November 7 In History
305 B.C.E.: Ptolemy, a Macedonian general who had fought by the side of Alexander the Great, became King of Egypt. Alexander’s empire broke into three parts after his death. Jerusalem and Judea came under the sway of the Ptolemy’s who left the Jews to practice their religion in comparative freedom. Things would change when the Ptolemy’s would lose control of Judea to the Seleucids setting the stage for what we know as the story of Chanukah.
1180(4941): Maimonides completed the Mishneh Torah.
1532(5293): Solomon Molcho, Marrano Kabbalist and mystic, was burned at the stake. Solomon Molcho’s life is too fascinating for this small snippet. Born Diogo Pires in 1500 to Portuguese Marranos, Molcho fell under the spell of a mysterious Jewish visitor name David Reuveni. Molcho circumcised himself and adopted his Jewish name. He traveled back and forth across the lands surrounding the Mediterranean. In the end he saw himself as a Messiah, role that did sit with Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor. He was having enough problems with the Lutherans and finally had Molocho put to death for trying to convert people to Judaism.
1573(5334): Solomon Luria, known as the Maharshal, passed away. A famed Talmudic scholar, he believed in a plain, lucid approach to study. Two of his commentaries were Yam Shel Shlomo (The Sea of Solomon) and Chokmat Shel Shomo (The Wisdom of Solomon)
1611(1st of Kislev,): Joseph Siegel Ish Lito, published Givat ha-Moreh, the first critical discussion of the philosophy of Maimonides written in Lithuania
1687(2nd of Kislev): Philosopher and poet Isaac (Balthazar) Orobio de Castro past away.
1707(12th of Cheshvan): Rabbi Israel ben Aaron Jaffe of Shklov, leading kabbalist and author of Or Yisrael, passed away today.
1736(3rd of Kislev): Rabbi Joseph David of Salonika, author of Bet David, passed away today
1765: David Franks, a prominent Philadelphia merchant and Jewish leader signed the Non-Importation Resolution. This was the Colonial response to the Stamp Act and was one of the acts of defiance that eventually led to the American Revolution. In one of those strange twists of fate, when war came, Franks became a Loyalist, the party that supported Great Britain and opposed the move for the colonies to gain their independence.
1847: In Hungary, the session of the Diet that opened today refused to take favorable action on the emancipation of the Jews.
1848: Zachary Taylor was elected President of the United States. While President, Taylor appointed Joseph Jonas as Postmaster of Quincy, Illinois in 1849. According to some, Jonas was the first Jew to settle in the area west of the Allegheny Mountains. Taylor died in 1850 and was followed in office by his Vice President, Millard Fillmore. Fillmore is the President who opposed a treaty with Switzerland that would have allowed the Swiss to discriminate against American citizens who were Jewish.
1849: August Belmont married Caroline Slidell Perry, niece of John Slidell, a Senator from Louisiana who would gain fame as a minor representative of the Confederate Government during the Civil War. The marriage would produce three sons prominent in the affairs of 19th century America but they were lost to the Jewish community. This would not be the last Jewish connection for Slidell. His daughter would marry a French Jewish banker while he was serving the Confederacy in Paris.
1853: Dr. Raphall, Rabbi of the Greene-street Synagogue, tonight delivered the first of a series of lectures on the “Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews.
1857: The New York Times published a letter today that was highly critical of Judge Osborne for declaring “Now, you’ll hearing some hard swearing” when the case of Henry Myers was called followed by the statement “They’re a parcel of Jews.” The writer wonders if the term “hard swearers” refer to the invalidty of the oaths i.e. they would lie on the stand. The letter continues “Doubtless many of your readers will agree with me that, taking as examples the respectable classof our Jewish residents, we have none more pleaceable and respected and law-obeying citizens in our metropolis – men…whose friendship once gained is esteemed without prejudice to their religious opinon. Does Judge Osborn foreget that not many years since ‘a Jew’ faithfully performored, upon the bench of the Court of Sessions, similar duties to those now devoling upon himself and at who whose decease thousands of the citizens of New York marked their respect by attendance at his funeral? Does he know that even now in our Senate and our House of Representatives as well as many publice offices of this City, we have several able members of thse same religion, whose ‘hard swearing’ has never yet been calle in questions. If not, it it is well the should inform himself…” the letter ends with a reminder that the citizens elect people based on their ability to act with dignity as well as their ability.
