February 16 In History
600: Pope Gregory the Great decrees that the phrase "God bless You" is an appropriate response to a sneeze. Gregory's policy in regard to the Jews is expressed in the following sentence, which was adopted by later popes as a fixed introductory formula to bulls in favor of the Jews: "Just as no freedom may be granted to the Jews in their communities to exceed the limits legally set for them, so they should in no way suffer through a violation of their rights" (As reported by the Jewish Encyclopedia)
1086: In response to a solar eclipse, citizens of Sicily burn torches and lamps during normal daylight hours. Jews would have been among those burning these lights. They had been living in Sicily since the end of the Great Revolt in 70 when they came to the island as slaves. Jews lived at Palermo, Syracuse and Catania. The community would survive until they were expelled as part of the Spanish Inquisition.
1249: Louis IX of France, also known as St. Louis, dispatched Andrew of Longjumeau as his ambassador to meet with Mongol Khagan of the Mongol Empire. Louis was in Egypt engaged in the first of his two Crusades aimed at regaining the Holy Land from the “Islamic infidels.” Andrew’s mission was part of an attempt to forge an alliance with the Mongols against the Moslems. Louis had financed his first crusade (known to history as The Seventh Crusade) in part by expelling all of the Jews engaged in usury and confiscating their property. Further acts of his pre-Crusade piety included the burning of some 12,000 manuscript copies of the Talmud and other Jewish books and an expansion of the Inquisition. The alliance with the Mongols failed to materialize and the crusade was a total failure.
1349: The Jews were expelled from Burgsdorf Switzerland
1570: The Jews miraculously escaped the impact a violent earthquake in Italy.
1616: Elias Felice Montalto passed away. Montalto had converted to Christianity but later returned to Judaism. A physician and author who had lived in Venice, Montalto was living in Paris and serving as the private physician to Queen Maria de Medici at the time of his death. The queen had him embalmed and sent to the Jewish cemetery at Ouderkerk near Amsterdam.
1799: French forces under Napoleon Bonaparte occupied the Egyptian town of El Arresh after an eight day siege. The French Army then began a march towards Khan Younis and Gaza.
1837: Birthdate of Asher Asher the native of Glasgow who was the first Jew in Scotland to become a doctor of medicine and the author of The Jewish Rite of Circumcision.
1854:L'étoile du nord (The North Star) an opéra comique in three acts by Giacomo Meyerbeer was performed at the Salle Favart by the company of the Opéra-Comique, Paris, for the first time today. Meyerbeer whose birth named Jacbo Liebmann Beer, was the son of the German-Jewish financier Jacob Judah Herz Beer and Amalia Liebmann Meyer Wulff
1857: An article published today entitled "Strange Piece of Rascality and Shysterism" reported on an apparent attempt to defraud Samuel Goldberry who had been arrested on a charge of petty larceny last March and who was still waiting to stand trial. According to the article "Heitman, a Jew," a police officer named Frank White, a man named Piser, a Jew named Rosenbaum and a Jew named Rosenberg, conspired to con Goldberry out of $165.00. [Interestingly, the author only the Jews were identified by religion.]
1857: The National Deaf Mute College (later renamed
Gallaudet
University
) is established in
Washington
,
DC
, becoming the first school for the advanced education of the deaf. In the course of fulfilling its educational mission Gallaudet has created a selected bibliography styled, “Deaf Persons in the Holocaust.” http://library.gallaudet.edu/dr/faq-holocaust.html.
1869: Birthdate of Julius Tandler native of Moravia who became a physician and political leader in Vienna.
1870: The Jews of Sweden were emancipated.
1871: The Executive Committee of the Hebrew Charity Fair presented Emanual B. Hart with an engraved silver dinner service tonight in recognition of the services he has rendered in making the latest fund raiser a successful event. Mr. S.L. Cohen made the presentation speech and Mr. Hart responded with the appropriate words and toasts.
1872: It was reported today that the of the 73 private charitable institutions in New York City controlled by religious denominations that received state aide in 1870, two of them were controlled by Jewish organizations. They received $11, 453.72 out of a total allocation of $688,048.86. No final figures were available for 1871.
