February 11
55: Tiberius Claudius Caesar Britannicus, heir to the Roman Emperorship, dies under mysterious circumstances in Rome clearing the way for Nero to become Emperor Would things have been better or worse if Britannicus had ruled instead of Nero? Nobody can say for sure since there is no record of his views on the Jewish people, Judea or Jerusalem. . Nero’s record regarding the Jews is a mixed bag (at least he did blame them for burning down Rome), he did appoint four inept governors to rule over Judea and appointed Vespasian to put down the Jewish Revolt when it began in 66. Given the rest of Nero’s behavior, the world (including the Jewish world) would have been better off with Britannicus.
1147 (24 Adar): The Jews of Wurzburg were attacked without warning by a band of Crusaders. “More than twenty among them met a martyrs death including Rabbi Isaac ben Eliakim…The humane Bishop of Wurzburg assigned a burial place in his own private garden for the bodies of the martyrs and sent the survivors to a castle near
Wurzburg
.”
1201: In
Worms
, the Jews took up arms to fight alongside the city's non-Jewish residents against an attack by Otto. At that time, Jews were still permitted to bear arms in various cities in
Germany
, although this privilege was soon to be abolished
1250: During the Seventh Crusade, the three day Battle of Al Mansurah comes to an end with the French forces under the command of the anti-Semitic King Louis IX suffering a crushing defeat.
1349: Jews of Uberlingen, Switzerland were massacred.
1482: By a Papal order, seven new Inquisitors were nominated, among them Tomas de Torquemada who led the Spanish Inquisition that brought an end to the fabled Spanish Jewish community.
1490: In
Spain
it was declared that no Jew or convert ever be allowed to rule over any Muslims. This was part of Spanish/Muslim negotiations leading up to the eventual surrender of
Granada
, the last Muslim territory in
Iberia
.
1491:Isaac ben Judah ibn Katorzi produced the first printed copy of at Naples the Sefer ha-Shorashim a lexicon by Rabbi David Kimhi, known as RADAK.
http://cojs.org/cojswiki/R._David_Kimhi_(Radak),_EJ_10:1001-1004.
1531: King Henry VIII is recognized as head of the Church of England, thus helping to unravel papal control of the British Isles, weaken the control of the Catholic Church and help the forces of what might be loosely called Protestant Christianity. Over the long haul, this was beneficial to the Jews since the rise of Protestants in the Netherlands and England would prove to be beneficial to their acceptance and provide escape from the Church approved Inquistion that had driven them out of Iberia and kept them from New World Settlements in Latin America and French controlled Canada.
1673: In England, According to the Conventicle Act of 1664 any prayer meeting of more than five persons not according to the Book of Common Prayer would be considered seditious. The act had been originally designed as a device against the Puritans but soon Jews were prosecuted as well. The Jews requested from the King to either allowed freedom of worship or be allowed to leave the country with their possessions. Charles II ordered the Attorney General to desist from prosecuting the “offenders”.
1812(28th of Shevat, 5572): Rabbi Joseph David Sinzheim passed away. According to The Jewish Encyclopedia, Sinzheim was born in 1745. He was the son of R. Isaac Sinzheim of
Treves
and brother-in-law of Herz Cerfbeer and the first rabbi of Strasburg. He was the most learned and prominent member of the Assembly of Notables convened by Napoleon I. He was entrusted with task of answering the questions laid before the assembly by the imperial commissioner; a task which he accomplished in such an admirable fashion that he won the approval of the Emperor himself.
1814: Norway's independence is proclaimed, marking the ultimate end of the Kalmar Union, the union of Norway, Denmark and Sweden. As part of its declaration of independence,
Norway
acquired its first constitution. “This document was relatively liberal, but in §2 it stated that the official state religion was Lutheran Protestantism and that Jews and Jesuits were forbidden from entering the kingdom. The lobbying to change this paragraph was led by the national poet, Henrik Wergeland. In 1851 the ban was indeed reversed, six years after the Wergeland's death.”
1826: University College London is founded under the name University of London. As the first university to open its doors to Women, Roman Catholics and Dissenters,
UCL
was also the first to admit Jewish students. This traditional link of the College with the Anglo-Jewish community is very much alive today.
