Austria as they marched across Europe. After all, why wait until they got to Palestine to kill the enemies of Christ when they were living right there in Europe? Of course, plundering and pillaging the Jews of their wealth was just an unexpected benefit of religious zeal.
1494: Birthdate of Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent. By 1517 the Islamic Ottoman Empire, ruled by Selim I, took Palestine from the Egyptian Mamelukes. Suleiman was so taken with the city of Jerusalem and its plight (having suffered centuries of neglect under Mameluke rule), that he ordered the construction of a magnificent surrounding fortress-wall that still stands around the Old City. He reigned from 1520 to 1566. There is not room here to acquaint you with all of the military and cultural accomplishments of the Ottoman Empire’s longest serving sultan. Like many living under his rule, the Jews benefited from his policies. The Ottomans had taken Palestine from the Egyptian Mamelukes three years before he came to the throne. Sulieman was so disgusted with the effect of Mameluke neglect of the city that he built “a magnificent surrounding fortress-wall that still stands around the Old City.” “Suleiman was renowned as a just and fair ruler, choosing his subordinates according to merit rather than social status or popularity. In 1553 Suleiman declared a law to stop the persecution of Jews via Blood libels, decreeing that all accusations of the slaughter of Christian children by Jews be referred to the Imperial Divan where the courts would expose these lies. The preparation of the law included the input of Moses Hamon, a favorite doctor and dentist of the Sultan. Another symbol of the Muslim-Jewish tolerance was the building of a synagogue and mosque which was built by Suleiman.”
1593(11th of Cheshvan, 5354): Rabbi Abraham Menachem Rapoport author of Minchah Beluah, passed away
1796: Catherine II, “whom the Boyars called The Great,” died. Many of her predecessors on the Russian throne had done all they could to keep Jews from living in the empire. Catherine’s aggressive foreign policy helped to lead to the dismemberment of Poland. With one fell swoop, Catherine undid all their efforts when she gained the Jews of a large part of Poland and Lithuania. Despite some early dabbling at enlightened treatment of her Jewish subjects, Catherine began the policies that would create the Pale of Settlement.
1815: Birthdate of Rabbi and educator Max Lienthal
1834: The Jews of Austria were forbidden to have the first names of Christian saints.
1839(29th of Cheshvan, 5600): Rabbi Hayim Rapoport, of Ostrowiec passes away. Rapoport was a member of a distinguished family of Jewish scholars. He was the author of a collection of Responsa called Maxim Chayyim.
1840: At Constantinople, Sultan Abd Al-Majid issued a firman declaring that Jews did not use blood in their ceremonies, and for any of the Sultan's subjects to say the Jews did was not truth. Moses Montefiore met with the Sultan and helped to secure this Decree. The Sultan issued the firman to protect the Jews of Rhodes and in Damascus, who were being persecuted by this old anti-Semitic remark.
1842: The first Jewish benevolent society in St. Louis was formed, Chesed v'Emeth ("Mercy and Truth"). Its purpose was to aid indigent Jews. In December 1846 the group formally incorporated as the Hebrew Benevolent Society (H.B.S.).
1853: In Hartford, Conn, Samson and Adelaide Wallach gave birth to Leopold Wallach, the prominent New York lawyer who was the father of Mrs. Max Morgentahu, Jr.
1855: An article entitled “Rachel’s French Critic” published today described career ofElizabeth-Rachel Félix the Jewish-French actress known as Mademoiselle Rachel,
1856: The first work of fiction by the author later known as George Eliot is submitted for publication. George Eliot was the pen name of Mary Anne Evans. Daniel Deronda, published in 1876, would the last novel she completed and the only one set in the contemporary Victorian society of her day. Its mixture of social satire and moral searching, along with a sympathetic rendering of Jewish proto-Zionist and Kaballistic ideas has made it a controversial final statement of one of the greatest of Victorian novelists.
1858: According to the police reports published in the New York Times, “when the case of Henry Myers” who was “charged with assault and battery was called, Judge Osborn, the presiding judicial officer declared “Now you’ll see some hard swearing. They’re a parcel of Jews.”