1872: It was reported today that Mr. Rosenfeldt had committed suicide in Kingston, Jamaica. Mr. Rosenfeldt had converted to Christianity from Judaism. Many of the Jews in Kingston thought that Rosenfeldt had changed his mind. But in a suicide note written to the Bishop the deceased said he had killed himself because “others were conspiring against” and he wanted to leave part of his estate to those working to convert Jews. [Editor’s note – I can find no further reference to Mr. Rosenfeldt or his family who was living in Germany at the time of his death.]
1880: David Harfeld, the brother of Rabbi Eugene Harfeld failed to return the furnished room he was renting with his wife, the former Julia Harlan. This desertion would lead to charges of bigamy in case that would be heard nine years later.
1880: Telegrams were received in Cleveland, Ohio from Evansville, Indiana, inquiring about the whereabouts of Bethold Landua, the Secretary of Kescher Sher Bassel. Landau, who has not been heard from in two weeks, has possession of nearly $40,000 of the society’s money. The society is holding its annual national convention in Evansville.
1881: Birthdate of Hans Meiser, the pro-Nazi Nuremberg native who served as Bishop of the Bavarian Evangelical-Lutheran Church. In 1938 he imposed the following loyalty oath: I swear to God the Almighty and Alknowing: I will be loyal and obedient to the Führer of the Reich and Volk, Adolf Hitler, I will obey the laws, and I will conscientiously fulfill all my official duties, so help me God."
1882: According to the Times of London, the British Foreign Office is about to issue a report based on information provided by its consular officials describing attacks on the Jews living in Russia. While there are no proven “cases of the violation of women” there is clear evidence of “other serious outrages.” If the authorities had used the proper amount of force, “the outrages” might have been confined to a more limited area. For obvious reason, the Jews still living in Russia have been reluctant to provide information to the British officials. [Editor’s Note – Use the term “outrages” to describe a Pogrom must be a classic example of the English penchant for understatement.]
1885(1stof Adar, 5645): Rosh Chodesh Adar
1890: The 23 piece Hebrew Orphan Asylum Band played at this evening’s concert sponsored by the Seligman Solomon Society.
1891: It was reported today that Lewis May and Jesse Seligman spoke at the memorial service held to honor the memory of Lazarus Rosenfeld. They recounted “his efforts in the founding of Mount Sinai Hospital, the Hebrew Orphan Asylum, the Home for the Aged, the Montefiore Home and Temple Emanu-El.”
1891: It was reported today that the newly elected officers of the Jewish Alliance of America are: President – Simon Wolf of Philadelphia; Vice Presidents – Dr. H.W. Schneeberg of Baltimore, Dr. Charles D. Spivak of Philadelphia and Ferdinand Levy of New York; Secretary – Barnard Harris of Philadelphia; Treasurer – Simon Wolf of Washington, D.C. The goal of the alliance is to help teach the newly arriving immigrants from Russia “habits of self-support” with an emphasis on farming.
1892: As the outbreak of typhus fever continues to spread, The Health Department is scheduled to accept the offer of the Immigration Commissioners to use Ward’s Island as a quarantine site for those found to be suffering from typhus. The fever seems to be most prevalent among recently arriving immigrants including a large number of Jews from Russia.
1892: The Second Conference of the Russian American Hebrew Agricultural Fund Association will meet this evening at the Hebrew Institute on East Broadway.
1892: It was reported today that all of the 84 people quarantined on North Brother Island because of typhus fever are Jewish immigrants from Russia who arrived aboard the SS Massilia.
1896: “Synagogue Members In A Fight” published today described fight that broke between supporters of Solomon Bentowski and Heyman Solomon during the business meeting of synagogue that met at 112 Clinton Street in New York. The police were called but no arrests were made.
1897: The third monthly conference of representatives of New York City charities including N.S. Rosenau of the United Hebrew Charities is scheduled to take place today.
1898: It was reported that Judge Meyer S. Isaacs will speak at the next meeting of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association.