1864(8th of Cheshvan, 5625): David Sassoon passed away. Born in October 1792, he was the treasurer of Baghdad between 1817 and 1829. He became the leader of the Jewish community in Bombay (now Mumbai) after Baghdadi Jews emigrated there. Most important of all, he was the founding Patriarch of the Sassoon clan.
1864: During the American Civil War, Major Alfred Mordecai, Jr., completed his service as Chief of Ordinance for the Department of the Army of Ohio.
1864: Alfred Mordecai, Jr. a Major serving in the Union Army was appoint Senior and Supervising Ordinance of the Army of the Cumberland under the command of Major General George Thomas. Mordecai was a second generation Army officer. Both he and his father distinguished themselves in the field of ordinance which essentially the artillery arm of the army.
1868: Birthdate of Royal S. Copeland, a Republican U.S. Senator from New York, who “crossed the aisles to support Senator Joe T. Robinson, the Democratic Majority Leader, in his remarks condemning the attacks by the new Nazi government on its Jewish citizens in 1933.
1871: An article published today entitled “Chatham Street” described the variety of experiences that would greet visitors to this New York thoroughfare including an encounter with a Jewish clothes vendor who would try and sell them “a nice pair of pants dirt cheap for seven dollars” or “a jolly Jewess whose black-eyed daughters…have beguiled many a young Gentile into purchasing paper collars and ten cent butterflies.”
1876: At the Tombs Police Court in New York City, Judge Duffy heard a case concerning alleged vote buying. A Jew named Morris Isaacs testified that a co-religionist named Mark Cohn gave him a dollar if he would vote the Republican ticket. Cohn denied the charge claiming that the dollar was partial payment for the $1.50 he owed Isaacs. Although he denied giving Isaacs a Republican ticket and Isaacs could not produce a copy of the Republican ticket, the judge still remanded the accused.
1878: Birthdate of physicist Lise Meitner
1879: It was reported today that the citizens of Elmira plan on erecting a monument to Adam, of biblical fame. According to the report, if they are able to raise the funds a personage fluent in Hebrew will remind them that Adam means red and that according to tradition the first man was made from red clay. This means that the proposed granite monument will have to be made from red granite.
1879: Birthdate of Lev Davidovich Bronstein known to history of Leon Trotsky, leader of the Bolshevik Revolution and due to his work with the Red Army, savior of the Communist cause.
1879: Birthdate Mordechai Nurock. Born Markus Nurock in the days when Latvia was part of the Russian Empire, he was both an ordained Rabbi and Doctor of Philosophy who served as member of the Lativian Parliament and the Knesset.
1880: It was reported today that the rulers of Persia continue to follow the practice of appointing foreigners to positions of influence that can be traced back to the Middle Ages when, for example Shah Arghim appointed his Jewish physician Matthias to the position of Minister of Finance.
1880: “Married Jewess Cutting Their Hair” published today traces this customs which “is universally followed in Poland, southern Spain and Northern Africa” as well as modern day London. “The act of removal of the hair is regarded as an important ceremony and takes place on the evening of the day previous to the wedding…in the presence of…relatives of both families.”
1881: “Palestine Exploration” published today provided a detailed review of East of the Jordan: A Record of Travel and Observations by Selah Merrill an archaeologist with the American Palestine Exploration Society.
1882: In an example of how important the “Jewish vote” has become, it was reported today that in an attempt to get that vote, the opponents of Emmons Clark, the reform candidate of for Sheriff, have issued claims that Clark has kept Jews from serving in his New York militia regiment and Clark has issued a strong denial of the claim.
1882: “Useful Opposition In Politics” published cited the claim that Edward Salomon “was unfriendly to followers of the Hebrew faith” as evidence of the appeals to religious prejudice that permeated the campaign in New York City.
1883: Sir Henry Irving played the role of Shylock and Ellen Terry played the role of his daughter Portia in tonight’s performance of “The Merchant of Venice” at the Star Theatre of New York
1885: In Rostov-on don Naphtul Arkadjevitch Spielrein,a merchant, and, Emilia (Eva) Marcovna Lujublinskaja, a dentist .gave birth to “Sabina Spielrein, a pioneer active in the early stages of the birth of psychoanalysis who made significant contributions to the field, was the first person to propose the thesis about instinctual life, which Freud later adapted.” (As reported by Karen Hall)
1886: “Gold Thread Embroidery” published refutes the claim that the Jewish use gold embroidery as described in Exodus 39 was an art form learned from the Eypgtians. “No stuff wove with gold have been found in Egyptian tombs.”