University
College
London
houses the largest department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies in
Europe
. The department is the only one in the UK to offer a full degree course and research supervision in Jewish Studies at the BA Honours, MA, MPhil and PhD levels in every subject of Hebrew and Jewish Studies - philology, history, and literature - covering virtually the entire chronological and geographical span of the Hebrew and Jewish civilization from antiquity through the Middle Ages to the modern period. Degrees can be completed on a full- or part-time basis.
1846(15thof Shevat, 5606): Tu B’Shevat
1859: It was reported today that Jews of San Francisco were scheduled to hold a meeting to express their feelings over the kidnapping of “the Mortara child” and the refusal of the papal authorities to return him to his parents. [The Mortara Affair had a galvanizing effect on Jewish communities throughout the world, especially in Western Europe and the United States. The public displays and attempts to get governments to act on behalf of Jewish victims, which is commonplace today, was almost unheard of one hundred and fifty years ago.]
1861: Edwin Booth appeared as Shylock for the first time at The Winter Garden in New York City. According to the reviewer, “first to last, Mr. Booth preserved with thorough faithfulness the varying passions which from time to time usurped the heart of the Jew.” In playing Shylock, Booth was following in the footsteps of his father Junius Brutus Booth who had previously this creation of Shakespeare’s pen.
1865(15th of Shevat, 5625) Tu B'Shvat is observed for the last time duirng the American Civil War which will in April of 1865.
1868: Birthdate of Nachman Syrkin, the Russian-born American Zionist leader. He may have been the only American to have attended the First Zionist Congress and the Versailles Peace Conference. He was an early advocate of what became the Kibbutz Movement.
1868:In Savannah, GA, Mikveh Israel, a synagogue that had followed the Sephardic Minchag began its shift from the Orthodox to Reform Judaism today “with the addition of a musically-accompanied choir and the elimination of observance of the second day of festivals.”
1869: Jeannette and Aaron Schüler gave birth to Jewish German poet and playwright Else Lasker-Schüler
1874: Birthdate of George Alexander Kohut an Hungarian-born American writer and bibliographer. He was educated at the gymnasium in Grosswardein, at the public schools in New York, at Columbia University (1893–1895), Berlin University, and the Berlin Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judenthums (1895–97). In the year 1897 he became rabbi of the Congregation Emanu-El, Dallas, Texas, a post which he occupied for three years. In 1902 he became superintendent of the religious school of Temple Emanu-El in New York, and was assistant librarian of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. Kohut was the author of: The Index to the Italian words in the "Aruch," "Early Jewish Literature in America," "Sketches of Jewish Loyalty, Bravery, and Patriotism in the South American Colonies and the West Indies," "Martyrs of the Inquisition in South America," and “A Memoir of Dr. Alexander Kohut's Literary Activity," and many other monographs on historical subjects and on folklore. He also edited "Semitic Studies in Memory of Dr. Alexander Kohut". Kohut established a library of Judaica at Yale in 1915, an important collection made by his father, Alexander Kohut, and the "Kohut Endowment" to maintain and improve the "Alexander Kohut Memorial Collection". He passed away in 1933.
http://www.library.yale.edu/judaica/site/exhibits/tercentennial/4-kohut-alexander.html
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/40858688?uid=3739640&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21101787245887
1874(24thof Shevat, 5634): Eleanor Ezekiel passed away in Philadelphia, PA
1874: Dr. Jacob Da Silva Solis Cohen a Sephardic Jew who served with Union forces during the Civil War before returning to Philadelphia signed the death certificate of Eleanor Ezekiel.
1875: Abraham H. Keinski, a Polish Jew, was arraigned at the Yorkville Police Court on charges that he was responsible for burning down a hat store that he owned which was located on Third Avenue. The prisoner was released after posting $5,000 in bail.
1880(29thof Shevat, 5640): Asher Bijur passed at 4 o’clock this afternoon at his home on West 53rd Street at the age of 54. He was born at Posen in 1825 and came to the United States when he was 20 years old. He began his business career by manufacturing cigars and then moved into the leaf tobacco trade. He leaves behind a widow and two sons.