1860(21st of Cheshvan, 5621): Warder Cresson, who was known by his Jewish name - Michael Boaz Israel ben Abraham – after he converted to Judaism, passed away today in Jerusalem. Born in 1798, Cresson was a member of a Quaker family that traced its roots back to the earliest days of the founding of the American colonies. Like many men of his time, Cresson was captivated by questions of morality and religion. Unlike others, he found his answers in Judaism. Cresson was the first American to be commissioned Consul at Jerusalem and the time spent in that city may have been the cause of his conversion. At any rate, his family took him to court and tried to have him declared a lunatic for his change in religious beliefs. Having prevailed in court, Cresson returned to Jerusalem where he took an active role in the early projects aimed at having Jews settle in Palestine. Her married and had two children. “The Key of David” is his most famous literary effort. It is biographical in part. It was written at a time when he was being persecuted for his religious beliefs so it contains a comparatively harsh description of Christianity.
1860: Abraham Lincoln was elected 16th President of the United States. The message of opportunity and defense of the Union represented by Lincoln and the recently created Republican Party resonated positively with many Jews. As President, Lincoln took action to make the Jews feel like “first class” citizens. In 1862 he signed an act of Congress that required Army chaplains to be Christian ministers. Now, Rabbis could officially serve in this position. Lincoln also rescinded General Grant’s notorious Order #10 that barred Jewish merchants from operating in the military theatre under his command.
1870: Birthdate of Herbert Louis Samuel, 1st Viscount Samuel, the whose distinguished career in public service include being name the 1st High Commissioner of Palestine.
1876: Giacomo Antonelli, the Cardinal Secretary of State passed away today. During the Mortara Affiar, Antonelli refused to allow British to see the Pope about this matter. He declared it “a closed question.” Oddly enough, Antoneli was reputed to have Jewish ancestors, a condition not uncommon among Italian Catholics of a certain vintage.
1879: The funeral services for Rabbi David Einhorn of blessed memory took place this morning at Temple Beth-El in New York City. The services, which began at 9 a.m. were conducted in both German and Hebrew Rabbis. There were numerous rabbis from across the country and several local dignitaries in attendance. Two of Einhorn’s sons-in-law – Rabbis Kaufman Kohler and Emile Hirsch – and his close friend Rabbi Samuel Hirsch of Philadelphia presided over this solemn event which ended with burial in Green Wood Cemetery.
1879: Daniel Dougherty is scheduled to deliver a lecture entitled “The Stage” at a meeting of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association in New York City.
1881: “Judaism and Heine” published today described the Bible as the great treasure of the Jews which has been their gift to the world.
1882: It was reported today that Colonel Emmons Clark, the reform candidate for Sheriff in New York, has issued a statement denying claims that he has used his influence to keep Jews from serving under his command in the Seventh Regiment. While the Colonel has no role in choosing members of the regiment he is proud of the fact that there are Jewish members in each of the companies that make up the regiment. Clark’s version of events has been accepted by “the managers of the newspapers which is recognized as the organ of” the Hebrew “race.”
1884: Hovevei Zion was founded in Kattowitz, Poland
1885: It was reported today that “the Industrial School of the United Hebrew Charities” is enrolling Jewish girls aged ten and above where they will learn to sew by hand and machine at no charge.
1886: The Wendell Phillips Literary Society is scheduled to sponsor a “dramatic entertainment” this evening which is a fund raiser to for the Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society which is planning on building a new, more spacious home for the children in its care.
1887: Formation of Federation of Synagogues.
1888: “The Protestant Reformation” published today provides a review of the History of the Reformation by Philip Schaff in which the author says of Martin Luther that he hated “Popery” and that “his last books against…the Jews are the worst.
1888: It was reported today that Republicans in Merrill, Indiana, “stocked a room with whiskey and beer and sent carriages out among the Polish Jews of the neighborhood.” Once the Jews had been gathered together and joined in the revelry, the Republicans tried to convince them to vote for their candidates and failing that offered to buy their votes for two dollars a head. (Editor’s note – regardless of Party or locations, practices like this were all to common in the electoral until well into the first half of the 20th century.)
