January 3 In History
106
BCE
: Birthdate of Marcus Tullius Cicero. Cicero is remembered as Roman statesman and orator. From the Jewish point of view he was just one more anti-Semitic intellectual. “He denounced Judaism as a ‘barbarous superstition.’” He defended a Roman official who had stolen contributions that we supposed to be shipped to the Temple at Jerusalem. He decried the influence of Jews in Rome cautioning one group to speak quietly lest they be overheard by the Jews. Unfortunately, when I had difficulty translating Cicero in high school, my father would not accept my excuse that Cicero was an anti-Semite so how could he expect to do well in Latin class.
1521: Pope Leo X excommunicates Martin Luther in the papal bull Decet Romanum Pontificem. Leo is portrayed as the epitome of Church corruption – the great seller of indulgences. But Leo also provided protection for the Jews living in the Papal States. On one occasion he defied King Louis of France by not burning Jewish texts and he actually encouraged a Christian printer to publish a complete, uncensored copy of the Talmud. Luther is portrayed as the great reformer and father of the Reformation. Jews certainly benefited from the Protestant Reformation since was in the Protestant Netherlands and protestant England that the Jews found refuge and had a chance to grow and develop. However, Luther’s version of the Protestant Reformation included a large dose of anti-Semitism that would help fuel the fires of what became the Holocaust. History is not always black or white, but can be a whole lot of gray.
1598: In a letter from the Sultan to the Ottoman leaders in Jerusalem, he expressed his approval of the fact that the local Muslims locked the doors of the Nachmanides (Ramban) Synagogue, since, "the noisy ceremonies of the Jews in accordance with their false rites hinder our pious devotion and divine worship." Because of this the door was locked and sealed. The Sultan approved of the closing of the building, and he then ordered the synagogue to be annexed to the Muslims.
1676: Frederick William of Brandenburg issued a decree safeguarding the privileges of the Jews of Berlin.
1690(22ndof Tevet, 5450): Famed Lithuanian Rabbi Hillel ben Naphtali Zevi passed away. Born in 1615, he served as a Rabbi in several towns throughout Lithuania. He was an important communal leader since he was a delegate to the Council of Four Lands. He was the author of Bet Hillel which was a major commentary on the code of Jewish law known as the Shulchon Oruch.
1769: Birthdate of Jacob Herzfeld, a native of Dessau, Germany who studied medicine at Liepzig before become an actor and theatrical manager. He passed away in 1826.
1825: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the first engineering college in the U.S. is opened in Troy, New York. Today its 4,000 undergrad student body includes approximately 500 Jewish students.
1853: “The Affairs in Europe” column published today reported that Parisians are amused at the “Protestant rigors in Germany against the Jews” in reaction to “the event of December 2, 1851…” The “event of December 2, 1851” is a reference to the overthrow of the Second French Republic by Louis Napoleon who had himself crowned Emperor on December 2, 1852.
1855(13th of Tevet, 5615): Forty-two year old Henry Edward Goldsmid passed away today in Cairo. Born in London in 1812, he spent most of his career serving in India in various positions with the East India Company.
1858: Judah Touro’s fourth Yahrzeit was observed this afternoon at the Green Street Synagogue in NYC.
1858: As she grew weaker, Rachel Felix completed a final letter to her father around 11 in the morning. At 8 o'clock a dozen Jews arrived from Nice to be with Rachel Felix in her last hours. Sometime after 10 pm, two women and one man approached Rachel's bed and and began chanting prayers for the dying Jewess.
