December 10 In History
1475: Seventy eight year old Italian artist Paolo Uccello passed away. Like many artists of his time, Uccello produced what today would be called anti-Semitic art. Among his works was “Miracle of the Host”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Uccelo_host_burning.jpg
1508: The League of Cambrai is formed by Pope Julius II, Louis XII of France, Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor and Ferdinand II of Aragon as an alliance against Venice. From a Jewish point of view, this item presents a mixed bag. Ferdinand ruled over a kingdom that had expelled its Jews and was home to the inquisition. But Pope Julius employed a Jewish physician, Samuel Sarfatti and practiced a policy of “benign neglect” when it came to dealing with the Jewish people. While Venice had enacted its share of ant-Jewish laws (and in 1516 would create the first Ghetto), it was a better place for Jews to settle than other parts of Europe. This is attested to by the fact that many of the Sephardim who had been expelled from Spain made their new home in the city of canals, including Isaac Abravanel.
1675: A German Jew, Alexander Polak, became a citizen of The Hauge. He was the progenitor of the Polak Daniels family, and gave the congregation a cemetery in 1697.
1776: Birthdate of Abraham Mendelssohn, the son of Moses Mendelssohn and the father of Felix Mendelssohn. A successful banker, he would change his name to Abraham Ernst Mendelssohn Bartholdy and change his religion to Christianity.
1804: Birthdate of German mathematician Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi. Jacobi was the German mathematician who, with the independent work of Niels Henrik Abel of Norway, founded the theory of elliptic functions. He also worked on Abelian functions and discovered the hyperelliptic functions. Jacobi applied his work in elliptic functions to number theory. He also investigated mathematical analysis and geometry. Jacobi carried out important research in partial differential equations of the first order and applied them to the differential equations of dynamics. His work on determinants is important in dynamics and quantum mechanics and he studied the functional determinant now called the Jacobian. He passed away in 1851.
1817: Mississippi was admitted to the union as the 20th state. The Jewish community in Mississippi dates back to the 1840’s. There are Jewish houses of worship and cemeteries dotted in many towns across the state including Jackson, the state capital, Greenwood and Vicksburg. The Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience (MSJE) is located in Utica, Mississippi. Utica is also the home to Henry S. Jacobs Camp, the summer destination for thousands of southern Jewish youngsters in the last forty years. The Mississippi Jewish community has produced several prominent individuals including Shelby Foote and Rabbi Fred Davidow.
1826 (10 Kislev 5587): Rabbi Dovber of Lubavitch was released from prison after being arrested the week after Sukkot on slander charges.
1836: Emory College was chartered in Oxford, Georgia. Today Emory University is located in Atlanta, Georgia. One third of the undergraduate student body is Jewish and in 2005 Hillel received a three million dollar grant to upgrade its services and facilities on campus. The university offers a two year graduate degree in Jewish Studies.
1854: In Berlin tax-collector Friedrich Wilhelm Ludwig Henrici and his wife Wilhelmine gave birth to Carl Ernst Julius Henrici the anti-Semitic leadr who founded the Social Nazi Party in 1881.
1855(1st of Tevet, 5616): Rosh Chodesh Tevet
1855: Birthdate of Mrs. James (Selina) Levi. The Dubuque native was the daughter of the founder of Iowa Jewry and one time held the record for being the oldest Jewish woman born in the Hawkeye State.
1858: The Executive Committee of the Representatives of the United Congregations of Israelites of the City of New York sent a letter to President James Buchanan which described a public meeting held on December 4 in which Jews and non-Jews gathered to demand the return of Edgardo Mortara to his parents. Those attending the meeting also petitioned the President to join with the several European nations who were protesting the kidnapping of the youngster by representatives of the Pope. This letter was a follow-up to a communication sent by the same group on November 20, 1858.
1858: Caleb Lyon delivered his second lecture on The Holy Land under the auspices of the Mercantile Library Association at Clinton Hall this evening. His lecture included a description of the mountains of Moab, the Dead Sea and “the silvery Jordan River.” He described his trip to Jerusalem which he said was populated by six thousand Jews as well as a visit to the Siloam Springs, the Wailing Wall and attendance at a Jewish wedding.
