December 5 In History
63 BCE: Cicero read the last of his Catiline Orations which exposed Cataline’s conspiracy to overthrow the government of Rome. There is no record of how Cataline felt about Jews, but Cicero said that Judaism was a barbarous superstition whose adherents were born to be slaves.
220 (22nd of Kislev, 3981): On the secular calendar Rabbi Judah Hanasior Judah the Patriarch passed away. Born in Eretz Israel in 138 (three years after the last rebellion against Rome) Judah, as the Nasi and head of the Sanhedrin, was both the religious and political leader of the Jewish community. His greatest claim to fame was his role as the compiler of the Mishna. The Mishna is a compilation of Oral Law which would serve as the basis for both the Babylonian Talmud and Jerusalem Talmud. The Mishnah is divided into six "orders": Zeraim - Seeds, Mo'ed - Festivals, Nashim - Women, Nezikim - Damages, Kedushim - Holy Matters, Taharot - Purity. There are a total of 63 "tractates." It was compiled in Hebrew and intended to be memorized. It served and still serves as a code for regulation of all Jewish life. Some of his more famous sayings include: “Be as punctilious in observing a light as a weighty commandment, for your do not know their relative reward.” “Contemplate three things and you will avoid transgressions: above you (in Heaven) is an eye that sees, an ear that hears and all your deeds are faithfully recorded.” And the favorite of all those who teach, “I have learned much from teachers, more from my colleagues, but most from pupils.”
663: Fourth Council of Toledo takes place. Among the other things the council adopted stringent measures that should be used against baptized Jews who had relapsed into their former faith.
1349: During the Black Death Riots 500 Jews were massacred at Nuremberg.
1443: Birthdate of Pope Julius II, the prelate who commissioned Michelangelo to paint the Sistine Chapel. Julius entrusted his health to a Jewish physician named Samuel Sarfatti. “More importantly for Jews at large, the pope’s mind-set…did not include attacking Jews. Benevolent neglect was indeed welcome.”
1484: Pope Innocent VIII issued the Summis desiderantes, a papal bull that deputizes Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger as inquisitors to root out alleged witchcraft in Germany and leads to one of the most oppressive witch hunts in European history. Innocent VIII seemed to have a penchant for Inquisitions since he was successfully in getting the King of Portugal to establish one aimed at the Jews and Marranos who had fled Spain. Those caught suffered long imprisonment or death by fire.
1496: King Manuel expelled the Jews from Portugal Manuel of Portugal befriended the Jews during his first year of reign, but his desire to unite the Iberian Peninsula through marriage to the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella changed all that. Four years after the expulsion of Jews from Spain, he ordered them expelled from Portugal within 11 months.
1497: King Manuel I proclaimed an Edict which demanded the Jews convert to Catholicism or leave the country. However, fearing most Jews would leave rather then convert, the Crown closed the ports, thus halting any potential Jewish sea escape.
1776: Phi Beta Kappa, the first and most prestigious American scholastic fraternity was founded at William & Mary College. Some of the Jewish members of the honor society include Bernard Baruch, Felix Frankfurter, Walter Lippmann, Jonas Salk, Daniel Boorstin, Betty Friedan, Henry Kissinger, Arlen Specter, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Gloria Steinman, Robert Rubin, Nadine Strossen, Joseph Lieberman, Ben Bernanke, Eliot Spitzer and Daniel Pearl.
1782: Birthdate of Martin Van Buren, eighth President of the United States. Van Buren intervened in the so-called Damascus Affair, seeking to use the good office of the Presidency to protect the lives and well-being of a group of Syrian Jews who had been falsely accused in another round of the “blood libel.”
1792: William Moultrie began his second term as Governor of South Carolina. Moultrie may have been the first Governor to attend the consecration of a synagogue. In 1794, he was present for the consecration of the new synagogue housing Beth Elohim in Charleston, SC.
1861: The Grand Jury of Monmouth County returned a bill of indictment charging a man named Radski with the murder of a German Jew named Sigismund Fellner.
1861: A detachment of Union troops reportedly under the command Gabriel Netter, a French born Jew who had settled in Kentucky, seized a railroad bridge at Whippoorwill, KY that was held by Confederate forces and burned it.