1886: It was reported today that the German term “Suso-Oppenheimer” does not mean “a wine the reverse of dry” but refers to “a shrewd Jew of Heidelberg who in 1733 became financial agent of Duke Karl Alexander of Wurtemberg.
1886: In a review published today of Arnold White’s The Problems of a Great City quotes the author as writing “dispassionately of the London Jews and…their own religious leaders” of early marriages among the poorer classes” which “is declared to a source of unmitigated evil.” Russian and Polish Jews come to England and New York “where the parents are not more than 20 and they have three children. In order ‘to sterilize the unfit’ Mr. White believes that the legal age of marriage should be raised” so “that reckless marriages should be prevented.”
1886: Birthdate of Aron Nimzowitch. Born in Riga, Latvia, Nimzowitsch was a world class chess master. He was known for his innovative strategies. He passed away in Denmark in 1935.
1895: Birthdate of Jacob Kaplan who served as the Chief Rabbi of Paris from 1950 until 1955 when he began serving as Chief Rabbi of Paris.
1897: Birthdate of screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewizc. His film credits include a variety of work including Citizen Kane, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Pride of the Yankees. He won an Oscar for Citizen Kane. He died in 1953.
1898(22nd of Cheshvan, 5659): Sixty-two year old Isaiah Luzzatto passed away in his native Padua, Italy. The son of S.D. Luzzatto trained as a lawyer and served as notary. He wrote a variety books including one “on the battle of Legnano.”
1899: Herzl writes to Nouri Bey, General Secretary of the Turkish Foreign Office, seeking to arrange a meeting with the Sultan.
1900: Birthdate of Efrem Kurtz. Born in St Petersburg Russia, Kurtz was one of many world renowned conductors of Russian Jewish origins. At one point after World War II he was the conductor of the Houston (Texas) Symphony Orchestra. He passed away in 1995.
1909: Birthdate of Norman Krasna “an American screenwriter, playwright, and film director. He is best known for penning screwball comedies, melodrama, and early films noir.”
1912: M. Benveniste who was the president of the Alliance school in Ionia wrote on the conditions in his locale. Everything "becomes more and more serious and has taken a disquieting turn. We are absolutely isolated…Greece is about to blockade the only road which remains open….Everything has quadrupled and even quintupled in price. Flour is lacking…."
1912: A Tel-Aviv magazine reported that an association had been founded to establish a new neighborhood in Jerusalem called Talipot. Talipot was to be located on tract of land near the German Colony and the railroad tracks. Construction on the newly purchased land was slated to begin in the spring of 1913.
1914: The first issue of The New Republic Magazine was published. Walter Lippmann, an assimilated Jew, was one of the cofounders. The current owner and editor-in-chief is Martin Peretz, a man who is aggressively proud of his Jewish background. Leon Wieseltier, the author of the book Kaddish is a longtime literary editor.
1915: Jacob Grossman, 27 years old, a shoemaker by trade, disappeared from Richmond, Virginia leaving his wife Annie and their small baby. Mr. Grossman took everything his wife owned and left her without a penny. He was born in Russia and came to America eight years ago.
1916: Birthdate of jazz musician Joe Bushkin.
1916: Woodrow Wilson was re-elected President of the United States. From a Jewish perspective, Wilson is best known for his appointment of Louis Brandeis to the Supreme Court. Wilson enjoyed the support of many of Jewish leaders and Jews played an active role in the peace negotiations at Versailles that marked the conclusion of World War I.
1917: In Russia, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and Leon Trotsky ousted Kerensky and took over the government. The Kerensky forces were the ones who had actually made the revolution against the Czars. The Mensheviks (Kerensky’s party) and the Bolsheviks (aka the Communists) had Jews in top leadership positions. The victorious Communists would turn on the Jews and subject them to treatment that was little better or even worse than what they had experience under the Czars.
1917: During World War I, the British captured Gaza from Turkey. The Jewish Legion was part of the British Army that was making its way across Palestine, heading for Jerusalem and beyond.