1861: An article entitled “Sold by a Jew Peddler” reported that John H. Bornisky had filed a complaint before Judge Osborne claiming that a Jewish peddler name August Seligman had sold to him seven pieces of linen, for the sum of $38 50. The sale was made by sample, and the complainant had paid the money upon the promise of Seligman to deliver the goods immediately. Since the goods were not delivered Seligman was arrested and held because bail had not been posted.
1861: Rabbi Arnold Fischel arrived in Washington, D.C. this evening. He hopes to meet with government leaders including President Lincoln in an attempt to change the law so that Jews can serve as chaplains with the Union Army.
1861: Moses Grinnell writes a letter of introduction to President Lincoln on behalf of Rabbi Arnold Fischel.
“Sir, permit me to present to you Rev .Dr. Fischell of this city who visits Washington as a delegate from the Board of Delegates of American Israelites, having been selected as chaplain to the Jews of the army around Washington estimated at about 8000. Dr. Fischell is of high literary abilities and greatly esteemed by distinguished men of all religious denimonations. Believe me, etc.”
1864: Sherman’s Union Army reaches Savannah in what history will call “Sherman’s March to the Sea.” Among those with Sherman was Major General Frederick Knefler. The native of Hungary was the highest ranking Jewish officer in the Union Army. He was commander of the 79th Indiana regiment before he was promoted to brigadier general for his performance at the Battle of Chickamauga and then to major general during his service with Sherman on his march through Georgia.
1870: It was reported today that ground has been broken for a new synagogue located at Lexington and 55th in Manhattan. Henry Fernbach who was the architect for the 34th and 44th street synagogues as well as one of the architects who worked on Temp[le Emmanuel, designed this building which he estimates will cost $180,000, [Today this synagogue is the Central Synagogue which was formed from the merger in 1898 of Shar HaShomayim (meaning Gate of Heaven), founded in 1839 by German Jews, and Ahawath Chesed (meaning Love of Mercy), founded in 1846 by Bohemian Jews. Its name was changed to Central Synagogue in 1920 symbolizing not only its location, but also its change to Reform Judaism.”]
1871: It was reported today that the Jewish Messenger has a published “a very discriminating criticism on the character of Shylock as a representative of the Hebrew nation.” According to the Messenger, “as an embodiment of the Jewish people Shylock stands forth strong in his love of religion, family and neighbors but impotent to remonstrate against injustice or to resent it.”
1874: During today’s meeting of the Board of Alderman in New York, a resolution authorizing the Hebrew Benevolent Orphan Society to sub-let the property they obtained from the City was referred to the Committee on Law.
1876(24th of Kislev, 5637): In the evening, kindle the first Chanukah light.
1876: It was reported today that the Purim Association will manage the upcoming Hebrew Charity Ball which is fund raiser for the United Hebrew Charities.
1876: It was reported today that New York’s Hebrew Free School Association is serving 580 students and that the association’s President has announced that additional efforts will be made to provide more facilities for the youngsters.
1876: Rabbi Lukskar officiated at the funeral of 27 year old Abraham Stettaner (sp) at the Cypress Hills Cemetery. He was one of the victims of the Brooklyn Theatre Fire.
1879: The New York Times publishes a lengthy article about the history of Chanukah which begins with the erroneous statement, “The Jewish feast called Chanukah or the Feast of Dedication will be honored by the adherents of the ancient faith on the 16th.” On the evening of December 16th, Jews will be lighting the 8th candle
1879(25th of Kislev, 5640): First Day of Chanukah
1880: It was reported today that a fundraiser is to be held to benefit the 44th Street Synagogue.
1881: It was reported today that the Young Men’s Hebrew Association is planning on hosting a ball in celebration of Chanukah at the Academy of Music that will feature several tableaus depicting events in Jewish history.
1882: The annual meeting of the Hebrew Free School Associations is scheduled to take place at ten o’clock this morning in Manhattan.