1888: Republican Benjamin Harrison defeated Grover Cleveland in his bid for re-election. Cleveland won the popular vote, but Harrison won in the Electoral College. In 1890, word reached the west, that Czar Alexander III was planning additional punitive measured aimed at making the lives of Russians Jews even more miserable. Harrison received a personally received a petition from a committee of prominent Americans (including the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court and leading Christian ministers) urging him to act on behalf of the Russian Jews. “The petitioners called for the first international conference "to consider the Israelite claim to Palestine as their ancient home, and to promote in any other just and proper way the alleviation of their suffering condition." Years before the first Zionist Congress, they were calling for a Jewish home in Palestine. Harrison instructed Secretary of State James G. Blaine to contact the U.S. Ambassador in Moscow and express United States’ displeasure with any measures aimed against the Jews. Despite the urging of Harrison and others, the Czar acted ordering the immediate removal of Jews from Moscow, St. Petersburg and Kiev, using violent force if necessary.
1889: It was reported today that in three days, Sir Henry Isaacs will installed as the Lord Mayor of London. He is third Jew to hold the position in the last 20 years.
1900: Herzl writes to David Wolffsohn. He wants him to ask Jacobus Kann in The Hague whether he can raise £ 700.000 for a Turkish loan.
1903: Racing driver Dorothy Levitt was summoned “to appear at Marlborough Street Assizes for speeding in Hyde Park.” The magistrate fined her £5 with 2s costs
1904: Elections in Italy result in the return of 13 Jewish candidates, among them 3 new members for the Chamber of Deputies.
1913: Mortimer L. Schiff announced at a meeting of the Chamber of Commerce today that $500,000 had been offered to found a College of Commerce by a man who was not ready to have his name revealed. Few of the members present had heard of the gift, and the announcement was received with much enthusiasm. There were several people, who when they first of the donation, attributed to the famous Jacob Schiff. Such was not the case.
1914: One day after Great Britain declared war on the Ottoman Empire, “Lord Herbert Samuel…met with Prime Minister Asquith to urge the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.
1917: Birthdate Joseph Bloch, a professor of piano literature at the Juilliard School in New York. A native of Indianapolis today Bloch earned a bachelor’s degree from the Chicago Musical College and, after service in Guam with the Army Air Forces in World War II, a master’s in musicology from Harvard. For five decades (with an interruption in the 1980s when he tried to retire but proved indispensable and was persuaded to return), every Juilliard pianist passed through Mr. Bloch’s classroom. His pupils included many of the best-known performers of the second half of the 20th century, among them Van Cliburn, Emanuel Ax, Garrick Ohlsson, Misha Dichter, Jeffrey Siegel and Jeffrey Swann.
1926: Edith Gregor Halpert opened her Downtown Gallery on West 13thStreet in New York’s Greenwich Village. The gallery was revolutionary because it promoted “American modernists when their European counterparts overshadowed them.”
1928: Republican Herbert Hoover was elected president, beating the Democrat candidate. Alfred E. Smith. Smith was a Catholic, but he received a large Jewish vote. What counted in America was that the he was from New York which had a large Jewish population and he espoused programs that appealed to the working class and newly enfranchised immigrants. This was the profile of the large mass of Jewish voters. In a strange quirk of history, the conservative Quaker from Iowa would appoint Benjamin Cardozo, a liberal Jew from New York, to the Supreme Court. Hoover viewed this as such an unremarkable act, that he covers it in one paragraph in his multi-volume autobiography.
1928: Albert E. Ottinger, the Republican candidate for governor was defeated by FDR in an election that was decided by less than one per cent of the total vote.
1931: Birthdate of director Mike Nichols. Born in Berlin in, Nichols attended a segregated school for Jewish children. His father, a doctor, fled the Nazis by moving the family to New York City when Nichols was still a child. His greatest early fame came when he teamed with another Jew, Elaine May to create some of the most memorable comedy sketches of the mid-twentieth century.
1931: Counselor-at-Law by Elmer Rice premiers at New York's Plymouth Theater, with Austrian-born actor Paul Muni (originally Muni Weisenfreund) in the starring role.
1934: Memphis, Tennessee becomes the first major city to join the Tennessee Valley Authority, the major New Deal project overseen by David Lienthal.
1936: The Maccabees, the soccer champions of Palestine were tendered an official farewell at City Hall today by Mayor La Guardia. The mayor gave the players a New York City flag in exchange for the flag of Tel Aviv that the team had given him when they arrived in New York. Jeremiah T. Mahoney, honorary chairman of the tour committee and Benjamin Winter President of the Federal of Polish Jews in America also attended the farewell ceremony
1937: Mussolini gave Von Ribbentrop, the German Foreign Minister, his approval of Hitler's plans for Austria. "Let events (in Austria) take their natural course. He was giving his approval to the German annexation of Austria which would take place in 1938. The annexation would prove to be quite popular with most Austrians, a fact they tried to soft-peddle after the war. For the Jews of Austria, the Anschluss meant they were now under the control of the Nazis and their racial laws.