1858 (17th of Tevet, 5618): Elisabeth Rachel Felix, known simply as “Rachel,” the French actress and singer passed away at the age of 36. “Élisabeth Rachel Félix was the second of the six children of Alsatian Jewish peddlers, Jacob (Jacques) and Esther Hayyah (Thérèse) Félix, and a French citizen under the Civic Emancipation, Rachel always remained profoundly in phase with the Jews’ entry into and participation in modernity. Although singular, her career was characteristic of the collective experience of the second generation of Jews born after the Emancipation and who participated fully in French social, economic, political and cultural life. Furthermore, for many French people, Rachel personified the great allegorical figures of Tragedy, History and the Republic. Her example illustrates the extent to which an often passionate but at any rate profound and intimate adhesion to French culture was an essential component in the construction of emancipated French Judaism. In Rachel we find all the cultural and political paradoxes and contradictions of her time. She was a symbol of legitimist and republican virtue in equal measure. Her performance as La Marseillaise had the public in raptures in 1848. But if she exercised such fascination it was also because she personified the social ascension of the lower classes, and was proud of it. Never hiding her humble origins and always asserting the importance of her family ties, she worked furiously at educating and cultivating herself and modeling her image. But despite her aspiration to affluence and respectability, she could never avoid details of her private life fuelling the whiff of scandal that clung to her name. Although never developing a critical awareness of the condition of women in the society of her time, she was loath to espouse the model of the bourgeois, cultivated woman defined by the notables of her time – married, a mother, either discreet or ceasing to appear on stage – and constantly asserted her desire to remain independent in order to devote herself fully to her art. The Rachel phenomenon in many ways transcends that of the successful actress. Many biographies of her were written, and she became one of the most famous women of her century. Other artists, men and women, may also have left their mark on their time, but Rachel forged a new model of the actress and woman.” As one reads this entry, one gets a sense of how “French” French Jews felt themselves which provides understanding to the depth of shock and dismay felt at the time of the Dreyfus Affair.
1863: Cesar Kaskel arrived in Washington and went to meet with Cincinnati congressman John Addison Gurley to get his help in arranging a meeting with President Lincoln.
1871(10th of Tevet, 5631): Asara B’Tevet
1876(6th of Tevet, 5636: Sixty-five year old Sir Anthony de Rothschild, 1st Baronet, the second son of Nathan Mayer Rothschild, passed away today. He took on much of the responsibility for the family’s banking business, was the first President of the United Synagogue and was known as an art collector and breeder of thoroughbred racehorses. He died without a male heir so his title transferred to his nephew Nathan Mayer Rothschild.
1879: It was reported today that a commission appointed at the recent convention of American Hebrew Congregations to consider plans to establish one central college to train Rabbis in the United States is meeting in Philadelphia. The commission includes Rabbis Gottheil and Einhorn from New York and L.M. Demibtz of Louisville, KY. Currently there are at least three such colleges located in New York, Philadelphia and Cincinnati, Ohio.
1883: Birthdate of British political leader Clement Attlee. Atlee was a member of the Labor Party and served as Prime Minister from 1945 to 1951. He replaced Winston Churchill as Prime Minister shortly after VE Day when the Laborites defeated the Conservatives in the first Parliamentary elections since the start of World War II. Talk about ingratitude. In what seemed like unnecessary cruelty, the Atlee Government continued to bar Jews from immigrating to Palestine. The government pursued an active war of suppression against the Zionists and made it clear that the Laborites had no intention in honoring the promise of the Balfour Declaration. Faced with financial bankruptcy and war weariness, Atlee began dismember the British Empire which meant surrendering the Palestine Mandate as well as the colony of India.
1887: In San Francisco, Marcus Schiller and others formally established the Beth Israel congregation with forty male members.
1890: “Trouble Over A School” published today described the opposition of Jewish citizens on the Lower East Side to the establishment of a school by Reverend Morgan of St. Mark’s which some of them “regard as movement to undermined the Jewish faith.”
1891: Birthdate of poet and author Osip E Mandelstam. A native of Warsaw, Mandelstam grew up in the comfortable middle class Jewish home that was described as not being very religious. The ups and downs of his career and posthumous honor mirrored the fate of many other intellectuals living in the Soviet Union. He died in the Gulag in 1938.
1891: Among the charities that the Brooklyn Board of Estimate said would be receiving public funds were the Eastern District of the Hebrew Benevolent Society ($155.86); Western District of the Hebrew Benevolent Society ($88.96) and the Hebrew Orphan Asylum ($319.06).
1892: It was reported today that among the forty Europeans being held as prisoners by the Mahdists are eight Jews.
1893: It was reported today that Henry Mazinsky, the young boy who had contracted typhus, had been at The Ladies’ Deborah Nursery and Child’s Protectory for four months “under the constant care of the attendants” and how he contracted the disease remains a mystery.
1893: It was reported today that The Ladies’ Deborah Nursery and Child’s Protectory is currently caring for 150 boys.