1882: It was reported today that Alfred Steckler has obtained an injunction preventing the police from arresting several Jewish shopkeepers and workers for violating the Sunday Closing Laws. The injunctions were based on Section 264 of the Penal Code which permits people to work on the first day of the week if they “uniformly keep another day of the week as holy time” and that their labor does not disturb those “observing the first day of the week as holy time.” (In our world where everything it is 24-7-365 it seems hard to remember that Sunday Closing Laws were the norm and vestiges of them still exist such as the prohibition on buying and selling vehicles in Iowa on Sunday.)
1882: Birthdate Austrian-born British philosopher Otto Neurath. The Marxist radical and refugee from Hitler’s Europe passed away in 1945.
1882: It was reported today that the Jews are one of only “religious sects” (the others being Catholics, Episcopalian and Presbyterians) who have founded one or more hospitals in New York City.
1882: It was reported today that that the Prefect of Police has ordered the expulsion of all Jews “residing within the boundaries of St. Petersburg without official permission.”
1889: It was reported today that the Montefiore Home Fair of 1887 which raised $158,000 was the most successful fundraiser sponsored by the Jewish community to date.
1889: It was reported today that this year’s Hebrew Educational Fair is being sponsored by the Hebrew Free School Association, the Aguilar Free Library and the Young Men’s Hebrew Association. Funds raised during this two long event will go the Hebrew Institute.
1890: A public meeting was held protesting against the conditions of Jews living in Russia
1891: Birthdate of Nelly Sachs. Born in Berlin, Sachs was a German poet and dramatist who was transformed by the Nazi experience from a dilettante into a poignant spokesperson for the grief and yearnings of her fellow Jews. Sachs found sanctuary in Sweden in 1940. When, with Shmuel Yosef Agnon, she was awarded the 1966 Nobel Prize for Literature, she observed that Agnon represented Israel whereas "I represent the tragedy of the Jewish people." She passed away in 1970 and was buried in Sweden.
1895: Large crowds visited all of the booths and displays at the Hebrew Fair in New York City. Isaacs S. Isaacs is editor in chief of the Fair Journal. Rebecca Kohut is the business manager of the Fair Journal.
1897(15th of Kislev, 5658): Charles Louis Fleischmann passed away. Born in 1835, he “was an innovative manufacturer of yeast and other consumer food products during the 19th Century. In the late 1860s, he and his brother Maximilian created America’s first commercially produced yeast, which revolutionized baking in a way that made today’s mass production and consumption of bread possible.”
1898: The Treaty of Paris is signed, officially ending the Spanish-American War. Following the war, a number of Jewish veterans settled in Cuba. By 1904, they were able to establish a synagogue in Havana.
1901: The first Nobel Prizes were awarded. In 1905, Adolph von Baeyer, a German chemist, became the first Jew to win a Nobel Prize. He won it in Chemistry for his work in synthesizing dye indigo.
1905: The Jews of Manchester, England called for a meeting to publicly protest the treatment of Russian Jews as typified by the Kishinev Pogroms.
1906: U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt wins the Nobel Peace Prize, becoming the first American to win a Nobel Prize. Roosevelt never intended to keep the money that was part of the prize. Finally, in 1918, he was able to donate the money to a variety of charities. Among those receiving funds was the Jewish Welfare Board, which received $4,000 for War Activities. The funds were to be handled by the treasurer, Mr. Walter E. Sachs.
1910(9th of Kislev, 5671): Seventy-seven year old Michael Friedländer passed away. Born in Posen, and educated in Germany, he moved to England in 1865 when he back principal of Jews’ College in London, a position he held until three years before his death. His English translation of Maiimonides’ Guide to the Perplexed is considered to be a classic. He was the father-in-law of Moses Gaster.
1910: German-Jewish author and translator Paul Johann Ludwig von Heyse was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
1913: Birthdate of composer Morton Gould.
1915: Moise Cohen of Constantinople was appointed professor of finance at Ottoman University.
1916: Alfred Mond began serving as First Commissioner of Works under Prime Minister David Lloyd George.
1917(25th of Kislev, 5678): First Day of Chanukah
1922: Due to travel problems, Albert Einstein was unable to attend the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony and deliver his Nobel Lecture.
