February 18 In History
1229: During The Sixth Crusade, Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor signed a ten-year truce with al-Kamil, regaining Jerusalem, Nazareth, and Bethlehem with neither military engagements nor support from the papacy. Prior to the Sixth Crusade, Pope Gregory III had used the Crusading Spirit to impose anti-Semitic legislation. Frederick II was involved in a power struggle with the Papacy. As part of that he struggle, he defied Rome and granted a charter of privileges to the Jews of Vienna in 1238.
1239: The ten year truce between Emperor Frederick II and the Sultan of Egypt came to an end. During this period, 1236, the Emperor issued a decree refuting the accusations of ritual murder and providing for the protection of his Jewish subjects.
http://www.ccjr.us/dialogika-resources/primary-texts-from-the-history-of-the-relationship/265-frederick-ii
1546: Martin Luther passed away. Luther was a significant figure in the movement to reform Christianity. He extended the hand of friendship to the Jews, thinking that he could win them over to his side with kindness. When the Jews rejected his goal - conversion - Luther turned on them. By 1544, he was publishing a pamphlet entitled "Concerning the Jews and Their Lies." Jews were characterized as “venomous, virulent, thieves, brigands and disgusting vermin." According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, "'...Luther's ferocious castigation of the Jews provided fuel for anti-Semites and vicious force of that legacy was still evident in Nazi propaganda.'"
1564:Michelangelo passed away. Among his works were a statue of Moses that had horns and a statue of an uncircumcised David.
1574: An auto-de-fe took place in Mexico City; nearly 100 people were sentenced that day, including New Christians.
1577: The Jews of Safed requested assistance from the Sultan for persecution by local officials. In a letter to the local Ottoman officials, the Sultan told his people that the Jews, "have complained of wrong done to them." The Jews were forced to pay high taxes, transport dung on Saturdays, were levies tolls on the road to Damascus, and were beaten with a strip of metal. The Sultan ordered his people not to molest the Jews, to investigate and give back what the Jews are owed.
1723:In Prussia a revised form of the "Aeltesten-reglement" (Constitution of the Jewish Community) was issued. The original document which was supposed to be read every in the synagogue was issued in March of 1722.
1757: In Avignon, France, a local townsman walking through the ghetto on a dark night, stumbled and fell into a well near the synagogue. Fortunately he was not hurt. The day was declared a local holiday for generations. The rationale was that had the townsman drowned so near the synagogue, the Jewish community would have been accused of complicity in his death.
1804: Ohio University founded in Athens, Ohio. Today approximately 10% of its 17,000 students are Jewish. There is an on-campus Hillel Chapter at Ohio University.
1839: Birthdate of Zadoc Kahn, the Alsatian native who became Chief Rabbi of France.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0011_0_10603.html
1840: Sultan Abdul Mejid I issued a royal decree absolving the Jewish community on the island of Rhodes of charges “of having killed a gentile child” so that his blood could be used in baking matzoth. The day was celebrated as The Purim of Rhodes. The Sultan was a reformer who was trying to make the Ottoman Empire a modern nation as can be seen by his attempts to replace the turban with the fez, introduce the use of banknotes and the issuing of a patent so that a telegraph system could be built in Turkey.
1846:Beginning of the Galician peasant revolt. At this time Galicia was a province of the Austrian Empire. The revolt was one of many that would sweep Europe during the late 1840’s. By 1851, once the revolts in Galicia had been suppressed, the Reform Constitution would be revoked and, among other things, Jews would lose their newly won right to purchase land in Galicia,
1848(14th of Adar I, 5608): Purim Katan
1850: In Budapest, Karl Ullmann and his wife gave birth to Jump to Alexander de Erény Ullmann the political economist who served in the Hungarian Parliament from 1884 to 1892. His father who was born in 1809 and passed away in 1880 founded the first Hungarian Insurance Company. Alexander passed away in 1897.