1894: A meeting was held this evening at the Jewish Theological Seminary “for the purpose of founding a society” that will improve the observance of Shabbat.
1894: The Footlight Club provided the entertainment for a fundraiser held at the Berkley Lyceum for the benefit of the Louis Downtown Sabbath and Daily School.
1895: It was reported today that Aaron Leiman was at work at cloak factory when a fire broke out in his apartment killing his wife and two children.
1895: It was reported today that the tenement house at 25 Pitt Street that burned yesterday “was inhabited entirely by the families of” Jewish “cloakmakers and tailors” most of whom are suffering financially due to the cloakmakers’ strike.
1895: Colonel David S. Brown who will be leaving on trip that will take him to Egypt and Palestine was the guest of honor at a dinner at the Colonial Club.
1895: Herzl personally witnessed Colonel Dreyfus being “drummed out of the army in the courtyard of the Ecole Militaire as huge crowds outside shouted, ‘” ‘Death to the Jews!’”
1897: Dr. Maurice Harris of Temple Israel in Harlem delivered the sermon this morning at Temple Emanu-El.
1897: “Maspero On The East Again” provides a detailed review of The Struggle of the Nations: Egypt, Syria and Assyria by Gaston Maspero in which “he records the exodus, the conquest of Canaan, the founding…of David’s kingdom, the building of the reservoirs ascribed to Solomon, and of Solomon’s temple.”
1898: It was reported today that Julius D. Eisenstein has been chosen as president of “The American Congregation, the Pride of Jerusalem” – a new organization to provide aid for the indigent Jews living in Jerusalem.
1898: Gratz College is scheduled to open its doors today in Philadelphia. A teachers’ and general college, it is the third Jewish institution of higher-learning in the United States. Faculty members include Rabbi Henry M Speaker (Jewish literature), Arthur A. Dembitz (Jewish history) and Isaac Husik (Hebrew). The course of study lasts three years and “under certain conditions” students who cannot afford the tuition “will be admitted free of charge.”
1906 (6th of Tevet, 5666): Dr. Otto A. Moses passed away at the age of 72. Born in 1846, the South Carolina native “had a worldwide reputation as a geologist and chemist.” He was also the founder of the Hebrew Technical Institute, a New York “institution for the education of poor boys” and was an active supporter of other Jewish charities including the Hebrew Orphan Asylum and the Montefiore Home.
1909(10th of Tevet, 5669): Asara B'Tevet
1915: Birthdate of Jack Levine the Boston born American Social Realist painter and printmaker best known for his satires on modern life, political corruption, and biblical narratives.
1919: Simon Petlyura, "hetman" of Russia and the Ruthenian Republic, a Ukrainian nationalist and commander of the Zaporog Cossacks and Haidamaks, began his attack against the Jews. He accused them of being supporters of the communist regime. In Berdichev, Uma, Zhitomir and other cities about seventy thousand were killed and an equal number wounded. Altogether 372 cities and towns were attacked in 998 major and 349 minor pogroms. This took placed during the Russian Civil War that followed the Bolshevik Revolution. The civil war was loosely described as fight between the Reds (the communists) and the Whites (all of the various groups opposed to the communists). The Jews were caught in the middle and suffered at the hands of both sides.
1919: The Faisal-Weizmann Agreement was signed today, by Emir Faisal (son of the King of Hejaz) and Chaim Weizmann as part of the Paris Peace Conference, 1919 settling disputes stemming from World War I. It was a short-lived agreement for Arab-Jewish cooperation on the development of a Jewish homeland in Palestine and an Arab nation in a large part of the Middle East. Weizmann first met Faisal in June 1918, during the British advance from the South against the Ottoman Empire in World War I. As leader of an impromptu "Zionist Commission", Weizmann traveled to southern Transjordan for the meeting. The intended purpose was to forge an agreement between Faisal and the Zionist movement to support an Arab Kingdom and Jewish settlement in Palestine, respectively. Weizmann and Faisal established an informal agreement under which Faisal would support dense Jewish settlement in Palestine while the Zionist movement would assist in the development of the vast Arab nation that Faisal hoped to establish. Weizmann and Faisal met again later in 1918 in London and soon afterwards at the Paris peace conference. In their first meeting in June 1918 Weizmann had assured Faisal that "the Jews did not propose to set up a government of their own but wished to work under British protection, to colonize and develop Palestine without encroaching on any legitimate interests". The day after they signed the written agreement, which bears their names, Weizmann arrived in Paris to head the Zionist delegation to the Peace Conference. It was a triumphal moment for Weizmann; it was an accord that climaxed years of negotiations and ceaseless shuttles between the Middle East and the capitals of Western Europe and that promised to usher in an era of peace and cooperation between the two principal ethnic groups of Palestine: Arabs and Jews. The maipoints of the agreement were:
The agreement committed both parties to conducting all relations between the groups by the most cordial goodwill and understanding, to work together to encourage immigration of Jews into Palestine on a large scale while protecting the rights of the Arab peasants and tenant farmers, and to safeguard the free practice of religious observances. The Muslim Holy Places were to be under Muslim control.