1923: Dr. Arthur Ruppin tells the Keren Hayesod Council that “the housing shortage in Palestine has been relieved to a considerably extent by the establishment of the General Mortgage Bank of Palestine, which has invested more than $300,000 in mortgages, enabling the construction of 300 houses, chiefly in Tel-Aviv, Jaffa, Haifa and Tiberias.”
1923: Birthdate of Harold Gould. Born Harold Goldstein, Gould is one of those character actors whose face you know but name you don’t. One of his more memorable roles came in Paul Newman/Robert Redford hit, The Sting.
1929: Ossip Gabrilowitsch, the Jewish son-in-law of Mark Twain, conducted the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in a concert at Carnegie Hall tonight.
1930: As the U.S. economy moved further into what we now call The Great Depression, the savings bank in which many members of the Sephardic Jewish Brotherhood in New York had placed their money closed and no funds were made available to depositors. The collection of dues began to fall off at an alarming rate, and there was a high demand for financial aid from the Secret Relief Fund.
1934: Birthdate of Howard Martin Temin. Temin was American virologist who in 1975 shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with his former professor Renato Dulbecco and another of Dulbecco's students, David Baltimore, for his co-discovery of the enzyme reverse transcriptase. In 1961, Temin's formed a provirus hypothesis that cancer cells affect genetic material. The protein coat of certain viruses contains an enzyme that facilitates the copying of viral genes into the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) of the host cell. In 1970 he and Baltimore both independently isolated the enzyme, now called reverse transcriptase. The viruses that contain the enzyme are known as retroviruses. Temin also investigated how genetic information in the provirus transforms a normal animal cell into a tumor cell. He passed away in 1994.
1934: Birthdate of Ryszard Przecicki, who as Richard J. Pratt, became one of the richest men in Australia.
1936: Jewish settlers erected the first of the “Tower and Stockade” settlements (Tel Amel) Nir David. These settlements on remote parcels of land purchased by the Jewish National Fund were set up overnight with the help of prefabricated towers and walls. They were usually put up overnight with the help of hundreds of volunteers. Eventually 118 of this type of settlement were erected throughout the Galilee, Bet-She'an Valley and the Jordan Valley. The secretive construction method was one way of avoiding Arab attacks.
1937: The Palestine Post reported on the brazen attack carried out in the heart of Haifa's Hadar Hacarmel. An Arab terrorist first exploded a bomb and then fired two shots, seriously wounding 13-year-old Elimelech Gromet. Another bomb was thrown in the Tel Arza quarter of Jerusalem, next to the Weismann carpentry.
1937: The Palestine Post reported that Sir Charles Teggart, who won his reputation as an indefatigable anti-terrorist fighter in Bengal, arrived in Jerusalem, to advise the government and police on new anti-terrorist tactics.
1939: Friedrich Ubelhor, governor of the Kalisz-Lodz district, issued a secret order for the establishment of a ghetto in the northern section of Lodz, where the Jewish Baluty slum quarter was situated. "Needless to say [stated his order] the establishment of a ghetto is only a provisional phase...the ultimate goal must be the total purge of this scourge."
1942: A transport of Jews from Germany arrives at Auschwitz.
1942: At Wola Przybyslawska, Poland, near the Parczew Forest, Nazis shoot seven Poles accused of aiding Jews.
1942: The Polish ambassador to Britain informs Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden that the Polish government-in-exile can confirm that the German authorities are systematically exterminating the entire Jewish population of Poland and the rest of Europe.
1943: As Soviet troops began to break through German lines, the Germans (and local Rumanians) tried cover up their actions by killing the surviving inmates of the labor camp and destroying the camp itself in Tarasika Rumania. This type of action was repeated over and over as Soviet troops moved toward Germany.
1945: Birthdate of James Lee “Jimmy” Kessler, the founder of the Texas Jewish Historical society and the “first native Texan to serve as Rabbi of B’nai Israel, in Galveston Texas.