1868: Birthdate of Naphtali Taylor Phillips son of Isaac Phillips by his second wife. Trained as a lawyer he held various political offices, e.g.: he was member of the New York state legislature, served on the judiciary and other committees and as a member of the Joint Statutory Revision Commission of that body (1900); and deputy comptroller of the city of New York (from 1902). He also was a trustee of the American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society, and a member of the Sons of the American Revolution and of the New York Historical Society. He served as treasurer of the Jewish Historical Society and has contributed several papers to its publications. For fifteen years he was clerk of Congregation Shearith Israel. In 1892 Phillips married Rosalie Solomons, daughter of Adolphus S. Solomons. Mrs. Phillips was an active member of the Daughters of the American Revolution.
1875: An interview of the three men waiting to be hung for the murder of Abraham Weissburg, a Jewish peddler, was published today.
1875: It was reported today that an English missionary named Dr. Stern appeared before the Jews of Yemen claiming “that he was the bearer of happy tidings.” The Yemini Jews accepted him as a co-religionist until he attempted to convince them that Messiah was the founder of the Christianity at which point they told him to leave their community. The missionary complained to the Sultan who told the Jews “Listen ye Jehuds, you are a miserable people. You pray in your synagogues that Allah may send you the Messiah and now when the good tiding is brought to you that he has come long ago, you ridicule the report as you have ridiculed and slandered our nebbi (prophet). In punishment for your conduct you shall pay double the head tax this year.” [The nebbi refers to Mohammed] This episode an unnamed Jewish teach to proclaim that God had ordered him to gather all the Jews and lead them Jerusalem. Large numbers of Jews across Arabia flocked to his leadership and viewed him as the Messiah promised in the TaNaCh. At the same, Yemen was conquered by Turkey and this unnamed Messiah gave up his leadership role rather than face the Ottomans.
1875: Abram Kurtz, William Lasser, William Meyers, Abram Dietz and Aaron Dietz were among the 278 people who perished in the Brooklyn Theatre Fire.
1880: It was reported today that the library of the late Baron James De Rothschild of Paris will soon be sold at auction.
1880: It was reported today that Trubner & Co has just published Early Hebrew Life: A Study in Sociology by John Fenton
1881:It is reported today that Russian Jews are excited by the prospect of Count Schovaloff replace General Ignatieff as Minister of the Interior given the former’s enlightened attitude towards deal with the Jewish population.
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9402E4D91730E433A25756C0A9649D94609FD7CF
1882: It was reported today that “five soldiers of a regiment of dragoons…have been condemned to 15 years at hard labor in the mines…for taking part in riots against the Jews.”
1882: A warrant procured by Bernard Jaworower of the Hebrew Emigrant Aid Society for the arrest of Hahal and Abraham Bronstein, two Jewish immigrants from Russia living at Ward’s Island was given to the Harlem Police so they could take them into custody.
1890: Birthdate of painter, David Bomberg. Bomberg was born in England, the son of Polish-Jewish immigrants. The Jewish Educational Aid Society enabled him to go to the Slade 1911-13, winning the Tonks Prize for a drawing of fellow student Isaac Rosenberg. During the 1920’s he lived in Palestine where he worked for the Zionists and furthered his painting career. He founded the London Group and at one point in his career was a cubist. He passed away in 1957
1890: Birthdate of movie director Fritz Lang.
1887: Reverend E. D. Simons of New Bloomfield, NJ, is scheduled to read a paper today entitled “Why the Jews Crucified Christ”
1889: The Hebrew Free School Association held its annual meeting today at the house of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association
1889: It was reported today that Mayor Hugh Grant will preside at the official opening of the upcoming Hebrew Educational Fair in New York City.
1892: Hermann Ahlwardt, an avowed anti-Semite, was elected to Germany's Reichstag.
1894: The Young Ladies’ and Gentlemen’s League of the Montefiore Home held its first annual reception in the recital chamber of the Music Hall. The League’s purpose is to aid in raising funds for the Montefiore Home.
1897: Birthdate of Gerhard Scholem, the German born Israeli-Jewish philosopher and author who gained fame as Gershom Scholem who served as the firs t Professor Of Jewish Mysticism at Hebrew University where he pursued his ground-breaking academic study of the Kabbalah.
1896: Birthdate ofDr. Gerty Theresa Radnitz Cori who was the first American woman to receive the Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology, in 1947, which was shared with her husband, Dr. Carl F. Cori, and Dr. B.A. Houssay of Argentina. Austrian born biochemist
1902: Birthdate of Emeric Pressburger. Born Imre Józef Pressburger, in Hungry, Pressburger immigrated to Great Britain where pursued a successful career as a movie director. However, he won his only Oscar as a writer. In 1942, he won the Academy Award for Best Writing for the original story of The Forty-Ninth Parallel.