1852: According to reports published today, a juror named Shubal Hubbard claimed that Alexander Christallar, a witness for the defendant, had tried to engage him in inappropriate social contact during a break in the trial. In his deposition, Hubbard claimed that Christallar was a Jew and that he was President of a Williamsburg Synagogue. He also claimed that Christallar had invited him to a celebration at which Oysters would be served.
1859: Birthdate of Solomon Rabinowitz who became famous under the penname of Sholem Aleichem. Born in Russia, Sholem Aleichem first wrote in Hebrew and only later turned to writing in Yiddish. He moved from Russia to Denmark, to Switzerland and ultimately moved to the United States at the outbreak of World War I. Unfortunately, he only lived in America for two years and he passed away in 1916. Known as the Yiddish Mark Twain, Sholem Aleichem is most famous for creating Tevya and all of the wonderful characters who lived with him in the shtetels of the Pale. He used humor to portray both the joy and the suffering of his co-religionists. He became famous among generations of Jews who had thought they had escaped from all of that "Yiddish stuff" and gentiles as well with the production of Fiddler on the Roof. Some of his famous lines include: "In the mud, but not of the mud." "When a Jew eats a chicken one of them was sick." "A bachelor is a man who comes to work each morning from a different direction." "Gossip is nature's telephone." "Life is a dream for the wise, a game for the fool, a comedy for the rich, a tragedy for the poor." "No matter how bad things get you got to go on living, even if it kills you." "The rich swell up with pride, the poor from hunger." Some of his works that have been translated into English include Tevye's Daughters, The Adventures of Menahem-Mendel, The Best of Sholom Aleichem and The Great Fair which is his autobiography.
1861: With the Italian unification almost complete, King Victor Emmanuel II of Piedmont, Savoy and Sardinia assumes the title of King of Italy. Jews were active participants in the fight to unify Italy and the newly unified Italian nation was certainly hospitable to its Jewish citizens. Historian Elliot Rosenberg cites a quote from his fellow historian Howard Morely Sacher to capture what the new Italian nation meant to the Jewish people. “In 1848, there had been no European country save Spain where the restrictions placed upon Jews were more galling and more humiliating than in Italy. After 1860, there was no country on the continent of Europe where conditions were better for Jews.”
1866: Birthdate of Samuel Krauss, a professor at the Jewish Teachers' Seminary in Budapest and the Jewish Theological Seminary in Vienna who was a contributor to the Jewish Encyclopedia.
1870: State Supreme Court Justice Cardozo denied a motion for an injunction in an action styled the Mayor of New York City vs. the Beach Pneumatic Transit Company.
1871: Rabbi Wise delivered the first in a series of lectures on the “Origin of Christianity” at Steinway Hall in New York City. Reverend O.B. Frothingham introduced the Rabbi.
1874(1st of Adar, 5634): Rosh Chodesh Adar
1876: In Maryland, Circuit Court Judge Pinkney, ruled that the City of Baltimore did not have the right give public funds to a variety of charitable organizations including the Hebrew Hospital.
1880: Mr. Moses Levinson of New Rochelle sued the New Haven Railroad today in United States Circuit Court for “exemplary damages.” Levinson contended that he had been wrongfully put off one of the New Haven’s trains when the conductor claimed he had not paid for his ticket. Levinson sought $5,000 in damages. The jury awarded him $750.
1882: In “The Russian War on the Jews” published today, it was reported that Jews of Kiev have been subjected to renewed attacks and that Count Totleben has refused to intervene without special instructions from the government at St. Petersburg.
1882: In Philadelphia, PA, the old passenger station belong to the Pennsylvania Railroad, has been configured to provide temporary accommodations for the Jewish refugees who will arrive in the city after having escaped from the recent round of pogroms in Russia. A supply of food has been gathered for the refugees and Dr. Thomas G. Morton is the head of a group of doctors who will be available to take care of their medical needs. In the mean time, an Employment Committee will make every effort to find jobs for the new arrivals.
1887: In New York, the Hebrew Technical Institute moved from its location on Crosby Street to its new school building at 34 and 36 Stuyvesant Street. Founded in 1884, the school provides vocational training to young Jews most of whom are the children of recent immigrants.