1938: First anti-Semitic attack over the radio in the U.S. was broadcast.
1938: At the German Embassy in Paris, Herschel Grynszpan shot Ernst vom Rath, a junior German diplomat. Vom Rath died of his wounds two days later. Grynszpan was born in Germany. His parents were Polish Jews. He had been separated from his parents for two years and was living illegally in France while trying to get to Palestine. His parents had been among the large number of Jews living in German of Polish origins that the Nazis shipped back to Poland in 1938. However, the Poles refused to admit them and these stateless people languished on the border with many of them dying. Grynszpan’s attack was supposedly in reprisal for their mistreatment. Vom Rath was just a chance victim. In 1942 Grnyszpan disappeared into the world of the Death Camps and died some time before 1945. His shooting of Vom Rath, was the excuse for the Night of the Broken Glass that would follow on November 9, 1938. he sees, Ernst vom Rath, in German Embassy in Paris.
1939: Birthdate of Civil Rights Activist, Michael “Mickey” Schwerner. Schwerener was murdered in 1964 outside of Philadelphia, Mississippi along with two fellow Civil Rights workers, Andrew Goodman (who was also Jewish) and James Chaney, an African-American. Their murder has become part of the folklore of the fight for equal treatment for all Americans.
1940: Birthdate of Ruth Wyler Messinger, a political liberal who served as Manhattan Borough President before running for Mayor. She is the CEO of American Jewish World Service and one those listed as “Forward Fifty” by The Forward.
1941: Popular German film star Joachim Gottschalk kills his family and himself rather than submit to the deportation and probable deaths of his Jewish wife and child.
1941(16th of Cheshvan, 5702): This was the second of two successive days in which the Nazis took Rovno, Ukraine, 17,500 Jews to the forests at Rovno in the Ukraine and ordered them to dig five large pits. In the bitter cold they were ordered to strip and the all murdered over a two day period.
1941(16th of Cheshvan, 5702): The Nazis massacred 500 Jews of Kolomyya, Galicia and 15,000 Jews of Rowno, Poland.
1942: One thousand Jews were deported to Birkenau from Drancy. Drancy was the the “transit camp in a Paris suburb from which 70,000 French Jews were shipped to death camps in the East. Drancy was run by the French police until the summer of 1943 when the SS took over.
1942(26th of Cheshvan, 5703): The Nazis executed 12,000 Jews from Minsk.
1943: Five weeks after escaping from a work detail at the Babi Yar, Ukraine, mass-murder site, about 14 Jews and Soviet POWs come out of hiding to greet the Red Army as it liberates Kiev, Ukraine.
1943: Fourteen survivors of the massacre at Babi Yar made it to the victorious Red Army in Kiev, and joined its troops.
1944: Two members of Lehi (the Stern Gang) – Eliyahu Hakim and Eliyahu Bet Zuri murdered Lord Moyne in Cairo. This led to what some call, The Hunting Season, which the name given to the Haganah’s campaign to curtail the activities of Irgun and Lehi
1944: Thousands of Hungarian Jews were sent westward to Austria. For most Jews, this was a Death March. Exposure to the harsh European winter, exhaustion, snarling dogs and German bullets all took their toll. In an additional act of wives would bury their husbands, then be shot dead themselves and finally thrown into the same graves.
1944(20th of Cheshvan, 5705): Hungary's Arrow Cross murders 19 Jews in Budapest and drives close to 30,000 toward the old Austrian border.
1944: In the Bronx, Harold and Ruth Berg gave birth to James Berg, President of the Realty Advisory Board on Labor Relations, the collective bargaining agent for the owners of more than 4,000 residential and commercial buildings in the city.(As reported by Dennis Hevesi)
1945: Stanley Isaacs was relected to the New York City Council
1947: Meet the Press, billed as “America’s first televised, spontaneous press conference” made its television debut. Meet the Press was the creation of producer and moderator, Lawrence “Larry” Spivak. The half hour show was live and came on late on Sunday afternoon - a dead zone in television broadcasting. The show featured one guest, who ranged from American political leaders to the Prime Minister of France to the Foreign Minister of the Soviet Union, and three journalists. The only things that the current iteration of the program has in common with the original are the name of the show, that it appears on Sunday and that it is broadcast on NBC.