1945: The cover of Time features a montage of Nazi leaders standing trial at Nuremberg under the title “Hitler’s Heirs”
1945: Time published “War Crimes: Day of Judgment” describing the trial of Hermann Göring, Alfred Jodl, Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht, Alfred Rosenberg, Julius Streicher, Julius Streicher and Rudolph Hess
1945: "The Chalice of Nurnberg," published today by Time described the purposed of the trials in the words US. Prosecutor Robert Jackson who defined the need for individual responsibility and the establishment of a rule of International Law that would prevent such crimes from happening again
1945: “Treason: The Seeker” published today described the condition Ezra Pound, the expatriate American poet who relished giving anti-Semitic and anti-American broadcast from his home in Italy. The latter earned him the dubious distinction of being one of the few Americans indicted for treason because of his radio broadcasts.
1945: President Truman names six U.S. members to Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine. London announces six members
1946: Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver criticizes President Truman, expresses his opposition to Partition and recommends resistance to the British Mandatory Government.
1947: British leaders will not alter the Jewish quota that limits the Jewish immigrants 1,500 a month.
1947: Dr. Gerty Theresa Radnitz Cori became the first Jewish woman, as well as the first American woman, to win a Nobel Prize in the sciences when she received the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine on. She won the prize jointly with her husband, Dr. Carl F. Cori, and Bernardo A. Houssay. The scientists were honored for their research in identifying the "Cori Cycle" which explained how the body converts carbohydrates into sugars that supply muscles with energy. This research was particularly important in leading to the understanding and treatment of diabetes. Dr. Gerty Cori was born in Prague in 1896. Encouraged by her family, she enrolled at the Medical School of the German University of Prague, receiving her Doctorate in Medicine in 1920. Together with her husband, Cori immigrated to the United States and became a citizen in 1928. Carl took a position at the State Institute for the Study of Malignant Diseases in Buffalo, NY and Gerty was hired as an assistant pathologist. The Coris persisted in working together despite the discouragement of many institutions that sought to hire only Carl. In 1931, they moved to St. Louis where Carl became the chair of the pharmacology department at Washington University School of Medicine. Gerty was offered a position as a research assistant. When Carl was made chair of a new biochemistry department in 1946, Gerty was finally promoted to full professor. They won the Nobel Prize the following year. In 1952, President Truman appointed her to the Board of Directors of the National Science Foundation.
1947: A detachment of Palmach soldiers was attacked while paroling the water pipeline near the Arab village of Shu’ut in the Negev. The commander of the Palmach assured his men that they had nothing to worry about since the head man of the village had been a friend of his. But in the Arab’s undeclared war on the yet to be born Jewish state, friendships did not always matter.
1948: Speaking in the House of Commons as leader of the Opposition, Winston Churchill raised the question of why the British government continued to refuse to recognize the state of Israel since nineteen other countries including the United States and the Soviet Union had already done so. He appeals to Parliament to end its “sulky boycott” of the Jewish state
1948: Despite opposition from some of his ministers, Ben Gurion pressured the cabinet into committing to move the Israeli government to Jerusalem “without further delay.” Ben Gurion dismissed the fears of his opponents that the move would anger world opinion by pointing out that the occupation of the Old City and the West Bank by the Jordanians had changed the equation.
1948: Israel agrees to UN truce mission's request to let a trapped Egyptian force withdraw from Faluja in Negev. Was it only 6 months ago that the Egyptians invaders were bombing Tel Aviv and heading toward the “Jewish city” with the intent of driving the Jews into the sea.
1948: The Israelis devised Operation Horev, a new offensive plan designed to drive the Egyptian army out of the remaining areas of Mandatory Palestine south-west of Beersheba, along the western edge of the Negev.
1950: Ralph J. Bunche was presented the Nobel Peace Prize. Bunche was the first black American to receive the award. He was honored for bringing an end to the war between the Israelis and the Arabs that began in 1948 when the Arabs began their unsuccessful attempt to drive the Jews into the sea.
1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that at the end of the 30-day mourning period for the first president of the State of Israel, Dr. Chaim Weizmann, his successor, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, took the pledge of office.
1955(25th of Kislev, 5716): Chanukah
1956(6th of Tevet, 5717): David Shimoni, Israeli poet, writer and translator, passed away.
1961: Birthdate of Oded Schramm, who melded ideas from two branches of mathematics into an equation that applies to a multitude of physics problems from the percolation of water through rocks to the tangling of polymers.