1881: Birthdate of Louis Ginsberg. Born in Russia, he came to the United States at the age of 22. After working in West Virginia and Illinois, he settled in Marietta, Ohio, where he established the Producers’ Supply and Tool Company and became a pillar of the community serving as s
Secretary of B’Nai Israel, President of the Local Jewish War Suffers’ Society, Director of the Hebrew Immigration Society and a generous supporter of the Red Cross.
1886: A charity ball sponsored by the Purim Association will be held this evening at the Metropolitan Opera House.
1889(10th of Adar I, 5649): Simon Mussina, merchant, newspaper editor, and attorney passed away. [This lengthy entry is intended to provide a sense of what American Jewish life was like for those who lived outside of a few major metropolitan areas.] Born in 1805, to Zachariah and Nancy Mussina in Philadelphia, PA, Simon learned the mercantile business from his father. In 1821 Simon and his father took a business trip to Mobile and Clark County, Alabama, where Zachariah drowned while crossing a swollen creek. The family fortune of gold disappeared in the drowning, and Simon was left to support his mother and several younger brothers and sisters. He set up a mercantile store in Clark County, then moved to Mobile, where he developed one of the largest mercantile businesses in the South. Before 1836 a fire burned his savings, and that year he moved to Matagorda, Texas, with his family. He bought the Matagorda Bulletin and edited it until 1840, when he moved to Galveston, where he edited the National Banner to advertise his vast holdings of West Texas lands. When Austin became the state capital, Simon sold the Banner and returned to Matagorda to assume editorship of the Bulletin. He subsequently moved to Galveston, where he established a large drugstore. When the Mexican War started he went to Matamoros, bought land at Point Isabel on the Rio Grande, acquired controlling interest in a Matamoros newspaper, the American Flag, and developed it into one of the most popular newspapers of the time. At the end of the war he served as one of the surveyors who laid out the town of Brownsville. Mussina became a close friend of Sam Houston, who encouraged him to become the chief plaintiff against Judge John C. Watrous, charged with corrupt decisions on land claims in and about Brownsville. The litigation lasted most of Mussina's life. In 1868 he moved to Austin and began proceedings for the La Vega land grant, an eleven-league grant that embraced a part of eastern Waco. This case, too, stayed in litigation. In his sixties Mussina became a member of the State Bar of Texas and established himself as one of the most astute land attorneys in the state. From 1870 to 1873 he served as president of the board of trustees for the state blind and insane asylums and in 1871 he served as alderman for the city of Austin. Mussina never married, but he reared his father's family.” His sister, who had married a Presbyterian minister of Galveston, buried him from that church in Galveston.
1890: A meeting took place at Temple Beth El this evening during which the young people discussed ways of helping the city’s poor Jews many of whom “live on the east side between 42nd and 86th streets from 5thAvenue to the River.”
1890: Among the recipients of the theatrical license fund which was distributed today was the United Hebrew Charities which received $1,500 out of total of $38,200.
1890: This and final day of the annular meeting of Grand Lodge, No.1 of the Independent Order of Free Sons Israel. The Jewish fraternal order’s newly elected officers are: Grand Mater – Louis B. Franklin; First Deputy Grand Master – Joseph Steiner; Grand Treasurer – Raphael Lehman; Grand Secretary – H.I. Goldsmith.
1892: In New York, the authorities expressed their concern today “over the worst outbreak of typhus…that has occurred since the organization of the Health Department.” The outbreak was most severe among recently arrived Jewish immigrants from Russia.
1894: Birthdate of Isaac M Kolthoff, the Dutch born chemist who was considered by some to be the “Father of Analytical Chemistry.” He passed away in Minnesota in 1993 a month after his 99th birthday.
1894: It was reported today that the fifth and final volume or Ernest Renan’s History of the Jews “has had a unique reception in Paris. “In an interview, Pere Henri Didon speaks tenderly of Renan, and almost approvingly of this closing work” which was published posthumously.
1894: “Diminutive Bride and Groom” published today described the nuptials of Maurice Bear and Bertha Levy, a leading member of the Birmingham, Alabama, Jewish community, both of whom are no more than four feet tall.