1948: Birthdate of Sidney Blumenthal, journalist, author and advisor to President Bill Clinton as well as Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton
1952: The Jerusalem Postreported that the Knesset passed the first reading of a measure recognizing the World Zionist Organization as the agency authorized to coordinate the activities in Israel of all Jewish corporate bodies and associations engaged in the development of the country and the integration of immigrants. During discussions Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion said he regretted his choice of words when he referred to American Zionist leaders as "bankrupt" because they failed to immigrate. However, he stood by the substance of his accusations. Ben Gurion, as an ardent Zionist, believed that the only authentic Jewish existence was in Israel.
1953: Israel complained to the United Nations truce supervision organization in Jerusalem today that armed Jordanians murdered a guard last night in an attack upon a post along the railway track north of Hadera in the coastal plain.
1956: During the Sinai Campaign, Golda Meir and Shimon Peres met with French officials. The two Israeli ministers were looking for French support in the face of Soviet threats to use missiles against Israel. The French Foreign minister told the Israelis that his government would “support Israel with everything we’ve got.” But, he also pointed out that the Soviets were more powerful and that their arsenal included missiles and nuclear bombs. As the two ministers flew back to Tel Aviv, the Eisenhower administration flip-flopped on its earlier statements. It demanded that Israel withdraw immediately from the Sinai or suffer the consequences. (The behavior of the United States during the Suez Crisis would cause the French to create their own nuclear weapons program. This would lead to De Gaulle’s decisions to take the French Army out of the NATO military command. This widening gulf between the French and Americans haunts the relationship between these two old allies to this very day.)
1956: President Eisenhower sent a message to Ben Gurion demanding that Israeli forces stop fighting immediately and withdraw from the Sinai.
1957: Birthdate of Lori Singer. The Texas born actress was the daughter of Jewish Canadian parents. Her film credits include starring roles in The Falcon and the Snowman and The Man with One Red Shoe.
1958: Syria resumed its artillery bombardment of the Galilee, while Israeli workers were involved in a massive project draining Lake Huleh to obtain more agricultural land for the country. Under orders from IDF Chief of Staff Haim Liaskov, the Israelis fired back at their attackers.
1967: Birthdate of actress Rebecca Schaeffer, costar of the 1980’s sitcom My Sister Sam. Tragically, she is best remembered for her manner of dying. She was murdered in 1989 by an obsessive fan who had been stalking her for years.
1973: Abe Beame defeated Mayor John Lindsay to become the first Jewish mayor of New York City. Born on New York’s lower East Side in 1906, Beame rose through the ranks and served two terms as comptroller before unseating the ineffectual but popular Lindsay. Beame inherited the worst fiscal crisis in the city’s history. Forced to slash budgets and reduce the city work force, Beame was a courageous but unpopular figure. He passed away in 2001. It does seem strange to many that New York, with its large Jewish population would have waited so long to have a Jewish mayor. Heck, gentile dominated Oregon had a Jewish senator twenty years before Manhattan et al had a Jewish chief executive.
1974: Ratz (the Movement for Civil Rights and Peace) left the governing coalition headed by Prime Minister Yithak Rabin.
1975: A revival of David Merrick’s “Hello Dolly” starring Pearl Bailey and Billy Daniels in all-black production opened at the Minskoff Theatre.
1977: PLO gunners fired katyusha rockets from across the Lebanese border at the seaside town of Nahariya. They killed one Israeli woman. She was a survivor of the Holocaust.
1987(14th of Cheshvan, 5748): Zohar Argov (a popular Israeli singer and a distinctive voice in the Mizrahi music scene passed away.
1989: Kitty Dukakis wife of presidential candidate and Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis is hospitalized for drinking rubbing alcohol. Mrs. Dukakis is Jewish.
1995: In his first court appearance on Yigal Amir, 25, asserted that he was required to kill Mr. Rabin under religious law because the Prime Minister was betraying Jewish lives and land to the enemy.