The Zionist movement undertook to assist the Arab residents of Palestine and the future Arab state to develop their natural resources and establish a growing economy.
The boundaries between an Arab State and Palestine should be determined by a Commission after the Paris Peace Conference.
The parties committed to carrying into effect the Balfour Declaration of 1917, calling for a Jewish national home in Palestine.
Disputes were to be submitted to the British Government for arbitration.
Weizmann signed the agreement on behalf of the Zionist Organization, while Faisal signed on behalf of the short-lived Arab Kingdom of Hedjaz.
Two weeks prior to signing the agreement, Faisal stated:
The two main branches of the Semitic family, Arabs and Jews, understand one another, and I hope that as a result of interchange of ideas at the Peace Conference, which will be guided by ideals of self-determination and nationality, each nation will make definite progress towards the realization of its aspirations. Arabs are not jealous of Zionist Jews, and intend to give them fair play and the Zionist Jews have assured the Nationalist Arabs of their intention to see that they too have fair play in their respective areas. Turkish intrigue in Palestine has raised jealousy between the Jewish colonists and the local peasants, but the mutual understanding of the aims of Arabs and Jews will at once clear away the last trace of this former bitterness, which, indeed, had already practically disappeared before the war by the work of the Arab Secret Revolutionary Committee, which in Syria and elsewhere laid the foundation of the Arab military successes of the past two years.The areas discussed were detailed in a letter to Felix Frankfurter, President of the Zionist Organization of America, on March 3, 1919, when Faisal wrote :
The Arabs, especially the educated among us, look with the deepest sympathy on the Zionist movement. Our deputation here in Paris is fully acquainted with the proposals submitted yesterday by the Zionist Organization to the Peace Conference, and we regard them as moderate and proper."The boundaries of Palestine shall follow the general lines set out below: Starting on the North at a point on the Mediterranean Sea in the vicinity South of Sidon and following the watersheds of the foothills of the Lebanon as far as Jisr el Karaon, thence to El Bire following the dividing line between the two basins of the Wadi El Korn and the Wadi Et Teim thence in a southerly direction following the dividing line between the Eastern and Western slopes of the Hermon, to the vicinity West of Beit Jenn, thence Eastward following the northern watersheds of the Nahr Mughaniye close to and west of the Hedjaz Railway; in the East a line close to and West of the Hedjaz Railway terminating in the Gulf of Akaba; in the South a frontier to be agreed upon with the Egyptian Government; in the West the Mediterranean Sea. The details of the delimitations, or any necessary adjustments of detail, shall be settled by a Special Commission on which there shall be Jewish representation. Faisal conditioned his acceptance on the fulfillment of British wartime promises to the Arabs, who had hoped for independence in a vast part of the Ottoman Empire. He appended to the typed document a hand-written statement:
"Provided the Arabs obtain their independence as demanded in my [forthcoming] Memorandum dated the 4th of January, 1919, to the Foreign Office of the Government of Great Britain, I shall concur in the above articles. But if the slightest modification or departure were to be made [regarding our demands], I shall not be then bound by a single word of the present Agreement which shall be deemed void and of no account or validity, and I shall not be answerable in any way whatsoever." The Faisal-Weizmann agreement survived only a few months. The outcome of the peace conference itself did not provide the vast Arab state that Faisal desired mainly because the British and French had struck their own secret Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 dividing the Middle East between their own spheres of influence, and soon Faisal began to express doubts about cooperation with the Zionist movement. After Faisal was expelled from Syria and given the Kingdom of Iraq, he contended that the conditions he appended were not fulfilled and the treaty therefore moot. St. John Philby, a British representative in Palestine, later stated that Hussein bin Ali, the