1918: “In Munich, Kurt Eisner, a Prussian Jew and follower of Lenin, who in his professional life was the theatre critic of the Munchener Post, declared the establishment of a Bavarian Soviet Republic.
1922: Socialist Meyer London was defeated in his bid to be re-elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from New York’s 12th Congressional District.
1930: Birthdate of Senator Rudy Boschwitz. In his day Boschwitz was a double anomaly. He was a Jew elected to the Senate from Minnesota, hardly a place with a big Jewish base. And he was a Republican at a time when most Jewish voters were Democrats. In 1990, he was involved in one of the strangest (from a Jewish perspective) Senatorial elections. The Jewish Boschwitz ran against the Jewish Democrat, Paul Wellstone. In other words, in America’s heartland, the winner was going to be a Jew no matter what.
1937: The Palestine Post reported that two unarmed British soldiers of the Black Watch (Royal Highland Regiment) were shot at and killed at the entrance to the Animal Hospital, at the foot of Mount Zion in Jerusalem. Their murderers escaped to the Silwan village. A police van was fired at on the Jerusalem-Hebron road.
1933(18th of Cheshvan): Zionist leader Leo Motzkin passed away.
1938: A distraught young Jew named Herschel Grynszpan, whose family has just been deported to Zbaszyn, enters the German Embassy in Paris and mortally wounds Third Secretary of Legation Ernst vom Rath. The Nazis will exploit this event by instigating a long-planned terror campaign against all Jews in Germany and Austria.
1939: The Germans began expelling Jews from Western Poland. Jews in Sierpc were ordered to wear a yellow patch on which is written "JUDE".
1941: The Nazis murder 2,580 Jews at Nemyriv, Ukraine.
1941: Twelve thousand Jews are transported from Minsk, Belorussia, to burial pits in the nearby Tuchinka Forest and murdered.
1941: In Bobruisk, Belorussia, 20,000 Jews are executed.
1941: More than 17,000 Jews are forced from Rovno, Ukraine, and murdered at burial pits in the Sosenki Forest, outside of town.
1941: Close to 5000 Jews are killed in Pogulanka, outside Dvinsk, Latvia
1942: Between now and the end of November, more than 50,000 Jews in Poland and the Ukraine are deported to death camps at Belzec, Treblinka, and Majdanek.
1944 (21st of Cheshvan, 5705): Chana (or Hannah) Senesh (Szenes) was executed in Budapest, by the Nazis. Born in Hungary in 1921, Senesh was the daughter of intellectual, middle class, non-observant Jews. Although the Senesh family was assimilated, anti-Semitic sentiment in Budapest led her to involvement in Zionist activities. Hannah Senesh left Hungary for the Land of Israel in 1939 where she lived on Kibbutz Sdot Yam. In 1943 Senesh joined the British Army and volunteered to be parachuted into Europe. The purpose of this operation was to help the Allied efforts in Europe and establish contact with partisan resistance fighters in an attempt to aid beleaguered Jewish communities. Senesh was parachuted in March, 1944 into Yugoslavia, and spent three months with Tito's partisans. At this time, she wrote a poem called "Blessed is the Match" that memorializes her idealism and commitment to her cause. Senesh then crossed the border into Hungary where she was caught almost immediately by the Hungarian police. Although tortured repeatedly and cruelly over the next several months, Senesh refused to reveal information. She did not cooperate even when the police threatened to harm her mother. When she was executed by a firing squad on November 7, she chose to stare at her executors rather than be blindfolded. In 1950, Senesh's remains were brought to Israel and re-interred in the military cemetery on Mount Herzl. Her diary and literary works were later published, and many of her more popular poems, including "Towards Caesarea," "Eli, Eli," and "Blessed is the Match," have been set to music. She was a brave young woman who captured the imagination because of her valor and because of the ardor which she expressed in her poetry.
“Walk to Caesarea” by Hannah Sensh
Eli, Eli, she loh yigamer leolam
Hachol vehayam,
Rishroosh shel hamayim
Berack hashamayim
Tfilat haadam
My Lord, my Lord let it never end
The sand and the sea,
The water’s whisper
The sky’s glitter
Man’s Prayer.
Blessed Is the Match
Blessed is the match consumed in kindling flame
Blessed is the flame that burns in the heart's secret places.
Blessed is the heart with strength to stop its beating for honor's sake
Blessed is the match consumed in kindling flame.