1894: On Sunday, Rabbi Joseph Silverman delivered a talk on “The Mistakes of Ingersoll About Moses” at Temple Emanu-El.
1895(17thof Shevat, 5655): Mrs. Hannah Steinberger, the wife of William Steinberger who teaches Hebrew and German, was found dead “in the miserable quarters” she occupied with her three children in a tenement on the Lower East Side.
1898: Birthdate of Physicist Leo Szilard. Born in
Hungary
, Szilard was a refugee from Hitler’s
Europe
who first sounded the alarm about the need to build an Atomic Bomb. He worked with Einstein on the letter that Einstein would take to FDR in 1939. This effort led to the Manhattan Project.
1902: Birthdate of Arne Jacobsen, Danish architect and designer.
1903: In a letter to the Grand Vizir, Herzl summarizes his proposal – the Ottomans will allow Jewish colonization in Palestine in exchange for a loan of 2 million Turkish pounds.
1905: Pope Pius X publishes the encyclical Vehementer nos. Vehementer Nos was a papal encyclical by the French law of 1905 providing for the separation of church and state, it denounced the proposition that the state should be separated from the church as "a thesis absolutely false, a most pernicious error". It is safe to assume that what Pius really meant was that there could be no separation of state from the Catholic Church since he only recognized the validity of the Catholic Church. His view towards Jews can be seen in his response to Herzl’s 1904 request for Papal support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine Pius X responded: We are unable to favor this movement …. The Jews have not recognized our Lord; therefore, we cannot recognize the Jewish people.”
1909: Birthdate of writer and movie director Joseph L Mankiewicz
1909: Birthdate of Max Baer, American boxer. Baer was a heavyweight fighter who knocked out Max Schmeling, the German champion and symbol of Hitler's
Germany
, in 1933. Baer had a Mogen David sown on his shorts. However, he may really not have been Jewish. According to some, his mother was a Christian and his father was only "a nominal Jew." For more on the subject of Max Baer, and Jews in sports, you might want to read Ellis Island to Ebbets Field.
1910: The Turkish Council of State approves statutes, which will allow a Jewish bank to be opened in Salonica.
1910 (2nd of Adar I, 5670): Moshe Leib Lilienblum, Russian born scholar, teacher and philosopher passed away. Following the pogroms that began in 1881, Lilienblum took the unusual stance, for an Orthodox rabbi, of supporting the settlement of Palestine by the Jewish people as the only realistic course of action if Jews were ever to be safe. This is yet another example of Zionism that pre-dated Herzl.
1911(13th of Shevat, 5671): Baron Albert von Rothschild of the Austrian branch of the House of Rothschild passed away at age 66.
1914: Herbert Louis Samuel, 1st Viscount Samuel completed his first term as Post-Master General in the cabinet of Prime Minister Asquith
1916: Emma Goldman was arrested for lecturing on birth control
1916: Herbert Louis Samuel, 1st Viscount Samuel completed his second term as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. His replacement would be Edwin Samuel Montagu, another prominent member of the Anglo-Jewish community.
1917: Birthdate of author Sidney Shelton. Sheldon won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in1947 for writing The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer, a Tony Award in1959 for his musical Redhead, and was nominated for an Emmy Award for his work on I Dream of Jeannie, an NBC sitcom. He passed away in 2007 at the age of 89.
1918: Ronald Storrs, the British governor of Jerusalem, approved a plan put forth by British army engineers designed to alleviate the water shortage in
Jerusalem
.
1920: Birthdate of King Farouk I. Farouk was the last king of
Egypt
. He was the king who led
Egypt
into its ill-fated war with
Israel
in 1948. There are those who say that if
Egypt
had refused to join the other Arab states, there would never have been a war in 1948. When Farouk was ousted in 1952, the Israelis thought the new reform government would want to end hostilities. Unfortunately, the leader of the “Colonel’s Revolt,”
Nasser
, made destroying
Israel
the rallying cry for his Pan-Arab Movement.
1925: The White Star liner Olympic with Chiam Weizmann and Bernard Rosenblatt on board, arrived today from Southampton and Cherbourg twenty-four hours late because of the fog off the American coast.
1929: Dedication of the Nathan and Lina Straus Health and Welfare Center in Jerusalem.