1964: In Israel, the government resigned when “Ben-Gurion demanded that members of the Supreme Court Investigate the Lavon Affair.
1966: Israeli Samuel Yosef Agnon and German-Jew Nelly Sachs shared the Nobel Prize for Literature.
1970: A small group of local Jewish activists gathered on the International Union of Electrical Workers plaza which was across the street from the Soviet Embassy. The group was protesting the verdicts of treason and death sentences of 11 Soviet citizens, 9 of them Jewish.
1975: Activist Andrei Sakharov is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, accepted by his Jewish wife, Yelena Bonner.
1978: The New York Times features reviews of children’s books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “My Noah’s Ark” by M.B. Goffstein and “Hanukah Money” by Sholem Aleichem with illustrations by Uri Shulevitz.
1978: Richard Shepard reviews “The Girl From Tel Aviv,” a throwback to “the Yiddish musical theater of bygone years, the type of theater that provided escapism for the Lower East Side, which always enjoyed tsoress on stage and had more than enough of its own waiting at the exit.”
1978: In Oslo, Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat accept 1978 Nobel Peace Prize. The two men earned the prize for breaking the cycle of violence. More to the point, their work has stood the test of time. These two certainly earned their award.
1980: Future Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer began serving as a Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit
1981: Jules Pfeiffer’s "Grownups" premieres in New York NY.
1984: In “Jewish Federation Shifts Policy on Hospital Gifts” published today Ronald Sullivan described changes the organization is making in its distribution of five million dollars to local medical facilities
http://www.nytimes.com/1984/12/10/nyregion/jewish-federation-shifts-policy-on-hospital-gifts.html?pagewanted=print
1986: Michiko Kakutani reviewed “Letters from Westerbrook” the posthumously published diaries of Etty Hillesum that describe life in Holland under the Nazi occupation. Westerbrook, where Miss Hillesum and a large number of Dutch Jews were held, was, in reality a transit camp with the next stop being Auschwitz
1986: Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel accepted the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize.
1987(19th of Kislev, 5748): Yasha Heifetz passed away. Born in 1901 in what is now Lithuania, Heifetz joined a long list of world class Jewish violinist.
http://www.jaschaheifetz.com/about/
1989: The Intifada enters into its third year today.
1989: In “The Arab Uprising After Two Years: Voices From Both Sides” published today, Joel Brinkley examines the impact of the Intifada on average Arabs and Israelis.
1990: In Canada, Herb Gray, a member of the Liberal Party stepped down as the leader of the Opposition
1992: An article published today entitled “Hafetz Hayim Journal; The Rabbis' Almanack of Seventh-Year Farming” reported that “Just as the calendar warned, belt-tightening has begun for the 500 members of this religious kibbutz sprawling across luxuriant fields 20 miles south of Tel Aviv. They are planting less cotton, normally an important cash crop. Instead, they are accumulating surpluses of wheat and corn so that there will be enough feed for the cattle and chickens to last for two years. They are building no new houses, buying no new cars, contemplating no new investments. Their children will have to make do with fewer extras like school trips and music lessons. "The tendency is to lower incomes for everybody," said Moshe Brukental, Hafetz Hayim's general secretary. "We take no risks in the sixth year." With the Jewish New Year in September, Israel entered the pivotal sixth year of a seven-year agricultural cycle that dates from ancient times and that some Israelis consider as valid today as ever. The Old Testament says the land must lie fallow in the seventh year, and a literal reading of that injunction means that this is the last year for normal planting, pruning and harvesting. Strict Constructionists Hafetz Hayim is among a handful of collective farms that take the Word at its word. And so its members have already started adjusting their economic priorities and work habits to be ready for the sabbatical period starting next September, when they will be able to plant nothing. "The land belongs to the Almighty and not to you," Mr. Brukental said. "It's good to be reminded of that -- that there's someone higher than you." No doubt, other Israeli farmers say. But they have economic imperatives to consider as well. Leaving farms untended for a year could be ruinous, they say. So in a few months nearly all Israeli farmers, observant or not, are expected to follow past practice and turn control of their lands over to the Chief Rabbinate for symbolic sale to a non-Jew. Rabbis have interpreted the biblical requirement as applying only to land in Israel that is held by