1903: Leopold Greenberg and Herzl hold consultations about the line of activity to be pursued in England. Herzl has the impression that the British government is withdrawing the East African offer. Greenberg is to press once more for Sinai and El-Arish.
1905: Birthdate of producer/director Otto Preminger. Born in Austria, Preminger’s film credits include “Luara” and the film adaptation of Leon Uris’ best-selling novel, Exodus.
1909: Many of New York City’s most prominent Jewish leaders took part in a memorial meeting this afternoon in honor of the Rabbi Joseph Mayer Asher, Professor in the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and rabbi of the Orach Chaim Synagogue, who passed away unexpectedly at the age of 37 on November 9. It was held under the auspices of the Jewish Community of New York City in the auditorium of the Hebrew Charities Building, at Second Avenue and Twenty-First Street.
1910: Birthdate of Abraham L Polonsky. An American born writer and director, Plolonsky’s political views led to him being blacklisted following World War II. After being “rehabilitated” he made one of his most famous works, “Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here.”
1911: Birthdate of Polish pianist Władysław Szpilman. He worked as pianist for Polish radio in Warsaw until 1939. He was sent to the Warsaw Ghetto where continued playing while helping to smuggle weapons into the ghetto. When the rest of his family was sent to Treblinka, Szpilman escaped. Eventually he was captured by the Germans. However, thanks to Wilm Hoseneld, a Wermacht Captain who had become disillusioned with the Nazis, Szpilman survived the war. His autobiography became the source for the script of the 2002 film entitled “The Pianist.”
1911: Russian born painter and portrait artist Valentin Alexandrovich Serov passed away. For a display of his work including his self-portrait see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentin_Serov
1912(25thof Kislev, 5673): Chanukah
1912: Birthdate of travel editor Kate Simon.
1916: Birthdate of Hilary Koprowski the Polish-born Jewish virologist and immunologist, and inventor of the world's first effective live polio vaccine.
1919: Mortimer L. Schiff, Chairman of the Finance Committee of the Jewish Welfare Board was among the passengers on board the SS Mauretania that set sail for Great Britain today. Schiff was accompanied by George W. Perkins, Chairman of the Finance Committee of the War Work Council of the YMCA. The trip which representative of kind of inter-religious harmony unique to the United States, was the first step in assessing how the funds collected by these two organizations could best be used to alleviate the suffering in post-war Europe.
1919: A delegation of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) including Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, Mrs. Joseph Fels, Louis Robinson and Bernard Flexner set sail from New York for London where they will meeting with leaders of other Zionist organizations, including the Zionist Political Committee.
1919: The Turkish Minister of War issues a decree releasing all Jews (as well as Greeks and Armenians) from obligation in the military.
1922: Birthdate of Lois Ruth Mell, who would become known as Casey Ribicoff, the wife Abraham Ribiccoff a great liberal Democrat and decent man who served as U.S. Senator from Connecticut and Secretary of HEW.
1922(15th of Kislev, 5683): Benjamin Levinsky was shot and killed this morning “by William Lipshitz while entering a Broadway loft building where he was employed as a cutter for the Levinson Brothers. He had driven to work in a taxi with Benjamin Massauer, an ex-convict who had spent the night at his home, and who had told the driver to stop the cab when two shots were heard shortly after Levinsky entered the building. As a crowd gathered in front of the building, Lipshitz ran out from the doorway and into a patrolman who had arrived at the scene. When questioned, he denied any knowledge of the shooting and claimed to have been buying a suit when the murder took place. Both Lipshitz and Massauer were taken to the Mercer Street police station where they were further questioned by police. Lipshitz maintained he had no involvement in Levinsky's murder but was caught lying when he claimed to have no criminal record. He had been using the alias William Levine but admitted to being William Lipshitz when confronted with his photo in the precinct's Rogue's Gallery. A witness also claimed to have seen he and Levinsky fighting in the doorway when the shooting occurred. Lipshitz was eventually charged with Levinsky's death while Massauer was held as a material witness until paroled in the custody of lawyer Hyman Bushel who had been hired by Levinsky's family. Although police suspected his murder had been committed by a personal enemy, Bushel later issued a statement from the family claiming that Levinsky had been murdered as the result of a murder contract by businessmen. Benjamin Levinsky, who was born in 1893, was an American gang leader, labor racketeer and organized crime figure. Spending almost twenty years in and out of reformatories and prisons, Levinsky had a lengthy criminal record prior to the start of Prohibition. He was first arrested in 1902 for incorrigibility and sent to a reformatory asylum. He was caught pickpocketing five years later and was imprisoned on a variety of charges over the next decade including petty theft, grand larceny, felonious assault and vagrancy. He become involved in labor racketeering in Manhattan's Lower East Side and, prior to the third "Labor Slugger War", Levinsky reportedly became "a thorn in the side of clothing contractors". Due to his unionizing activities, he apparently became the target of assassination by certain business interests. Other sources claim he headed a gang of gunmen and thieves which began muscling in on the territory of other "labor sluggers” particularly that of newsboy and labor racketeer William Lipshitz.”