A Poem Written While in Prison
One - two - three . . . eight feet long,
Two strides across, the rest is dark
. . .Life hangs over me like a question mark.
One - two - three . . . maybe another week,
Or next month may still find me here,
But death, I feel, is very near.
I could have been twenty-three next July;
I gambled on what mattered most,
The dice were cast. I lost.
Words Written While Waiting to Die
“There are stars whose radiance is visible on Earth though they have long been extinct. There are people whose brilliance continues to light the world though they are no longer among the living. These lights are particularly bright when the night is dark. They light the way for humankind.”
1944: The Birkenau gas chambers ceased being operational. Jews who arrived there were all now given tattoo numbers, a practice usually reserved for those who were not selected for immediate death.
1948: Egyptian forces retreat from Majdal and take refuge in Gaza, leaving IDF forces in control of this portion of the Mediterranean coast.
1952: The Jerusalem Post reported a group of immigrants that had been demonstrating for a long time against the Jewish Agency¹s absorption activities and asked to be returned to their native India, and was finally allowed to do so last April, had now pleaded to be allowed to return from India to Israel again.
1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that the Arab Legion opened fire on children playing near no-man¹s-land in the Musrara quarter of Jerusalem. One boy was hit and slightly wounded. The Arab Legion was the name of the Jordanian Army.
1956: During the Sinai Campaign, Prime Minister David Ben Gurion responded to Eisenhower’s demand for an immediate end to the fighting and the immediate withdrawal of the IDF from the Sinai Peninsula. Israel was prepared to stop fighting immediately, abide by the UN Cease Fire Resolution and advance no further. But Israel would only withdraw from the Sinai with appropriate assurances. The Israelis wanted an end to terror raids from Gaza, the opening of the Straits of Tiran and end to Egyptian restrictions on the use of the Suez Canal by ships stopping at Israel’s ports.
1961: Republican Stanley M. Isaacs was elected to the New York City Council
1962: Eleanor Roosevelt, widow of FDR, passed away. She was mourned by many Jews because she was a champion of number of social and political causes they supported and because of the high regard in which her husband was held. More to the point, Mrs. Roosevelt championed the cause of Jewish refugees during World War II. Unfortunately, FDR lagged behind his wife on this and it cost the Jews of Europe dearly.
1977: The Israeli government reluctantly sent aircraft on a retaliatory mission against the PLO bases from which rockets had been launched against northern Israel. While the Sinai had been quiet, citizens in the north could be blasted at a moment’s notice. This was unacceptable.
1977. In a speech marking the opening of the Egyptian Parliament, Anwar Sadat expressed his desire and his willingness to address the Knesset. Despite doubts among some Israeli leaders, Prime Minister Begin responded by sending an invitation to Sadat that very evening using American diplomats to carry the message.
1977: The Jerusalem Post reported that Hilarion Capucci, the Greek Orthodox archbishop who had served three years out of his 12-year sentence for smuggling arms for terrorists from Lebanon to Israel, was released and flown to Rome, in a goodwill gesture towards the pope and the Vatican. Assurances were given that he would no longer engage in any anti-Israeli activities. (This promise was never kept properly).
1982: Birthdate of outfield Brian Jeffery Horowitz whose nickname was “The Rabbi.”
1984: Madeleine Kunin was elected as the first Jewish and first female governor of Vermont.
1987: Birthdate of Larry Cohen, a South African footballer, who is the son of Martin Cohen, one of South Africa's prominent footballers in the 1970s
1987: In Tunisia, President Habib Bourgiba is overthrown ending two decades of power. When Tunisia gained its independence from France in 1956, Bourgiba promised his 90,000 Jewish citizens full civil and political rights in the new republic. Jews occupied prominent positions in government and journalism. After six years of increasing economic instability, a third of the Jews had left the country. By 1965, the Jewish population had dwindled to 8,000. After 13 years of rule by Bourgiba’s successors, the once proud Jewish population had dwindled to a few hundred.
1988: Bob Hope was a “surprise” guest at the, “Broadway Tribute to Lee Guber” at the Minskoff Theatre. He joined such stars as Robert Merrill, Eli Wallach, Theodore Bikel, Charles Strouseand Henny Youngman, in acclaiming Broadway producer Guber “a man of the theater with the mind of a philosopher and the heart of a social scientist” who had died in March of that year. The evening’s proceeds were to benefit the YM-YWHA’s Emanu-El Midtown Y and its [then] newly renamed Lee Guber Jewish Repertory Theater.