1899:French President Félix Faure dies in office. Faure was the “addressee” of one of the most famous letters in Jewish History. On January 13, 1898 The French newspaper L’Aurore published a letter written by Emile Zola entitled J’accuse addressed to Faure. The letter exposed the conspiracy known as the Dreyfus Affair.
1902: In a letter to the Sultan, Herzl summarizes his negotiations. The Sultan's decision is unfavorable.
1910: Colonel Claude Reignier Conder passed away. During his service with the Corps of Engineers, Concor took part in a survey of Western Palestine from 1872 to 1874 along with Lieutenant Horatio Kitchener, the future British military leader known as Lord Kitchener. He also served two tours with the Palestine Exploration Fund Among his literary accounts of his work were Tent Work in Palestine, Memories” The Survey of Western and Eastern Palestine, and The City of Jerusalem.
1912: A Turkish Jew, G. Valensin Bey, who was a member of the municipal council of Alexandria, was appointed Commander of the Order of St. Maurice and St. Lazarus by the King of Italy
1913: “After an interregnum of eighteen months and a spirited contest between candidates, Dr. Joseph H. Hertz of New York was to-day elected Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the British Empire at a meeting of the Electoral College, presided over by Lord Rothschild, President of the United Synagogue.”
1915(2nd of Adar, 5675): French composer Emil Waldteufel passed away.
1917: After 425 years, dedication of the first synagogue to open in Madrid. We all know about 1492 when the Jews were expelled. Now we know a little about their official readmission.
1918: Lithuania proclaimed its independence from Germany.
Lithuania
would have to fight both the Germans and the Soviets for its right to be independent. According to one source, at least 3,000 Jews fought in the armies defending Lithuanian independence. This active role brought Jews and their institution a certain amount of early recognition in the early days of Lithuanian independence. This acceptance would recede during the thirties. Following the outbreak of World War II, over 90 per cent of the Jewish community would perish at the hands of the Soviets and the Nazis.
1926: Birthdate of British born film director John Schlesinger. Schlesinger won the Oscar for Best Director for his work on “Midnight Cowboy” which won the 1969 Oscar for Best Picture.
1927: Birthdate of British actress June Muriel Brown.
1930:On New York’s Lower East Side, Rabbi Yitzchak Mattisyahu Weinberg and his wife Hinda gave birth to Yisrael Noah Weinberg the Rosh Yeshiva at Aish HaTorah.
1932(8th of Adar I, 5692): Sir Edgar Speyer, 1st Baronet passed away. He was an American-born financier and philanthropist who became a British subject in 1892 and was chairman of Speyer Brothers, the British branch of his family's international finance house, and a partner in the German and American branches. He was stripped of his honors as a British citizen following a smear campaign that accused him of being pro-German during World War I.
1932: Birthdate of Romanian born and Holocaust survivor Israeli novelist Aharon Appelfeld. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/appelfeld.html
1932: Birthday of Harry Goz who played Tevye in “Fiddler on the Roof” on Broadway in 1966 and 1967.
1932:The New York Times said of Cardozo's appointment that "seldom, if ever, in the history of the Court has an appointment been so universally commended"
1934: The Austrian Civil War, also known as the February Uprising which had begun on February 12 came to an end today. When the dust settled, the Socialists were in disarray and/or in exile while the right combined to form what their enemies called Austrofascism which did not share the anti-Semitism of German fascism.
1935: Birthdate of Barbara Myerhoff, acclaimed anthropologist and documentary filmmaker.
1935: Birthdate of Gilbert de Botton, the financier who invented the open architecture model of asset management. A native of Alexandria Egypt, he was a descendant of a distinguished Sephardic family whose ancestors included Abraham de Boton. His mother was Yolande Harmer, a Zionist who was imprisoned by the Egyptians on charges of spying for Israel. (As reported by The Telegraph)
1936: In honor of her 75th birthday, Henrietta Szold, American Zionist leader will be honored today by the Jews of Palestine with the title of “freewoman” which makes her an honorary citizen of Tel Aviv The title is the feminine form of “freeman” that has been confirmed on such leaders as the Earl of Balfour and former British Prime Minister David Lloyd George. The Jewish community is also collecting funds for a social welfare project to be named for Miss Szold.