1929: “Pope Pius XI signs a Concordat and Lateran Treaty with fascist Italian leader Benito Mussolini. The pope agrees to discriminate against Jews and Protestants while gaining the assurance that Catholicism would remain the sole and official religion of Italy.” (Pious was, if anything, not consistent in this matter. Later he would condemn fascism and racism and support efforts to rescue Jews.)
1932: Birthdate of pianist Jerome Lowenthal.
1936: Richard Tucker married Sarah Perelmuth, the only daughter of Levi and Perelmuth who were also the parents of Yakob Perelemtuh who would gain fame as Jan Peerce.
1938: The Palestine Post reported that an agreement was signed in
Geneva
providing for the status of German refugees who were to be furnished with travel documents, resembling Nansen passports, allowing them to work in the countries where they had been living for more than five years.
1938: The Palestine Post published a special Reporter's Report, a reproduction of a broadcast made on the Palestine Radio by Gershon Agron, the founder and editor of this newspaper, on the tragic situation of Jews in Romania where an authoritarian, anti-Semitic regime was deeply entrenched and had the solid backing of the king.
1939: Physicist Lise Meitner and her nephew Otto Fritisch published a paper on nuclear fission in the hour “Nature.” Her work contributed to the development of the atomic bomb. Meitner was the daughter of a Viennese Jewish family.
1941:Birthdate of Avraham Hirchson, an Israeli politician who served as a member of the Knesset for Likud and Kadima between 1981 and 1984, and again from 1992 until 2009. “He also held the posts of Minister of Communications, Minister of Finance and Minister of Tourism. He resigned following allegations of corruption, and was ultimately convicted of stealing close to 2 million shekels from the National Workers Labor Federation while he was its chairman.”
1942 (24th of Shevat, 5702): Flight Lieutenant Michael Weizmann of the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve, the 25 year old son of Chaim Weizmann, was shot down over the Bay of Biscay. His body was never found.
1943: The Nazis deported 123 children under the age of twelve without their parents from
Paris
to the chambers of Birkenau.
1948: Birthdate of Dr. Arthur Gould Schatzkin, “an epidemiologist whose investigations into the connections between diet and cancer yielded new analytic tools and led to the discovery that eating fiber did not prevent the recurrence of polyps in the colon.” (As reported by Douglas Martin)
1948(1st of Adar I, 5708): Russian film director Sergei Eisenstein passed away.
1948(1st of Adar I, 5708): Sir Isaac Alfred Isaacs GCB GCMG QC passed away, Born in 1855, the son of Jewish immigrants from Poland, he was an “Australian judge and politician, the third Chief Justice of Australia, ninth Governor-General of Australia and the first born in Australia to occupy that post. He is the only person ever to have held both positions of Chief Justice of Australia and Governor-General of Australia. He also was an anti-Zionist.
1952(15thof Shevat, 5712): Tu B’Shevat is observed for the last time under the Presidency of Harry S. Truman.
1953: The Jerusalem Post reported that 19 persons were detained in Tel Aviv in an intense hunt for culprits responsible for the bombing of the Soviet Legation.
1953: The
Soviet Union
broke diplomatic relations with
Israel
. The
Soviet Union
competed with the
United States
to be the first to recognize the fledgling state of
Israel
in 1948. Stalin hoped the new Jewish state would help to undermine the power of the
British Empire
in particular and Western democracy in general. Also, there were some in the
Soviet Union
who thought that
Israel
's socialists would lead the new nation into the Eastern Bloc. Since nobody really can say with total certainty what propelled Stalin and his associates behavior, we can only assume that the decision to break relations in 1953 was a combination of the anti-Semitism which was running rampant in the Soviet Union and/or the realization that the Arabs and not the Israelis would be a better foil to foster Soviet imperialism in the Middle East.
1953: President Eisenhower refused clemency appeal for convicted spies, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg
1958: Seventy-year old Alfred Ernest Jones a British neurologist who was the first the first English-speaking practitioner of psychoanalysis and Sigmund Freud’s biographer passed away. In 1919 he found marital bliss when he wed Katherine Jokl “a Jewish economics graduate from Moravia” who had been a classmate of Freud’s daughters.