1925(18th of Kislev, 5686): Yehuda Leib Levin, oldest of the Hebrew poets in Russsia, known for more than half a century under his pen name ‘Jahalel,’” passed away today in Kiev. Born in Minsk in 1844, Levin studied Talmud, worked as a teacher before serving as a treasurer for local flour and sugar mills. The first collection of his poetry was published in 1871 under the title Sifte Raananim.” In 1877, “Kishron Massech” his poem “devoted to a description of the social conditions of Russian Jews” was published. In a case of Jew meets Jew, Levin translated Disraeli’s Tancred into Hebrew.
1926: Sergei Eisenstein's "Battleship Potemkin," debuted. Eisenstein was a famed Russian director whose father was a Jewish architect. As a “child of the Russian Revolution,” Eisenstein did not profess a belief in any religion.
1932: Birthdate of Farhat Ezekiel Nadira, a member of a prominent Baghdadi Jewish family who gained fame as Nadria, a leading Indian movie actress.
1932: “German” physicist Albert Einstein was granted a visa. Einstein was the kind of German who had to use his visa to flee to the United States where he could continue his work and, more importantly, continue to stay alive. To history he may have been a “German” but to the Germans he was one more candidate for the Final Solution. As those who studied Jewish History on Monday nights at Temple Judah in Cedar Rapids learned, “who writes history often determines what the history is.”
1932: Birthdate of Sheldon Glashow. Glashow developed the Electroweak Theory and won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1979.
1933: Edith Frank-Holländer and her daughter Margot join their father Otto in Amsterdam. Her sister Anne will leave Germany and join them in February of 1943
1935: Birthdate of author Calvin Trillin. Trillin is known as journalist, humorist novelist and creator of comic verse. He is best known for his writing about cooking and food. A few of his famous one-liners include: “Following the Jewish tradition, a dispenser of schmaltz (liquid chicken fat) is kept on the table to give the vampires heartburn if they get through the garlic defense.” “The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years she served the family nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found.”
1937: The Palestine Post reported that Sir Alfred MacMichael, governor of Tanganyika since 1934, had been appointed to replace Sir Arthur Wauchope as the High Commissioner and Commander-in-Chief of Palestine and the High Commissioner for Transjordan.
1937: The Palestine Post reported that in Jerusalem Abraham Perlman, 20, was shot dead and two young girls were wounded when they strolled together towards the King David Hotel.
1937: An article published today entitled "A Trio by the Thames" described the opening of a four week season of the Habima Players in London. By November 19, at the end of the first of the four weeks, the Palestinian troupe had displayed "the Habima Method" in a faultless performance of the Dybbuk.
1938: As the Arab uprising intensified, Abd el Bader Abu Saleh, an Arab leader was shot dead by Arab terrorists. Snipers attacked Jewish settlements as well as military and police installations in Gaza. Damage done to the railroad running between Lydda and Tel Aviv was repaired within hours after having been discovered.
1938: The following article entitled “Germany: Ad Nauseam” published today proves the world was not ignorant of the fate of German Jewry.