1936: Birthdate of Jerusalem native Eliahu Inbal the Israeli conductor.
1938: “Benito Mussolini issues an official declaration that there is no ‘Jewish Problem’ in Italy and the Fascist government isn't considering any special anti-Semitic measures. This will change in July, 1938, when Jews are stripped of their Italian citizenship and banned from many professions.”
1938: The Palestine Post reported that two Jews were wounded when Arabs fired at a Jewish bus which was on its way to the Kastel quarries. Over a dozen of shooting incidents and attempts to sever communications were reported from all over the country.
1938: The Palestine Post reported that the total number of Jewish immigrants in 1937 was 12,475, compared to 31,671 a year earlier. Of these, 3,648 immigrants came from
Poland
, 3,601 from
Germany
and the rest from other countries. This painful and unjustified reduction was directly attributed to the new British and
Palestine
governments' immigration policy.
1938: Abraham Pais was awarded two Bachelor of Science degrees in physics and mathematics, with minors in chemistry and astronomy. [Pais was the Dutch born Physicist who survived the Holocaust and came to America to pursue his career. The Abraham Pais Prize for the History of Physics attests to the esteem in which he was held by his colleagues.]
1943: The White Rose, an anti-Nazi group posted a sign in Munich, Germany, reading “Out with Hitler! Long live freedom!” The members of White Rose were not Jewish, but they were a courageous group that did what it could to oppose Hitler. Many of its members were caught and beheaded, a favorite form of death among the Nazis.
1944(22nd of Shevat, 5704): Danish writer and director Henri Nathansen passed away. Born in 1868, he gave up his legal career to become an author and theatrical director. His Jewish background provided a major theme for some of his efforts. “His best known work, ‘Inside the Walls,’ premiered in 1912 and centers around a wealthy, loving, but conservative Jewish family whose only daughter breaks away from tradition by attending lectures at the university and secretly becoming engaged to her teacher, a gentile.” His 1932 novel Mendel Philipsen and Son, features “a Jewish woman who falls in love with a gentile painter but instead enters into a loveless marriage with her Jewish cousin…” In 1929, he wrote a biography of fellow Danish Jew, Georg Brandes. In October 1943, when the Nazis attempted to round up the Danish Jews, Nathansen fled to Sweden just four months before his death.
1947:Famed violinist Isaac Stern joins Jack Benny in a laughed filled appearance on the Jack Benny Program.
1947: Morton Gould's 3rd Symphony premiered. In 1995 Gould won the Pulitzer Prize for “Stringfellow.”
1948: The Arabs began their first organized attack, on Tirat Tzvi. Tirat Tzvi (Zevi's Castle) was a Kibbutz founded in 1937 near the Jordanian border. It was named in memory of Rabbi Zevi Hirsh Klaischer who urged his fellow Jews to form a national movement following the failed revolutions of 1848 in
Europe
. In 1862, he published a book combining the themes of agriculture and spiritual re-awakening in what was then called
Palestine
. He had hoped to move to Mikveh
Israel
but at the age of eighty felt himself too old and he died in
Germany
, one of the first religious champions of what was to become the Zionist dream. The attack in 1948 took place between the vote to partition
Palestine
and the actual British departure from the
Mandate
Territory
. In other words, Arab military forces were on the attack determined to wipe out as many of the Jewish kibbutzim as possible thus destroying the Jewish state before it was even born. The attack on Tirat Tzvi failed thanks to the bravery of the outnumbered defenders.
1953: The Jerusalem Post reported that from the establishment of the state in May 1948 to the end of 1952, 707,576 immigrants arrived, including 124,225 from
Iraq
, 121,536 from
Romania
, 106,727 from
Poland
, 62,565 from
North Africa
and 48,447 from
Yemen
and
Aden
. The immigrants hailed from 69 countries.
1953: The Jerusalem Post reported that Israel had sent anti-typhoid vaccine to flood victims in Holland.
1953: The Jerusalem Post reported that forty prominent American senators prepared a program of action to stop the excesses of the anti-Semitic propagandists in the Soviet Union and its satellite nations.