1988: Nita M. Lowey was re-elected to the House of Representatives from New York.
1989: Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg asked President Ronald Reagan to withdraw his nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court, citing the clamor that arose over Ginsburg's admission that he had smoked marijuana. As chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Ginsburg upheld the decision of Secretary of State Powell designating Meir Kahan’s Kahane Chai as a terrorist organization
1993(30th of Cheshvan, 5754): Efraim Ayubi of Kfar Darom, Rabbi Chaim Druckman's personal driver, was shot to death by terrorists near Hebron. HAMAS publicly claimed responsibility for the murder.
1997: Haaretzpublished a letter from Sir Isaiah Berlin to his close friend Professor Avishai Margalit expressing his final thoughts the "Israeli Palestinian Situation.”
1999: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or about topics of Jewish interest including A People Apart: The Jews in Europe, 1789-1939 by David Vital and Women: Photographs by Annie Leibovitz, including an introductory essay by Susan Sontag.
1999: Judith Anne Shulevitz and Nicholas Lemann, writers in New York, are married today by Rabbi Marion R. Shulevitz, the bride's mother, at the University Club in New York. The bride, 36, is the New York editor and cultural columnist for Slate, the online magazine. The bridegroom, 45, is a staff writer at The New Yorker magazine.
2004: In an article, entitled “Mein Kampf': The Italian Edition,” Lila Azam Zanganeh explores the relationship between Hitler and Mussolini especially as it regarded issues of nationalism and racial purity; issues that have special bearing on the road to the Shoah.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/07/books/review/07ZANGANE.html
2005: Author Jonathan Rosen won the 2005 Reform Judaism Prize for Jewish Fiction for Joy Comes in the Morning his second novel. The prize carries a $5,000 award.
2005: According to published reports, Israel will give the Holy See possession of the Coenaculum, or the Room of the Last Supper (also known as the Upper Room or the Cenacle), on Mount Zion. In exchange, Israel is to gain control of a 12th-century synagogue in Toledo, Spain, which is currently the Santa Maria la Blanca Church, says the Times of London. The synagogue became a church during the 15th-century expulsion of Jews from Spain.
2006: As America gathers to vote in the Congressional elections, there seems to be one thing seems to be certain. Vermont will elect its first Jewish Socialist to the United States Senate, Bernie Sanders. The 65 year old Sanders was born in Brooklyn and raised by Jewish immigrants from Poland who had lost a large part of their family in the Holocaust. Sanders is currently serving as Vermont’s only member of the House of Representatives.
2006: Elliot Spitzer was elected Governor of New York with 69% of the vote.
2006: Ed Rendell wins a second term as Governor of Pennsylvania by defeating football hero Lynn Swann.
2006: In an apparent reversal of the decision to discontinue the manufacture of the Merkava tank, Haaretz reported that the IDF General Staff had decided to defer a decision on the fate of the battle tank based on an assessment “if properly deployed” the Merkava Mark IV “can provide its crew with better protection than in the past.”
2007: The Kibbutz Chamber Orchestra under Doron Salomon presents an evening of Balkan Music at Beit Shean, a kibbutz in the shadow of Mt. Gilboa famed for its olive production and the fact that Michael Levin of Lubbock, Texas, spent his junior year in high school living, working and studying at this monument to Zionist idealism.
2007: At the Center for Jewish History the American Jewish Historical Society and the Jewish Women's Archive cosponsor a panel discussion entitled “You Never Call! You Never Write! An Exploration of the Contemporary Jewish Mother.”Through personal reflection and stories, an illustrious panel of mothers and daughters provide an intimate, heartfelt, affectionat and---of course---critical look at the contemporary Jewish Mother based on Joyce Antler's recent book: You Never Call! You Never Write!
2007: At the Jewish Community Center of Greater Washington 38th annual Book Festival, Pulitzer Prize winning author Thomas Friedman discusses his best selling work The World Is Flat.
2007: Interpol issued six warrants five Iranian and one Lebanese terror suspects connected with bombing Jewish buildings in Argentina.