How 62 prosperous German Jews were forced to run a bloody gantlet at Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp was reported last week in the Liberal News Chronicle of London. Two long ranks of Adolf Hitler's personal Schutzstaffel formed the gantlet, down which the 62 Jews were forced to run. "As they approached between the ranks, a hail of blows fell on them," said the News Chronicle. "As they fell, the Jews were beaten further. The orgy lasted half an hour. . . . Twelve of the 62 were dead, with skulls smashed. All the others were unconscious, some with eyes out and faces flattened in. ... Police, unable to bear the cries, turned their backs." This nauseating atrocity, whether or not the honest News Chronicle was correctly informed as to exactly what happened, is undoubtedly the truth in the sense that such atrocities do occur today in many parts of Germany, especially the countryside. The case for antiSemitism, as it appears to strong-stomached Nazis, was taken last week before the bar of German public opinion. It is to be kept there for many weeks, with more than 1,500 major anti-Semitic mass meetings, scheduled throughout Germany, plus countless anti-Semitic lectures—all under the showmanship of Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels. Dr. Goebbels is sometimes described in print as a barking, brawling, screaming propaganda maniac. Actually the Minister for Propaganda & Public Enlightenment is one of the great political orators of this century. He opens suavely, is restrained most of the time, mellifluent, knows how to whip a point over with the sting of humor, a trifle crude at times—or very crude if Dr. Goebbels is radiorating to the masses. The importance in Dr. Goebbels' mind of the "educative campaign" he was starting last week caused him to summon 2,000 of his picked Nazi stooge-orators to meet him in the Kroll Opera House. "I have never made anti-Semitic propaganda in the outside world," said Orator Goebbels softly. "The dear Jews have done that for themselves. . . . Anti-Semitism is latent among all peoples. The Jews awaken it. ... All we have done is to eliminate Jews from public life in Germany. Let the English say what they will, what we do is our business! . . . After five-and-one-half years of National Socialism, the Jews still have in Germany proportionately four-and-one-half times as much wealth as the Aryans!" From this Dr. Goebbels proceeded to an economic attack on the Jewish Question. According to him, if the average German owned as much as the average German Jew still owns today, the national wealth of the Reich would be not as at present some 200 billion marks but over 900 billion marks. As though for a Liberty Loan Drive, the Ministry for Propaganda and Public Enlightenment rushed to German "educative meetings" Dr. Goebbels' brand new "educational film" prepared weeks ago—Jewry Without The Mask. This was not all, by any means. With typical German thoroughness, Dr. Goebbels forced the Jewish Theatre of Berlin, which wished to remain closed, to re-open last week and ordered a Jewish director Fritz Wisten brought directly from a concentration camp to put on a comedy, The Wind And The Rain—or else. A policeman then noted in his little book and reported back to his Nazi superiors what was also noted by the Associated Press correspondent: The bedraggled Jewish audience "occasionally applauded" this comedy which they were obliged to sit through by Dr. Goebbels so that his 2,000 orators can "truthfully" tell the German people such things as this: "There is right now a Jewish theatre going full blast in Berlin and playing comedies at which the rich Jews laugh and applaud while poor Jews are starving!" Such despotic acts of State are the most effective form of 1938 streamlined propaganda, but Orator Goebbels of course uses many first-rate German orators—as well as his 2,000 regimented speakers. First-rate Orator Dr. Robert Ley, führer of the Labor front of 20 million German workers (who have to take him as their trade union boss whether they like him or not), declared last week: "The resurgence of the German people had three stages: first, unification under a Führer; second, the bursting of the Versailles bonds; third, exposure of the Jewish enemy and the battle with him."* Dr. Ley did not forget that he was addressing, among other German workers, many more or less devout Catholics, all of whom know that Pope Pius XI has taken the strongest stand against anti-Semitism and inferentially against Naziism (TIME, Aug. 14). Attacking His Holiness directly, Labor Front Ley blasphemed: "The Pope is wrong because he recognizes only one Catholic race. But Almighty God was not so papal as the Pope. He made differences among races! There are positive and negative elements in the human race and the negative can exist only as parasites—as witness the Jews!" Herren Hitler, Goebbels, Ley et al. are the remorseless leaders and directors of the Nazi program to liquidate the Jews. But the merciless hand of 185,000 who eagerly carry out their orders to the hilt and then some are the 185,000 bullyboys of the Reich—the Schutzstaffel, the vicious elite of the Nazi storm troops. Their organ, and that of the Gestapo (secret police) is Das Schwarze Korps. This Party paper recently stated it as a fact that international Jewry had declared war on Germany. Last week Das Schwarze Korps, descended from appalling generalities to particulars. It proposed this program to destroy Germany's Jews as follows: first impoverish them; this will end in the Jews' having no other means of livelihood than to descend to criminality; "at this stage of development we should therefore face the hard necessity of exterminating the Jewish underworld in the same fashion in which ... we exterminate criminals generally—by fire and sword. "Because it is necessary, because we no longer hear the world's screeching and because, after all, no power on earth can hinder us, we will now bring the Jewish question to its totalitarian solution," declared Das Schwarze Korps. "The program is clear. "The Jews must be quartered in streets and housing blocks where they will be among themselves and come into touch with Germans as little as possible." No one of the ghettos which would be Stage 1 of the Schtitzstaffel's plan had yet been set up in Germany last week. But the laws to put Jews outside Germany's social and economic life were being promulgated daily. No German Jew may enter any non-Jewish place of entertainment or education. No Jew may conduct any commercial business or service. The professions had not been entirely closed to them. That would come later. Meantime, blustering Reich Master of the Hunt Hermann Göring withdrew all Jewish hunting licenses. *Newshawks who few weeks ago reported that Germany's famed folk song, Heinrich Heine's Lorelei, had been banned because its author was a Jew, discovered that Dr. Ley had nonetheless named his newborn daughter Lore Ley.