1963: The first of the articles that, in expanded form, would become Eichmann in Jerusalem, Hannah Arendt's most controversial work, was published in The New Yorker
1967: The original West End production of “Fiddler on the Roof” opened on at Her Majesty's Theatre and played for 2,030 performances. It starred Chaim Topol, as Tevye and Miriam Karlin as Golde.
1972(1stof Adar, 5732): Rosh Chodesh Adar
1974(24th of Shevat, 5734): German born, Harvard educated philosopher Horace Kallen passed away.
1978: The Jerusalem Post reported that two persons were killed and 46 injured when an Arab threw a bomb at a bus passing through Rehov Tzefania in Jerusalem.
1978: The Jerusalem Post reported that in Washington the US Administration threatened to withdraw its request for the sale of advanced F-15 and F-16 fighter planes to Israel if Congress blocked the sale of F-15s to Saudi Arabia and F-5Es to Egypt.
1985: The founding of Hezbollah, another Arab/Moslem terror group dedicated, in part, to the destruction of the state of Israel.
1986(7thof Adar I. 5746): Actor Howard Da Silva passed away at the age of 76. Da Silva had a long career as a character actor. His work in
Hollywood
was temporarily interrupted because he was named to the Hollywood Blacklist.
1987: The Demjanjuk trial opened in
Jerusalem
. Ivan Demjanjuk, a former Ukrainian SS volunteer, was accused of overseeing the gas chambers in Treblinka. His cruelty had earned him the name "Ivan the Terrible." Demjanjuk was extradited to
Israel
in 1986, was found guilty and condemned to death. The verdict was appealed to the Israeli Supreme Court. After 3 years of deliberation they ruled that there wasn't enough sufficient proof that Demjanjuk and Ivan the Terrible were one and the same person. This was mainly due to the lack of first person witnesses and the length of time that had elapsed made definite identification impossible. In September 1993 he was released and returned to the
United States
. He was later stripped of his citizenship for falsifying his documents when he entered the
United States
.
1990:Elyakim Rubenstein, the Cabinet secretary, called Ariel Sharon here at his ranch today, just to be sure he was serious about his intention to resign.
1991:At Shabbat synagogue services, congregants were mindful of the deaths of Iraqi civilians, but they were also reminded that Israel had been subjected to indiscriminate Iraqi missile attacks for more than a month and that fighting was the price of peace. Worshippers at the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue on the Upper West Side of Manhattan expressed regret over the killing of Iraqi civilians and said they were disturbed by the television images of broken bodies. But most said their support for the war was undimmed. "War is a terrible thing," said Billy Sussis. But he added that the deaths of the civilians had not shaken his support for the allied effort. "If you're going to fight a war, terrible things like this are going to happen." Rabbi Helene Ferris, however, expressed hope that the incident would "wake up the world's conscience" and disrupt wide impressions of a bloodless conflict. "War is about killing," she declared. "It's about mothers bleeding, fathers bleeding. If we lose sight of that, we may stop trying to find a better way." At the Forest Hills Jewish Center in Queens, Rabbi Gerald C. Skolnik, just back from a visit to Israel, gave his congregation graphic impressions of life in a war zone: an old woman standing beside the ruins of her home in Tel Aviv, an infant in a gas-mask crib, wailing sirens in the night, the sight of his own parents donning gas masks and the vibration of windows as the missiles exploded nearby. "It's not just that the air raids are terrifying, though certainly they are," Rabbi Skolnik said. "It's more that the entire rhythm of the country has been thrown out of kilter."
1992: An Israeli helicopter strike killed the Secretary-General of Hezbollah, Abbas al-Musawi. According to western officials, al-Musawi was responsible for numerous terrorist attacks including the 1983 terror attack in
Beirut
that killed 300
U.S.
and French soldiers. Musawi may be dead, but Hezbollah and its murderous ways live on.
1997: The first Conference on Feminism and Orthodoxy opens in New York City. The conference leads to the founding of the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance
1997: The New York Timesincludes a review of The Boy Who Went Away, “Eli Gottlieb’s touching coming-of-age novel…”
1998: The funeral of Abraham Bloch, a graduate of Yeshiva Yitzchak Elchanan who served as the Rabbi of Congregation Petach Tikvah, is scheduled to take place in Brooklyn, NY today.