2007: At the Jerusalem Theatre, The Emet Prize for Arts and Science were awarded to Prof. Micha Sharir - Exact Sciences, Prof. Shmuel Agmon - Exact Sciences, Prof. Vitali Milman - Exact Sciences, Former Justice Aharon Barak - Social Sciences, Prof. Shlomo Giora Shoham - Social Sciences, Prof. Eliora Ron - Life Sciences, Prof. Yosef Yarden - Life Sciences, Prof. Myriam Yardeni – Humanities, Prof. Avishai Margalit – Humanities, David Grossman - Culture & Arts, and Sami Michael - Culture & Arts. Grossman, whose son was kiled during fighting in the Second Lebanon War refused to shake the hand of the Pime Minister or the Supremem Court Presdient as a means of protests
2008: The
AIA
Center for Architecture presents Technion lecturer Nili Portugali speaking on "Architecture Is Made For People: A Holistic-Phenomenological Approach to Architecture"
2008: In Chicago, premier showing of “The boy in the Striped Pajamas.” The“able adaption” of the 2006 young adult noble by John Boyne “shows the Holocaust through a child’s eyes.”
2008: On the eve of the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht Duke Helfand writes the following article entitled “L.A. Jews celebrate Yanov Torah's survival,” in which he describes how “Los Angeles Jews celebrate the story of a Torah that was pieced together from scattered texts smuggled into a Nazi labor camp.”
http://articles.latimes.com/print/2008/nov/07/local/me-torah7
2009: In Rockville, MD, the Magen David Sephardic Synagogue presents a screening of “Women from Sarajevo,” the story of how two families – one Jewish, one Muslim- save each other during slaughters in the Balkans.
‘2009: The New York City Opera presents a revival performance of Hugo Weisgall”s “Esther” in the recently renovated David H. Koch Theatre. “The opera, which originally premiered in 1993 to universal acclaim, was especially praised for addressing questions of Jewish identity and assimilation, as well as its refusal to exult over the massacre of an enemy.”
2009: When the World Series of Poker opens today in Las Vegas, four of the nine players will be Jewish – Jeff Shulman, Steven Begleiter, Eric Buchman and Kevin Schaffel.
2010: Gomez Mill House is scheduled to present “Jewish Merchants in the New World, 1800-1900.”
2010: Hulin, which deals with the laws of slaughtering animals, the last Talmud tractate in the Steinsaltz series is scheduled to be completed. Ceremonies celebrating the event will be held around the world.
2010:The 2010 General Assembly (GA) and the International Lion of Judah Conference (ILOJC) of the Jewish Federations of North America are scheduled to begin in New Orleans, LA.
2010: Cathleen Schine is scheduled to discuss The Three Weissmanns of Westport at the opening session of the Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia Book Festival.
2010: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish authors including Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff, Scorpions: The Battles and Triumphs of FDR’s Great Supreme Court Justices by Noah Feldman and The Instructions by Adam Levin.
2010: German soldiers, including one wearing a skullcap with his uniform, filed silently through a leaf-covered cemetery in Frankfurt today to lay wreaths at a memorial for 467 Jewish soldiers killed fighting for the kaiser during World War I.
2010(30th of Cheshvan, 5771): Rosh Chodesh Kislev
2011: Gilad Sharon, author of Sharon: Life of a Leaderis scheduled to appear at the St. Louis Jewish Book Festival.
2011: In New York City, leading Adlerian psychoanalyst and president of the Alfred Adler Institute of New York Ellen Mendel is scheduled to present a comprehensive introduction to Alfred Adler, the man, his theories and his impact, providing attendees of the lecture with a broad understanding of Adler’s psychology and philosophy. In New York City
2011: All Israeli government and security-related websites that crashed yesterday started working once again today after long hours of malfunctions.
2011: A general strike by Israel's public sector ended today after four hours of near paralysis across in the economy.
2011: An IDF force spotted a terrorist squad today around noon, as it planted two explosive charges near the northern section of the security fence separating Gaza and Israel. The IDF Spokesman's Unit said that the Israeli soldiers fired tank shells at the terrorists and identified hits on target.
2012: “The World Is Funny” is scheduled to be shown at the Melbourne Opening Night of the Jewish International Festival in Australia.
2012: Start of Jewish Book Month sponsored by the Jewish Book Council
2012: British premiere of “Aliyah” at the UK Jewish Film Festival