1995: In the following article entitled “The Unvanquished,” Michael D. Lemonick describes how a group of young Jews “survived the Nazis, studied in Germany and liberated themselves” which runs contrary to usual picture of Jews seeking to flee the Home of the Holocaust
http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20102025,00.html
2005: A mosaic and the remains of a building uncovered recently in excavations on the Megiddo prison grounds may belong to the earliest church in the world, according to a preliminary examination by the Israel Antiquities Authority. The church dates from some time in third or fourth century. It features a table, instead of an altar, on which a sacred meal was consumed to commemorate the Last Supper. If this interpretation is accurate it might shed new light on the origins of Christian rituals. The Church was uncovered when digging had begun to extend the prison facility. Archaeology is “Israel’s national sport” and evidence of other people’s practices and civilizations are treated reverently by Israelis. The prison is located near Tel Megiddo, which is supposed to be the site for the mythic Battle of Armageddon. The Israelis expect that this latest find will be a boon to the tourist industry which has suffered in recent years because of Arab Terrorism.
2005: The New York Times features reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or on topics of special Jewish interest including The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton by Jerome Karabel and Dean and Me (A Love Story)
by Jerry Lewis and James Kaplan
2006: Borat, the cinematic creation of British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, was the leading box office hit over the weekend, grossing 26 million dollars in sales. This financial success is all the more amazing when you consider the limited number of theatres in which the film appeared.
2006: The edition of Sports Illustrated of this date features two page retrospective on the recently deceased Arnold “Red” Auberach without mentioning the fact that he was Jewish. This is no small oversight when one considers the role of two Jews - Abe Sapperstien and Red Auberach - for opening up careers in professional basketball players to African Americans.
2006: The edition U.S. News & World Report of this date reported that “prosecutors in Argentina are placing blame on ‘the highest authorities’ of the then government in Tehran for the 1994 Jewish Center bombing in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people and injured more than 2000. Prosecutors are seeking arrest orders for former Iranian President Rafsanjani and seven others, alleging that they plotted to have Lebanon-based Hezbollah stage the bombing, the worst terrorist attack ever in Argentina.”
2007: The Diaspora Museum (Beth Hatefutsoth), marks the 40th anniversary of the Six Day War with the opening of an exhibition covering the Jewish nationalist spirit that Israel's incredible 1967 military victory ignited among Russian Jewry, setting of a struggle that began with a cry for free immigration to Israel and ended with the struggle to lead a free Jewish existence in the Soviet Union. Entitled, Jews of Struggle: The Jewish National Movement in the USSR, 1967-1989, the exhibition presents photographs, posters, rare footage, artifacts, rare documents, books, diaries, albums, letters and art (pictured is the Let My People Go! poster, USA, 1973, artist Saul Bass; the Ilan Roth Collection, Herzliya). The subjects covered include the anti-Semitism that existed in the Soviet Union during the period of Stalin and his successors; the repression of Jews across the USSR; the attempts of various governments to hide the destruction of the Jews in the Holocaust; the reactions of Soviet Jews to the establishment of the State of Israel; Golda Meir's visit to Moscow in 1948; the closing of the Israeli embassy in 1967; the movement on behalf of Soviet Jewry among Jews around the world; and finally, the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989 that opened the floodgates of Aliyah to Israel.
2007: At the Jewish Community Center of Greater Washington 38th annual Book Festival, Walter Isaacson discusses his bestselling biography Einstein: His Life and Universe.
2007: Shalom Auslander reads from his biography Foreskin’s Lament at Prairie Lights Books in Iowa City, Iowa.
2007: In what appears to be a challenge to David Ben-Gurion’s old dream of “making the desert bloom” The Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI) released a report detailing the extent of recent agricultural development throughout the Negev and the underestimated impact of this development on the local ecology.
2007: Staff Sergeant Yariv Amitai of Moshav Hazor’im was killed in a Jeep accident along the border with Gaza.
2007: At rededication ceremonies at Sha’ar Hashamayim Synagogue Cairo, D. Gaber Baltagi recited one of his works in Arabic and Hebrew calling for peace among the nations followed by the sounding of loud Shofar blast.
2008: At ColumbiaUniversity, the Alliance Program presents a seminar entitled “Israel As A Jewish and Democratic State: A Reappraisal” moderated by Peter Awn, Director of the Middle East Institute.
2008: U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in Israel in a last ditch attempt to salvage something from the aborted “peace talks” held in Annapolis. Secretary Rice is forced to admit that none of the grandiose Bush talk about peace in the Middle East have become a reality.