Jews. The technical and temporary sale of farms to a non-Jew, sanctioned by the rabbinical authorities here for decades, amounts to a theological loophole that permits Jewish farmers to continue working the land as usual, even during the sabbatical. It means that for a full year, there is a single person -- usually an Arab -- who holds technical title to virtually the entire country's farmland. Apparently, few Israelis are nervous about it. "I assure you that it's someone they trust to sell it back again," said Moishe Cohen, a senior official of Ha-Kibbutz Hadati, an association of 17 religious-observant collective farms that accept the symbolic sale as necessary. From the first large wave of Jewish migration to Ottoman-controlled Palestine in the 1880's, the rabbinical authorities have ruled that scrupulously obeying the Torah in this matter would risk leaving farms desolate and turning fragile settlements into wastelands. And, there are the present-day business considerations. "If we were to stop marketing our products to Europe even for one year, we'd be finished," said Yonatan Bassi, the Agriculture Ministry's director general. It is no more possible, he said, to observe the biblical mandate unswervingly than it would be to honor a companion requirement that Jews in the seventh year cancel their debts to one another. To date, there has been no detectable rush by Israeli banks to forgive outstanding loans. But there are no rabbinical escape clauses for Hafetz Hayim, whose members argue that Zionist principles, in addition to religious beliefs, rule out even a symbolic sale of Israeli soil. That is not to say they leave themselves entirely in God's hands. Mr. Brukental says he is well aware that Leviticus 25:21 promises that "I will command my blessing upon you in the sixth year, and it shall bring forth fruit for three years." But he adds with a smile, "I can't tell you that it's exactly been like that." In the last "sixth year," the kibbutz farmers tried planting a two-year cotton seed that was supposed to flower on its own during the seventh year, to be harvested once the sabbatical ended. Instead, a harsh winter wiped out the plants. Promoting New Enterprises This time, they are not only cutting back the cotton crop but also diversifying their sources of income, with a marine park for tourists and a factory that produces paper products. Farmers are not the only ones caught in the seven-year hitch. Symbolic sales or no, about 10 percent of Israeli consumers will refuse out of religious conviction to eat any fruit, vegetables or grain produced next year by Jews in this country. So the Government must decide before long what to do, for example, about the 200,000 tons of domestically grown wheat that goes each year for bread -- a bigger problem now because bakeries are under tighter religious supervision. One possibility, albeit a costly one, says Mr. Bassi of the Agriculture Ministry, is to export the entire crop and import a comparable amount of foreign-grown wheat. As for fruit and vegetables, religious Jews used to buy them from Arabs during sabbatical years, usually in the occupied territories, but only after rabbinical inspectors personally went there early in the morning to affirm that the harvesting was indeed being done by non-Jews. Now, the Palestinian uprising may take its toll, cautions Rabbi Yosef Efrati, a leading expert on sabbatical-year law. "It's dangerous," he said. "I'm not sure you can get someone to go out there alone at 4 A.M." (As reported by Clyde Haberman)
1994: The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres and Yasser Arafat. Arafat betrayed Rabin, Peres and all who supported the peace process as can be seen by his continuing support of violence in the Middle East up until the day of his death.
1995: Vice President Al Gore, Prime Minister Shimon Peres and Leah Rabin, addressed a crowd of nearly 15,000 people crowded into Madison Square Garden today to honor the memory of Yitzhak Rabin.
1996: Three hundred Palestinian students “suddenly barged onto the walled campus of Hebron University, closed by the Israelis since last March, and declared that they would stay until it was reopened.”
2000: Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak submitted his resignation.
2000: The New York Times book section includes a review of Open Closed Open by Yehuda Amichai whose “poems capture the joy of ordinary experience.”
2001(25th of Kislev, 5762): Chanukah is celebrated for the first time in post 9/11 world.
2005: The first Asiatic elephant to be conceived in Israel through artificial insemination was born at the Tisch Family Zoological Gardens in Jerusalem. The Biblical Zoo joined the project to preserve the Asiatic elephant, which faces extinction, several years ago. The zoo's next goal is to mate the still-adolescent elephant bull Teddy -named after Jerusalem's former mayor, Teddy Kollek -with elephant cows around the world, again through artificial insemination.