1939: German authorities seize Jewish property in Poland. Items that are appropriated include businesses, homes, furniture and other household goods, currency and bank accounts, art, jewelry, and other valuables. Now economically helpless, the Jews have virtually nothing with which to sustain themselves.
1940: British government official Sir John Schuckburgh wrote that "the Jews have no sense of humor and no sense of proportion."
1941: The Nazis collected 7,000 Jews in the town courtyard at Nowogrodek, Poland. After a night in the court yard, the Jews were selected to the left for work, or to the right for death. Five thousand of the Jews went to the right.
1943: The New York Times reported today that 34 of the Jews arrested by the British during their search for arms at Ramat HaKovesh were released during the last weekend in November, 1943.
1945: Birthdate of Moshe Katsav, future President of Israel.
1947: The U.S. State Department announced that no arms will be sent to the Middle East. [This American arms embargo worked to the advantage of the Arabs who had standing, well armed militaries the best of which was the Arab Legion, the Jordanian Army supplied by the British with equipment and officers.]
1947: “The Jewish Agency announced the call-up of all men and women between the ages of seventeen and twenty-five for national service.” This was part of the Yishuv’s response to the immediate increase in Arab violence following the vote to adopt the UN back partition plan.
1948: At its meeting in Tel Aviv, the Knesset publicly declared the Jerusalem was the capital of the new Jewish state.
1948: First day of Operation Assaf, a campaign by the IDF to secure the western Negev by dislodging the Egyptians who had invaded the area out the outbreak of the war. The first day was a success for the IDF which captured several Egyptian positions without sustaining serious casualties.
1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that it was decided to proceed with the release of accounts held by Arab refugees in banks in Israel. Arab states made no such offer of releasing funds of Jewish refugees held in Arab banks in such places as Morocco or Yemen. At the UN Britain joined Canada in urging the Arab states to enter into direct peace negotiations, without any preconditions, with Israel.
1956: During the Suez Crisis, Golda Meir addressed the General Assembly. In part of her speech Mrs. Meir compared Israeli treatment of Jews who had been forced to flee from Arab countries with the pitiful conditions under which Arab nations forced the refugees in Gaza to live. “While Israel ‘fed those babies and cured their diseases, the fedayeen were sent in to throw bombs at children in synagogues and grenades in baby homes.’”
1957: New York City passed the Fair Housing Practices Law making it the first city to legislate against racial or religious discrimination in the housing market. A decade after the Holocaust, it was still legal to keep a people from buying a house because they were Jewish.
1965(11th of Kislev, 5726): Joseph Erlanger passed away. Born in 1874, Erlangerborn was an American physiologist who discovered that fibers within the same nerve cord possess different functions. In 1910 he accepted the chair of physiology at Washington University in St. Louis, which he held until his retirement in 1946. While his department became one of the major research centers in physiology in America, Erlanger continued his work on cardiovascular physiology. During WW I, he carried out research on the problem of shock. In 1921 he shifted his interests to neurophysiology, and began joint work, with colleague Herbert Gasser, on the amplification and recording of nerve action potentials with the cathode ray oscilloscope, for which they were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1944.