Sharif of Mecca and King of Hejaz, on whose behalf Faisal was acting, had refused to recognize the agreement as soon as it was brought to his notice. However, Sharif Hussein formally endorsed the Balfour Declaration in the Treaty of Sèvres of 10 August, 1920, along with the other Allied Powers, as King of Hedjaz. The United Nations Special Committee On Palestine did not regard the agreement as ever being validwhile Weizmann continued to maintain that the treaty was still binding. In 1947 Weizmann explained:"A postscript was also included in this treaty. This postscript relates to a reservation by King Feisal that he would carry out all the promises in this treaty if and when he would obtain his demands, namely, independence for the Arab countries. I submit that these requirements of King Feisal have at present been realized. The Arab countries are all independent, and therefore the condition on which depended the fulfillment of this treaty, has come into effect. Therefore, this treaty, to all intents and purposes, should today be a valid document". According to C.D. Smith the Syrian National Congress had forced Faisal to back away from his tentative support of Zionist goals
1920: Viola Flannery married Elie Nadelman, the Polish born American-Jewish sculptor, in New York City.
1923: Birthdate of Haim Gouri, Israeli poet, novelist, journalist, and documentary filmmaker born in Tel Aviv and currently living in Jerusalem. Following a period in Europe, during which he helped Jews immigrate to Palestine after World War II, he fought in the 1948 Israeli War of Independence. The impact of these events on Gouri is evident in his writing. He has been called "Israel's Poet." He was awarded the Bialik Priz for Literature in 1975 and the Israel Prize for Poetry in 1988. The film The 81st Blow, which he wrote, co-produced, and co-directed, was nominated for the 1974 Academy Award for Documentary Feature. The 81st Blow is part of Gouri's comprehensive and powerful Holocaust trilogy, which includes The Last Sea and Flames in the Ashes
1924: Birthdate of Israeli Admiral Mordechai Limon, the man who would mastermind and execute the Cherbourg Project in 1969.
1925: Benito Mussolini, the Italian Fascist, announced that he was taking dictatorial powers over Italy. Mussolini enjoyed support among Italian Jews. According to Alexander Stille, by 1938 one third of adult Italian Jews belonged to Fascist Party. “This amounted to 10,000 Jews out of Italy's small Jewish population of 47,000.” But according to Claretta Petacci, Mussolini's mistress, between 1932 and 1938, the Italian dictator “was a fierce anti-Semite, who proudly said that his hatred for Jews preceded Adolf Hitler's and vowed to ‘destroy them all.’”
1927: At Cooper Union, the United Palestine Appeal held its kickoff event designed to raise $100,000. During the meeting it was announced that $15,000 had already been raised with $2,500 having been donated by Morris Eisenman.
1927: During a meeting of the United Palestine Appeal held at Cooper Union in New York City, tribute was paid to the memory of Asher Ginsberg who was better known by his pen name, Achad Ha’am. Ginsberg who was living in Tel Aviv when he passed away, was described as “one of the most creative forces in world Zionism.”
1929: At the tender age of 27 William S. Paley became President of CBS.
1930(3rd of Tevet, 5690): The first Chanukah to be observed during The Great Depression comes to an end today on the 8thday of the festival.
1936: The Manchester Guardian published an article disproving Hitler’s claims that the Jews had a “stranglehold or monopoly” on German cultural and professional life. The percentages were based on official German statistics.
1937: The New York Timesreports that Mrs. Yetka Levy-Stein the wife of a Berlin Rabbi arrived here last week on the Cunard White Star liner Berengaria to make a three-month tour of the United States on behalf of the Youth Aliyah movement, which is concerned with the settlement of German-Jewish children in the cooperative colonies of Palestine.
1937:California Congresswomen Florence Prag Kahn completed her fifth and final term in office.
1938: The Palestine Post reported that it was no coincidence that most of the arms found on Arab terrorists were of German manufacture. They were smuggled in from Lebanon, Syria and Transjordan. British troops, assisted by police, fought a bloody battle with a band of arms smugglers near the Sahla village in Galilee.