2006: Celebration of Yud-Tes Kislev, the 19th of Kislev. “The 19th day of the Hebrew month of Kislev is celebrated as the Rosh Hashanah of Chassidism. It was on this date, in the year 1798, that the founder of Chabad Chassidism, Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi was freed from his imprisonment in Czarist Russia. For Chassidim this event is more than a personal liberation. They see this as a watershed event heralding a new era in the revelation of the ‘inner soul’ of Torah. This is also the celebration of the birthday of Avraham Elimelech ben Yosef Dov, the Coca Chef.
2006: Under the title of “The Schindlers of the Middle East” The Washington Post book section features a review of Among the Righteous: Lost Stories from the Holocaust's Long Reach into Arab Lands by Robert Satloff.
2007: The New Republic features a review of The Book of Psalms: A Translation With Commentary translated by Robert Alter. Over the centuries, The Book of Psalms has gained popularity with a wide variety of religious groups and leaders. However, this has led to translations and interpretations that fit their different agendas and often has meant drifting far from the original meaning of the words. Alter attempts to release this trend. “He has deliberately set out to evacuate these covert (and usually Christological) assumptions” that distort or completely alter what the Psalmists actually created.
2007(1st of Tevet, 5768): Rosh Chodesh Tevet
2008: Peter Yarrow, the Peter in “Peter, Paul and Mary” appears at the Barnes & Noble in Cedar Rapids, Iowa as he promotes “The Peter Yarrow Songbook Series.”
2008: Baal teshuvah Andy Statman who is at home with Klezmer and Country music joined Bela Fleck and the Fleckstone in a concert at the University of Buffalo.
2008: The month-long exhibition “The Nature of Dreams: Israeli photographs, selection from the collection of Yosefa Drescher Fine Art” has its final showing at Trinity College in Hartford. Artists featured during the exhibition included Noa Ben Shalom, David Harris, Menahem Kahana, Joel Kantor, Alex Levac, Shimon Lev, Tamir Sher, Ilan Spira, and David Rubinger. According to Yosefa Drescher, a well-known Israeli documentary photographer “The land in which [Israeli photographers] live and work is replete with gripping visual scenes, and striking images both human and landscape. The challenge is at once to do justice to the external reality and not attempt to usurp the power of the place and moment, while giving reign to deeply personal comment and reaction to the subject.”
2008 (13 Kislev): On the Hebrew calendar, Yahrzeit of Ravina II who passed away in 475 CE the same year in which he finished editing the Gemara portion of the Talmud Bavli ("Babylonian Talmud"), completing the work of his teacher Rav Ashi.
2008: At Princeton University, Dennis Ross former special Middle East Coordinator under the Clinton administration and consultant for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy delivers a speech entitled "Whither the Middle East?"
2009: The third annual Kisufim Conference which aims to "encourages encounters between Israeli creativity - in Hebrew and other languages - and world Jewish creativity that is both multilingual and multicultural," comes to an end.
2009: Screenwriter Steven Karras discusses and signs his first book, The Enemy I Knew: German Jews in the Allied Military in World War II, at the Sixth & I Historic Synagogue, in Washington, D.C.
2009: The 20th Washington Jewish Film Festival includes a screening of “Brothers,” a film that depicts the struggle of 2 brothers who struggle to come to terms with their political and religious beliefs when they reunite in Israel after years of silence.
2009: The 24th Annual New York Israeli Film Festival includes a screening of “Achziv,” a film that documents the unique story of Eli Avivi, President of "Achziv Land," from the time of the War of Independence when Eli appropriated a deserted Arab village called A'Ziv.
2009: The Israel Aerospace Industries made the first delivery of the Heron UAV to the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) today. The ten unmanned aerial vehicles will be used in Afghanistan in the coming weeks.
2009: The third annual Kisufim Conference, a series of special workshops and meetings in Russian, English, French, Hungarian, Serbian and Spanish which aims to "encourages encounters between Israeli creativity - in Hebrew and other languages - and world Jewish creativity that is both multilingual and multicultural," comes to an end in Jerusalem.