1967: Poet Allen Ginsberg was arrested protesting Vietnam War
1969:Princess Andrew of Greece and Denmark, the mother of the Duke of Edinburgh and the mother-in-law of Queen Elizabeth II passed away. During World War II, “After the fall of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini in September 1943, the German Army occupied Athens, where a minority of Greek Jews had sought refuge. The majority (about 60,000 out of a total population of 75,000) were deported to Nazi concentration camps, where all but 2,000 died. During this period, Princess Andrew hid Jewish widow Rachel Cohen and two of her five children, who sought to evade the Gestapo and deportation to the death camps.[40] Rachel's husband, Haimaki Cohen, had aided King George I of Greece in 1913. In return, King George had offered him any service that he could perform, should Cohen ever need it. Cohen's son remembered this during the Nazi threat, and appealed to Princess Andrew, who with Princess Nicholas was one of only two remaining members of the royal family left in Greece. She honoured the promise and saved the Cohen family.”
1977: The Jerusalem Post reported Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's warning that if Israel wanted the previous month's mutual non-aggression pledge to stand, it had better bring a softened negotiating position to the planned Arab-Israeli talks in Cairo.
1977: In response to the Declaration of Tripoli Egypt breaks diplomatic relations with Syria, Libya, Algeria, Iraq and South Yemen. The Declaration of Tripoli was part of an Arab attack on Sadat for his visit to Israel and his willingess to recognize the Jewish state.
1979(15th of Kislev, 5740): Sonia Delaunay, one of the foremost painters of her day and one of the last survivors of the Parisian art world before 1914 died today in Paris at the age of 94. (As reported by John Russell)
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=F00617F6385A12728DDDAF0894DA415B898BF1D3
1882: Rabbi Louis Stein officiated at the marriage of Debra Michele Freedman and Andrew William Sideman at the Westbury Hotel.
1982(19th of Kislev, 5743): English critic, novelist, and journalist Carly Brahms passed away.
1982: Schindler’s List by Thomas Keneally and Years of Upheaval by Henry A. Kissinger are among the twelve books chosen by the New York Times Book Review to the best books published in the country during the preceding year.
1990: Responding to growing fear over a rash of Palestinian knife attacks on Jews, the police broadened surveillance of Arab workers in Israel today with spot checks, searches and a new network of roadblocks along the West Bank. More than 20 Israelis have been stabbed over the last two months. Five of the victims died of their wounds and seven Arab attackers were killed. Until this fall, anxiety about knife attacks had been limited largely to Jews in the occupied territories and along the boundaries between Arab and Jewish sections of Jerusalem. But recent stabbings have also frightened Israelis in the heart of the country, in Tel Aviv, the Galilee and the southern coast. Requests for gun permits have soared, and thousands of Jews have begun carrying pistols, knives and mace.
1991: "Catskills on Broadway" a comedic celebration of a slice of Jewish culture, opens at Lunt-Fontanne Theatre in New York City for the first of452 performances.
1993(21st of Kislev, 5754): David Mashrati, a reserve soldier, was shot and killed by a terrorist attempting to board a bus on route 641 at the Holon junction. The Islamic Jihad Shekaki group claimed responsibility for the attack.
1993: Shylock: A Legend and Its Legacy by John Gross is among the twelve books chosen by the New York Times Book Review to the best books published in the country during the preceding year.
1994(2nd of Tevet, 5755): Jacob Kaplan, the former Grand Rabbi of France, died in his home in Paris today. He was 99 years old. Rabbi Kaplan was known both for his openness to dialogue with the Christian churches of France and for his staunch support of Zionism. He spoke out during World War II against anti-Jewish measures adopted by the collaborationist Vichy Government. Rabbi Kaplan, who was born in Paris on Nov. 7, 1895, was wounded in action during World War I and received the Croix de Guerre. He completed his rabbinical studies after the war and served as a rabbi in Mulhouse in eastern France from 1922-29 and then in Paris. He became the Grand Rabbi of Paris in 1950, and was elected Grand Rabbi of France in 1955, serving as spiritual leader of France's 700,000 Jews until his retirement in 1981.
1994(2nd of Tevet, 5755): 8th day of Chanukah
1999: The New York Times list of the Best Books of 1999 contains the following works about Jewish related subjects or by Jewish authors including Reading the Holocaust by Inga Clendinnen and An Affair of State: The Investigation, Impeachment, and Trial of President Clinton
by Richard A. Posner.