1998(20th of Shevat, 5758): Martha Gellhorn, whose father was Jewish, passed away at the age of 89. Gellhorn gained fame for her reporting during the Spanish Civil War and as one of the many wives of Ernest Hemingway.
1999: The United States Third Court of Appeals ruled on the constitutionality of holiday displays in ACLU versus Schundler.
2000: In an address before the Knesset, German President Johannes Rau asked forgiveness for Germany’s murderous treatment of Europe’s Jews during World War II.
2006: Britain's most senior Jewish leader has condemned the Church of England for voting this month to review its investments in companies whose products are used by Israel in the occupied territories. Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks said the Anglican vote on whether to pull money from "companies profiting from the illegal occupation" was ill-judged and would inflame relations between the two religions.
2007: Sheik Raed Salah, the head of the Islamic Movement’s northern branch gave a sermon in Jersualem’s Wadi Joz neighborhood in which he “urged supporters to start a third intifada in order to save Al-Aksa Mosque, free Jerusalem and end the end occupation.” Salah, who denies any Jewish historical claim to Jerusalem or the existence of a Jewish temple on the Temple Mount included these words, “We are not those who ate bread dipped in children’s blood.” (The Blood Libel is alive and well.)
2007: The Sabbath Queen gets a royal welcome at
Temple
Judah
in
Cedar Rapids
,
Iowa
as Rick Recht returns with “Shabbat Alive” Part II.
2007(28th of Shevat, 5767): Mordkhe Schaechter, a leading Yiddish linguist who spent a lifetime studying, standardizing and teaching the language passed away at the age of 79. As reported by Wolfgang Saxon)
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/16/obituaries/16schaechter.html
2008: The Jerusalem Cinematheque features a showing of the internationally acclaimed “The Band’s Visit” ( ביקור התזמורת).
2009: In New Orleans, “The Expanse of Russia in Israel,” an international conference sponsored by Tulane University’s Jewish Studies Program under the Chairmanship of Dr. Brian Horowitz, enters its second day. “The conference is devoted to a long-awaited investigation of Zionism and the influence of secular Russian culture on Israeli life.” Given the rise of Beiteinu leader Avigdor Lieberman, the topic of this conference becomes all the more urgent and timely.
http://www.tulane.edu/~jwst/WebsiteFiles/downloads/conference_schedule_02152009.pdf
2009: France's top judicial body formally recognized the nation's role in deporting Jews to Nazi death camps during the Holocaust - but effectively ruled out any more reparations for the deportees or their families.
2009:The German officer made famous in Roman Polanski's 2002 film The Pianistfor sheltering two Jews who escaped from the Nazis during the Holocaust has been posthumously recognized as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust Memorial. Wilm Hosenfeld was drafted into the German Army shortly before the outbreak of World War II and was stationed in Poland, where he spent most of the war as a sports and culture officer. During the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, he interrogated prisoners. After the war, Hosenfeld was arrested and tried by the Soviets and sentenced to life imprisonment. His sentence was subsequently commuted to 25 years, but Hosenfeld died in a Soviet prison in 1952. Over the years, the testimony of two Holocaust survivors was presented to Yad Vashem, detailing how the German officer had provided them with shelter from the Nazis. Leon Wurm testified that Hosenfeld employed him at the sports center after his escape from the train to Treblinka, while Wladyslaw wrote to Yad Vashem, as well as in his diaries (which became the basis for the film), that in November 1944 Hosenfeld helped him find a hiding place and that he provided blankets, food and moral support. Yad Vashem had previously considering bestowing the German officer with its highest honor for saving the pair, but waited until it was clear that he was not involved in war crimes during the Warsaw Uprising. Recently, new material, including Hosenfeld's personal diaries, and letters to his wife were reviewed by Yad Vashem, which clarify his "consistent stance" against the Nazi policy toward the Jews, Yad Vashem said. In his writing, Hosenfeld stressed his growing disgust with the regime's oppression of Poles, the persecution of Polish clergy, abuse of the Jews, and, with the beginning of the Final Solution, his horror at the extermination of the Jewish people. Although Hosenfeld supported the Nazi party in its beginnings, it is clear that as he saw the consequences of the Nazis' rise to power, his opposition to them was deep and consistent, Yad Vashem said. Hosenfeld's children, who live in Germany, will receive the medal and certificate on their late father's behalf. More than 22,000 non-Jews have been recognized as "Righteous Among the Nations" by Yad Vashem.