1890: In Moscow, according to the Gregorian Calendar, Leonid Pasternak, a professor at the Moscow School of Paint, Sculpture and Architecture and concert pianist Rosa Kaufman gave birth to Boris Pasternak, the author of Doctor Zhivago
1894: It was reported today that George Eliot had told American author Charles Godfrey Leland “that in order to write Daniel Deronda she had read through 200 books.” Leland wrote that he “longed to tell her that she had better have learned Yiddish and talked with 200 Jews and been taught, as Iwas by my friend Solomon the Sadducee, the art of distinguishing Fraulein Lowenthal of the Ashkenazim from Senorita Aguado of the Sephardim by the corners of their eyes.” (Daniel Deronda is the philo-Semitic novel written by Mary Anne Evans who used the penname George Eliot. At the time of this entry, Leland was doing research on gypsies.)
1894: “All Fools’ Day” published today claimed that 17thcentury antiquarian John Brand attributed the origin of April Fool’s Day to the Jews. According to Brand, Noah sent the dove out of the ark before the waters had abated on a day which corresponds to April 1. The celebration of fools on this date reminds of the original “fool’s errand” on which Noah sent the Dove.
1894: It was reported today that the late Albert S. Rosenbaum passed away as a result of heart disease which probably does not offer any comfort to the widow and five children who survived him.
1897: In Paris, French author Emil Zola was attacked by a mob on his way home from the court where his case was being heard. The police were forced to intervene to prevent a lynching. The frustrated mob then “made a rush for the Jews threatening to throw them into the Seine.”
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F50710F8355D11738DDDA00994DA405B8885F0D3
1901: Winston Churchill makes his maiden speech in the House of Commons. At the time, Churchill was member of the Conservative Party serving as an MP for Oldham. In 1904, the Conservatives at Oldham would tell Churchill that they could no longer support him. This would force Churchill to seek a new constituency which would be Manchester North-West where a third of the voters were Jewish. This change in political fortune would force Churchill to deal with Jewish political issues for the first, but not the last time, in his career. For more on this topic you should Sir Martin Gilbert’s highly readable Churchill and the Jews.
1910: In Lithuania, Rabbi Moshe Yom Tov Wachtfogel gave birth to Nosson Meir Wachtfogel who became known as the Lakewood Mashgiach.
1913:During the Third Republic, when real power was held by the Prime Ministers, Raymond Poincaré becomes President of France. Along with General Pershing (commander of the AEF), Poincare opposed the Armistice contending that Allied armies needed to penetrate deeper into Germany lest the German people not realize that their army had been beaten. Their view did not prevail. The German Army marched back into Germany giving rise to the “stabbed in the back” myth that helped Hitler come to power. During the 1920’s, Poincare intervened on behalf of the Jews of Poland when he convinced the Polish government to refrain from adopting legislation that would have discriminated against her Jewish citizens.
1916: Birthdate of Maria Victoria Bloch-Bauer, who as Maria Altmann gained fame for her “successful, five decades long fight to regain five Gustav Klimt paintings owned by her family that had been stolen by the Nazis during World War II.
1918: Morris Rothenberg, Chairman of the Zionist Committee of New York, presided over the memorial service held in honor of the late Jechiel Tchlenow, the Russian born doctor who passed away in London only months after having participated in the negotiations that produced the Balfour Declaration.
1927: The London Gazette reported from Whitehall that “Letters Patent have passed the Great Seal of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, granting the Dignity of a Baronet of the said United Kingdom to the undermentioned gentlemen and the heirs male of their respective lawfully begotten:
Sir Joseph Duveen, of Millbank in the City of Westminster”
1929: First Academy Awards are announced. “Broadway Melody” produced by Irving Thalberg was named Best Picture for 1928 – 1929. “All Quiet on the Western Front” directed by Lewis Milestone was named Best Picture of 1929-1930.
1930: Richard Rodgers & Lorenz Hart's "Simple Simon" premieres in New York
1931: King Levinsky fought a four round exhibition with former Heavy Weight Champion Jack Dempsey. Levinsky the scion of a Jewish family from Chicago that had a fish business on Maxwell Street
1932: Birthdate of Czech born film director Milos Forman. Forman’s father was Jewish but his mother was not. They died in the camps.