2003:The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington (JHSGW) joins Adas Israel in honoring the memory of synagogue member Arthur Welsh (z'l), an aviation pioneer who flew for the Wright Brothers. The presentation in the Kogod Chapel will feature a rendition of “the relatively unknown story of Arthur Welsh's role as an aviation pioneer, his relationship with the Wright Brothers, and his life as a member of Washington, DC's Jewish community.” Welsh is buried in the synagogue's Alabama Street cemetery in Southeast Washington. The evening’s presentation will also “include a discussion of Welsh's life as a Jewish Washingtonian as well as the milieu of early aviation. Several never-before- seen photographs and mementoes of Welsh's work from the JHSGW archives, including a small black and white photograph depicting Welsh preparing for a two-hour test of the Wright military planes on June 3, 1912, will be on display.”
Welsh became interested in aeronautics after he observed Orville Wright's flights at Ft. Myer, VA, in 1909. In 1910, Orville and Wilbur Wright accepted him into their first flying class, where he worked closely with them, first as a student and, subsequently, as a pilot and instructor at the Wright Flight School in Dayton, OH. Among the people Welsh trained were Henry H. (Hap) Arnold, who later became a five-star general and U.S. Army Air Chief of Staff during WWII. In 1912, the Wrights sent Welsh to the U.S. Army Signal Corps in College Park, MD, to serve as a civilian test pilot for a new plane for the War Department. On June 11, 1912, Welsh, accompanied by Signal Corps Lt. Leighton W. Hazelhurst, was attempting to complete final military tests of the Wright Model C airplane when the airplane buckled under its 450- pound load. Both men were killed instantly, the first-ever fatalities at College Park. The Washington Times, Jewish Forward, and various aviation publications, including Fly and Aero: America's Aviation Weekly, covered Welsh's death.
2004: The Jerusalem Post reported that the Jews of Oudtshoorn, South Africa, celebrated the 120th anniversary of their town, which was known as the "little Jerusalem of Africa."
2004: The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with commentary by Robert Alter appears on the New York Timeslist of "100 Notable Books" of 2004 and the Washington Post listing of the "best books of 2004." The Cedar Rapids Gazette had previously published a review praising this volume describing at as a great gift for either Christmas or Chanukah. Considering the text itself and the nature of the commentary this is another reminder that despite oft repeated reports of the demise of the Jewish people, Am Yisroail Chai.
2005(4th of Kislev, 5766): Five people were killed and 50 wounded after a suicide attack at a Netanya shopping mall. The five known dead are Eliyah Rozen, 39, of Bat Hefer, Daniel Golani, 45, of Nahariya, Haim Amram, 26, of Netanya, Keinan Tzoami, 20, of Petah Tikva and Alexandra Zarnitzki, 65, of Netanya. Islamic Jihad proudly took credit for the attack on the northern seaside town.
2005: Frits Phillips, the former head of the Dutch electronics giant Philips, who helped save the lives of hundreds of Jewish workers during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands in World War II, passed away at the age of 100. During the war years, when Philips supplied electronics to Germany, he secured positions at his factory in the Vught prison camp for as many Jews as possible, delaying their deportation to the Auschwitz death camp. Frits Philips was imprisoned by the Nazis after a strike during the war. He was awarded the Yad Vashem medal by Israel in 1995 for his efforts to save Jewish workers - almost 380 prisoners survived out of 496 who started work. He said he was no hero and that many others had helped to save lives. According to the staff at Yad Vashem, "Frits Philips, in risking his life to save Jews during the Holocaust, showed extraordinary courage in the face of terrible circumstances."
2005: A London production of “Once in a Lifetime” by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman opened at the Royal National Theatre.
2006: Haaretz reported on the development of new flavors and styles of sufganiyot. The original red jam filling has been replaced by a variety of baked and deep-fried “delicacies including ones filled with Roquefort cheese, chocolate and halva cream. (Can chocolate chip latkes be far behind?)
2006(14th of Kislev, 5767): Chess grandmaster David Bronstein passed away at the age of 82.
2007: The Maymana dance troupe produces “Adraba” for its seventh Chanukah celebration at Heichal Hatarbut in Rishon Letzion.
2007: Eli Nissman and Ashdod’s municipal cultural organization put on the children’s song festival, “Yeled Pele” (Wonder Child) as part of the Chanukah celebrations in Ashdod.
2007: Sixty one years after he was buried at a cemetery in southeast Washington, the exhumed remains of Stephen Theodore Norman, the only grandchild of Theodor Herzl will be buried on Mt. Herzl in Jerusalem, thus finally joining his famous grandfather in his famous resting place.
2007(25th of Kislev, 5768): First Day of Chanukah
2008: At the Ma’ariv service being reciting הכרבל רטםו לט <span style='color: black; font-family: "