2010:Yeshiva University Museum, Center for Jewish History, University of Pennsylvania in cooperation with Centro Primo Levi are scheduled to present “Between Sacred and Profane: Jews and the Modern City: Three Snapshots” part of “a series of talks by fellows at the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies (U of Penn) who are engaged in a critical analysis of the notions of the "secular" and "religious" as they affect all aspects of Jewish life over the past three centuries.
2010: Israel will erect a memorial commemorating the Red Army’s crucial role in the victory over the Nazis, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told Russian Prime Minster Vladimir Putin at a photo opportunity before their meeting today.
2010: Four hundred cadets graduated from the IDF Infantry Officers Training Course today and will be awarded the rank of second lieutenant. The highest number of awards for excellence went to the Golani Brigade.
2011: “Jewish Life in Mr. Lincoln’s City,” a lecture by Laura Cohen Apelbaum the Executive Director of the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington, is scheduled to take place at Adas Israel in Washington, D.C.
2011: “Precious Life,” an “acclaimed documentary that explores the paradoxes of a Palestinian infant being treated for a rare immune disorder at an Israeli hospital” during a period when the IDF was fighting to halt rocket attacks from Gaza, is scheduled to be shown at the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival.
2011: The Jewish community of Tunisia filed an official complaint with Tunisian Interior Minister Fahrat Rajhi after several of its members were harassed by protesters last Friday outside a synagogue in the capital, Tunis.
2011: Human rights lawyers are attempting to challenge a government decision designating the planned city of Harish as a haredi-only town. In a letter sent today to the directors-general committee established by the government to promote the city’s establishment, attorneys Michael Sfard and Ishai Shneydor, representing residents of the region, wrote that the plan to populate Harish with only haredi residents was unconstitutional.
2011: The Iron Dome missile intercept system will be declared operational within a number of weeks, after the Israel Air Force – who will be responsible for operating the system – conducted successful test-runs for the first time yesterday and today.
2011(11th of Adar I, 5771): Len Lesser, a veteran character actor best known for his recurring role in the 1990s as Uncle Leo on the hit NBC-TV comedy "Seinfeld," passed away today at the age of 88 8n Burbank, CA ( As reported by Bruce Weber)
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/18/arts/television/18lesser.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Len+Lesser&st=nyt
2011: Today in celebration of Black History month Knicks legend and Assistant General Manager Allan Houston received the 2011 Martin Luther King Jr. Award in front of players and fans at Madison Square Garden. Mr. Houston received the award from Ido Aharoni, Acting Consul General of Israel in New York, in honor of his efforts in spreading compassion and uniting communities of all backgrounds.
2012: “Ahead of Time: The Extraordinary Journey of Ruth Gruber” is scheduled to be shown at the Conservative Synagogue Adath Israel of Riverdale in New York.
2012: Yasmin Levy is scheduled to weave her Ladino musical magic at Pace University’s Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts
2012:Mossad chief Tamir Pardo visited New Delhi just days before an attack on Israeli officials in the Indian capital this week, Indian media reported today, highlighting the extent to which Israeli intelligence was in the dark regarding possibility of a terror attack taking place in the country.
2012: Today, the Foreign Ministry issued a travel warning for Israelis in Thailand. The warning said that in the wake of the attacks on Israelis in India and Georgia earlier this week, Israelis should “act with caution” when traveling in Thailand.
2012: Yair Lapid warned today that Israel might "bring on its own demise" and demanded a change in the system of government.
2013: Cirque du Purim, the YLD”s annual Purim Party is scheduled to take place in Irvine, CA this evening.
2013: “Off White Lies” is scheduled to be shown at the Denver Jewish Film Festival