2008: Rahm Israel Emanual accepted an offer from President-elect Barack Obama to become the White House Chief of Staff in Obama's administration, which begins on January 20, 2009.
2009: The 40th Annual Book Festival sponsored by the JCC of Greater Washington continues with a presentation by Fashion Institute of Technology Professor Helene Verin sharing the story of Beth Levine, the trend-setting designer who led shoe fashion from the early 1950’s through mid 1970’s
2009: Beginning of Chabad’s New York Weekend
http://www.chabad.edu/templates/chabad_edu/special/shabbaton_cdo/aid/721754/jewish/International-Shabbaton-Homepage.htm
2010: Rivka Zohar, famed Israeli singer, is scheduled to perform at Bnei Zion Hall in New York.
2010: Lauren Beth Denenberg married Alex Bettman, the son of Gary Bettman, the commissioner of the National Hockey League, tonight at the Plaza Hotel in New York.
2010(29th of Cheshvan, 5771): Eighty-eight year old Robert J. Lipshutz,"who as White House counsel to President Jimmy Carter played an important behind-the-scenes role in negotiations leading to the Camp David peace accords, passed away today. (As reported by Dennis Hevesi)
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/11/us/politics/11lipshutz.html
2011: Annual Afternoon Tea featuring Karen Bergreen, author of “Following Polly,” is scheduled to take place at the JCC of Northern Virginia Annual Jewish Book Festival.
2011: Calvin Goldscheider, the Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Judaic Studies at Brown University, is scheduled to discuss his recent book, "A Typical Extraordinary Jew: From Tarnow to Jerusalem", which tells the story of a charming Polish Jew, Shmuel Braw (1906 – 1992) who lived through the traumatic historical events that shaped Jewish experience in the twentieth century in the Adas Israel Freudberg Memorial Sisterhood Library
2011: The Upshernish of Menachem Mendel Blesofsky is scheduled to take place this evening in Iowa City, Iowa.
2011: The 33rd Annual St. Louis Jewish Book Festival, which claims to be the largest Jewish book festival in the United States is scheduled to begin this evening.
2011: The Illinois Holocaust Memorial Museum is scheduled to present “The Valiant and the Indifferent – Honoring Rescuers, Commemorating Kristallnacht.”
http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?llr=yyvh5xbab&v=001QcKplmKMacE5kypHlw0kGqBUtOim6n4sXYW0oxVitPf2LPfhWTcUz2d2jTxtVV6HjlzjXgjHNHhnxDQDCBDHID0Yr5Bamt0bD_xbOre0pLCLTUgLvi400reKvDIjhGHWR3NYjLgmzq0%3D
2011: The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington is scheduled to hold its 51st annual meeting where it will celebrate the Giant Food Archival Project. The Giant was the name of what became a leading supermarket chain which was founded in 1936 by Nehemiah Cohen and Samuel Lehrman. Although the Giant was not “a Jewish store,” in the 1950’s the men who worked at the fish counter at the Spring Valley store knew what to grind if you wanted to make Gefilte fish and the Giant was the first chain store in Washington to carry fresh baked challah.
2011: Peace Now activists said tonight that the words "price tag" had been sprayed on the walls of the building where the movement operates in Jerusalem.
2011: Police announced today that they have arrested a suspect in last month's stabbing attack in which a Jewish youth was seriously injured in Jerusalem's Ramot neighborhood. The suspect, 20-year-old Zaid Abd al-Rahman from the village of Beit Iksa near Ramot, was arrested several days ago in a joint, police, IDF and Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) operation. A media ban on the arrest was lifted today.
2011:The Jewish Federations of North America’s (JFNA) General Assembly opened today in Denver, Colorado amid questions of how much funding the Jewish federations will continue to provide to the Jewish Agency for Israel and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.
2011(9thof Cheshvan, 5772): Seventy-eight year old Israeli author and journalist Peretz Kidron passed away. A native of Vienna, his family escaped to Britain at the time of the Anschluss and he eventually made his to Israel where he lived at Kibbutz Zikim.
2012: “The Price of Kings: Shimon Peres” is scheduled to have its British premiere at the UK Jewish Film Festival.
2012: In the U.S. elections are scheduled to be held for President, the House of Representatives, one third of the United States and host of state and local positions. Among the candidates is Shelly Adler who is running in New Jersey’s 3rd Congressional District. Mrs. Adler late husband had held the seat until he was defeated in 2010.