1938: The Palestine Post reported that settlers at Kibbutz Neveh Ya'acov, north of Jerusalem, repelled another heavy Arab attack.
1938: The Palestine Post reported that a forest was planted at the Ma'aleh Hahamisha hill in memory of the five pioneers who were murdered there while preparing land for this new settlement.
1938: New York Supreme Court Justice Salvatore A. Cotillo signed a writ of reasonable doubt today which allowed the release of convicted felons Samuel "Sammy" Weiss and David Goldberg. The two had been convicted by Thomas E. Dewey for filing false tax returns. Weiss was a notorious racketeer and mobster.
1941: During World War II, German bombers dropped some of their payload on Greenville Hall Synagogue. The building was damaged but not destroyed in the raid.
1943: Polish President Wladyslaw Raczkiewicz requested that Pope Pius XII publicly denounce German atrocities against the Jews. Pius remained silent concerning both the German slaughter of the Polish Jews as well as the German attacks against Polish Catholics.
1945: Benjamin Rabin assumes office as member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from New York's 4th district
1947: Jacob Javits begins serving in the U.S. House of Representatives from New York’s 21st congressional district.
1948: The Palmach received orders concerning the attacking on Salama.
1949: Leo Isacson, a member of the American Labor Party, finished his term as a member of the House of Representatives representing New York’s 24thcongressional district
1949: As part of Operation Horev, Israeli troops attacked the Egyptians at Rafah in an attempt to encircle the Arab force.
1951: Sydney A. Fine assumes office as member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York's 23rd district.
1953: Isidore Dollinger assumed office as member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from New York's 23rd district
1956: More than 600 leaders of Hadassah from all over the United States met at New York’s Plaza Hotel to celebrate the twenty-second anniversary of Youth Aliyah, the worldwide child rescue and rehabilitation organization.
1959: Seymour Halpern assumed office as member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from New York's 4th district. Unlike most New York Jewish politicians, Halpern was a Republican.
1959: Alaska became the 49th state to join the Union. For more about Alaska, the final Jewish Frontier you may go to http://www.joyfulnoise.net/JoyAlaska5.html, featuring “Alaskan Jewry – An Historical Overview.”
1963: Tel Aviv University opened. Although its antecedents go back to the early 1950's the university became an independent entity on this date. Today it is the largest University in the country with over 100 departments and over 75 research facilities.
1965(29th of Tevet, 5725): Semyon Ariyevich Kosberg passed away. Born in 1903, this Jewish-Soviet engineer developed an expertise in aircraft and rocket engines who won the Lenin Prize in 1960 and was named a Hero of Socialist Labor in 1961.
1965: Richard Ottinger assumed office as member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from New York's 25th district
1967(21st of Tevet, 5727): Jack Ruby, the man who shot accused presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, died in a Dallas hospital.
1973: Seymour Halpern finishes his career as a member of the House of Representatives representing New York’s 6th congressional district.
1975: Stephen J. Solarz began serving in the United States House of Representatives as the Congressman from New York’s 13th District, a post he would hold until 1993.
1975: President Gerald Ford signed the Trade Reform Act which contained the Jackson-Vanik-Mills Amendment. The Amendment required any nation that wanted “most favored nation status” had to grant its citizens the right immigrate to the country of their choice. The Amendment was intended as a way of forcing the Soviet Union to allow Jews to leave the USSR and was part of the campaign to “Free Russian Jews.”
1977: Ted Weiss assumed office as member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from New York's 20th district
1977(13th of Tevet, 5737): Avraham Ofer, Minister of Housing the cabinet of Yitzchak Rabin, passed away
1978: The Jerusalem Post reported that the US was seeking to establish a bloc of moderate Arab and Muslim states, like Turkey, that would accept Israel's self-rule proposal for the West Bank and Gaza as a transitional phase, leading eventually to these areas' fuller independence, preferably in close linkage to Jordan. Gush Emunim members settled at Karnei Shomron, on the Kalkilya-Nablus road. The Gush rejected Prime Minister Menachem Begin's assurances that his new peace plan would not affect the safety of the existing Jewish settlements in administered areas.