1960(13th of Shevat, 5720)Victor Klemperer passed away. Born in 1881, he “was a businessman, journalist and eventually a Professor of Literature, specializing in the French Enlightenment at the Technische Universität Dresden. His diaries detailing his life, successively, in the German Empire, the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany and in the German Democratic Republic were published in 1995.”
1961: The trial of Adolf Eichmann began in
Jerusalem
1968: Border fighting broke out between Israeli and Jordanian forces.
1970: In a sign of how the “poor food of eastern European Jewish immigrants” has become chic and trendy, bagels, seedless light rye and “a new marbled bread combining twists of black and regular pumpernickels are among 113 different varieties of breads, from nine Old-World-Style bakers, at Bloomingdale's Bread Basket, which opens today in the delicacies department.
1976 (10th of Adar I, 5736): Actor Lee J Cobb passed away at the age of 64. Some of Cobb’s most famous roles were in 12 Angry Men, On the Waterfront and Death of a Salesman.
1976: Adlene Harrison became the first Jewish female mayor of a major American city when she was appointed mayor of
Dallas
.
1979: Under the leadership of Ayatollah Ruhollah Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi is swept from power with the success of the Islamic Revolution. Khomeini. When Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi held power,
Iran
was the world's biggest buyer of Israeli arms. The Islamic fundamentalist government which succeeded the Shah militantly damned Zionism up and down and hung a prominent Iranian Jew for "spying for
Israel
." In 1980, however, when the Iraq-Iran war began, Iranian representatives met in
Paris
with
Israel
's deputy defense minister and worked out a "Jews for arms" deal.
Iran
permitted Jews to emigrate and
Israel
sold
Iran
ammunition and spare parts for Chieftain Tanks and US-made F-4 Phantom aircraft. Channeled through a private Israeli arms dealer, this particular agreement appropriately ended in 1984, when
Iran
was slow in paying its bills. At the same time, under the Ayatollah and his successors,
Iran
would arm and train Hezbollah fighters in
Lebanon
. Nothing is ever straight forward in the swirl of the
Middle East
.
1981: Birthdate of Michael Andrew “Mike” Seidman who played tight end for UCLA, the Carolina Panthers and Indianapolis Colts.
1986: Having been released from imprisonment by the USSR, Anatoly Sharansky leaves the country and begins his journey to Israel.
1988(22nd of Shevat, 5748): Rabbi Israel Raphael Margolies, “who spoke out on a variety of social issues and was a longtime civil rights advocate, died of complications from hypoglycemia” at his home in Teaneck, N.J. at the age of 72. Rabbi Margolies grew up in the Williamsburg and Crown Heights sections of Brooklyn and graduated from the Jewish Institute of Religion in Manhattan, a seminary for the education of conservative and reform rabbis He served at Temple Emanu-el in Engelwood, N.J., from 1937 until 1953 and at Beth Am The People's Temple in Manhattan, from 1953 to 1981 From his pulpit, Rabbi Margolies frequently called for equality for minority group members and for women. He was a supporter of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and once marched alongside him in a civil rights parade in Englewood Rabbi Margolies was often quoted for his opposition to the Vietnam War and for his belief in peaceful protest, and he was a founding member of the New Jersey chapter of SANE, a Washington-based organization that opposes nuclear weapons.”
1989 (6 Adar I): Rabbi Shmaryahu Gurary ("Rashag") passed away. He was born in 1898. His father, a wealthy businessman and erudite scholar, was a leading Chassid of the fifth Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Sholom DovBer Schneersohn
. In 1921, Rabbi Shmaryahu wed Chanah Schneersohn
,
the oldest daughter of the 6th Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn
.
When Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak passed away in 1950, there were those who saw Rabbi Shmaryahu -- an accomplished Chassidic scholar and the elder of the Rebbe's two surviving sons-in-law -- as the natural candidate to head of the movement; but when the younger son-in-law, Rabbi Menachem Mendel, was chosen as Rebbe, Rabbi Shmaryahu became his devoted Chassid. Rabbi Shmaryahu served as the executive director of Tomchei Temimim, the world-wide Lubavitch yeshiva system -- a task entrusted to him by his father-in-law -- until his passing o