1981: Jacob Javits completed his career as a member of the U.S. Senator from New York.
1981: Lester L. Wolfe finished his career as a member of the House of Representatives representing New York’s 6th congressional district
1984: A revival of David Merrick’s “Hello Dolly” starring femal impersonator Danny La Rue as Dolly opened at the Prince of Wales Theatre.
1985: The government of Israel confirmed the resettlement of 10,000 Ethiopian Jews. In a world where revisionists condemn the Zionist dream or at least pronounce it dead, this rescue operation served as poignant, pressing reminder of one of the reasons the Jewish state must continue to exist.
1988: As part of the war against terrorists, Israel ordered 9 Palestinian "instigators" deported from West Beirut.
1988: The Reagan Administration, through an announcement by its State Department, withheld comment today on the Israeli air strikes into southern Lebanon. A State Department official said Administration officials monitoring weekend developments in the Middle East would assess the information about the air strike Last month, the Administration urged Israel to exercise restraint in retaliating against Palestinian guerrilla forces in Lebanon. Since the group targeted in the Israeli air attacks was believed responsible for the Nov. 25 raid on an Israeli army base, the attacks prompted renewed questions, first raised last month, about whether the Israelis might have postponed the retaliation to avoid complicating the summit meeting in December between President Reagan and Mikhail S. Gorbachev.
1988(13th of Tevet, 5748): Rose Ausländer a Jewish German- and English language poet passed away.
1989: Eliot L. Engel assumed office as member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from New York's 17th district.
1989: Nita Lowey assumed office as member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from New York's 18th district.
1990: Ezer Weizmann is scheduled to leave today for Moscow, a visit that is a further sign of warming relations between the Soviet Union and Israel. Shimon Peres is planning a Soviet trip at the end of January or beginning of February.
1991: Israel reopened its consulate in the USSR after 23 years. The Soviets had broken off relations with Israel after the Six Day War. The Soviets alternately used its Jewish population as pawns or prisoners depending upon the vagaries of the Cold War. The cry of “Free Soviet Jewry” now seems like something out of the distant past.
1991: Pan American World Airways announced today that it was suspending flights to Tel Aviv and to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, because of surging insurance rates, a result of the crisis in the Middle East.
1992: Yasar Arafat demanded that the United States vote for a U.N. resolution that would “strongly deplore” Israel’s decision to deport a dozen Palestinians described as “inciters to violence.” The Israeli action followed the murder of four Israeli settlers by P.L.O. hit men over the past ten weeks. But today, during a meeting in the State Department office of Assistant Secretary Edward Djerejian, at the instigation of Director of Policy Planning Dennis Ross and with the concurrence of Richard Haass, a national security aide, the Bush Administration decided to punish the Israelis and give Arafat more than he had asked for. The U.S. would not only grant the P.L.O.'s wish to add adverbial strength to its expression of disapproval, it would changed the wording from “strongly deplore” to "strongly condemn” the deportations by Israel. In May 1991, the U.S. had voted to "deplore" (up from a previous "regret") such action by Israel, after deportations helped suppress an outbreak of knifings of Israeli civilians. P.L.O. wanted to offset the U.N.'s recent rescission of the "Zionism is racism" resolution by ratcheting up the disapproval one notch: to “strongly deplore."
1992: In the State Department office of Assistant Secretary Edward Djerejian, at the instigation of Director of Policy Planning Dennis Ross and with the concurrence of Richard Haass, a national security aide, the decision was made to unload on Israel as never before. PLO hit men had murdered four Israeli settlers in the past 10 weeks, provoking Israel to expel a dozen Palestinian inciters to violence. No Yasser Arafat was sending word that Arabs would boycott the peace talks unless the U.S. voted in the U.N. to strongly deplore the deportations.
1993(10th of Tevet, 5753): Asara B'Tevet
1993: Nita Lowey completed her term representing New York’s 20th Congressional District and began representing New York’s 18th Congressional District.
1993: Stephen J. Solarz career in the House of Representatives came to an end.
1993: "Catskills on Broadway" closes at Lunt-Fontanne Theatre in New York City after 452 performances
1993(10th of Tevet, 5753):: An agent of the Shin Bet security service was stabbed and bludgeoned to death today, ap