1933: Marinus van der Lubbe, the man who will be accused of setting the Reichstag Fire, arrived in Berlin. There are those who contend the fire was really set by the Nazis. Regardless, they used it as tool to consolidate their power weeks after Hitler became Chancellor.
1934(3rd of Adar, 5694): “Dr. Heinrich York Steiner, Hungarian Jewish writer, friend of Dr. Theodore Herzl” and one of the founders of the Zionist movement passed away today at the age of 75. Dr. York-Steiner, who was born in Hungary, spent most of his life in Vienna. Known as a novelist, critic and dramatist, he became friendly with Dr. Herzl as a young man and worked closely with him to form Zionist groups. He played an important part in the creation of the World Zionist Organization.”
1938: The Palestine Post reported that owing to German influence there had been in recent months a concentrated Italian drive against the appointment of Jews to leading positions in the economic and political life of the state.
1938: The Palestine Post reported that there were three successive Arab attacks on the Rana police post, near Acre. Some 150 Arab villagers in the Tulkarm area were arrested in connection with a number of recent railway sabotages.
1938: The Palestine Post reported that Maestro Toscanini had withdrawn from participating in the Nazi-dominated Salzburg Festival and announced his intention to come and conduct the Orchestra in Palestine.
1940: In Warsaw, two Jewish girls were raped by two German sergeants.
1943: A group of 1,220 Jewish refugees from Poland arrived in Israel from Tehran where they had found refuge in 1924.
http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%205872.pdf
1943: Joseph Goebbels gave his Total War speech which should have put an end to any later claims that the Allies were wrong in pursuing a policy of Unconditional Surrender when fighting the Axis.
1943: The Nazis arrest the members of the White Rose movement. The White Rose movement was an anti-Nazi movement inspired by German students. It is important to remember that there were those in Germany who opposed Hitler and were willing to risk their lives to express that opposition.
1946: A clandestine radio transmitter known as the “Voice of Free Israel” that is reportedly operated by the Stern Gang was seized in Tel Aviv after “a house to house search by British Soldiers and police officers.”
1946: Clemens August Galen was named as a Cardinal. During World War II, while serving as the Bishop of Munster (Germany), he opposed the Nazis.
1947: Birthdate of Eliot Engel, Congressman representing New York’s 17th District.
1949: Eamon de Valera resigns as Taoiseach (head of government) of Ireland. The controversial Irish leader was rumored to have been the illegitimate son of a Portuguese Jew, a rumor he vehemently denied. However de Valera was not an anti-Semite as can be seen by his support in 1937 for a provision in the Irish Constitution that explicitly recognized the existence and rights of the Jewish community in Ireland.
1953: The Jerusalem Post reported that the Knesset approved, by 79 votes to 16, the government's statement on the ruptured relations with the Soviet Union. The resolution upheld the role the Soviet Union played in the establishment of Israel in 1948, but found no justification for the Soviet role in breaking off the diplomatic relations between the two countries now. Mass meetings in New York asked the Soviet Union to "Let My People Go!"
1953: The Jerusalem Post reported that in London the House of Commons backed the British government's decision to continue selling jet fighters to Arab nations to the exclusion of Israel.
1955: Pinchas Lavon’s resignation as Defense Minister is accepted.
1955: David Ben Gurion agrees to come out of retirement and serve as Defense Minister. Four months later he will also agree to serve as Prime Minister.
1967(8th of Adar I, 5727): Robert Oppenheimer passed away. The famed physicist was director of the Manhattan Project and is one of those referred to as the father of the Atomic Bomb.
1969: The PLO attacked El-Al plane in Zurich Switzerland. Long before 9/11, the Israelis were forced to deal with a level of vicious terrorism aimed at strangling their avenues of commerce and tourist industry. As a result of the PLO attacks, the Israelis were the first to put sky marshals on their flights and to do in depth pre-screening of all passengers. And yes, the head of the PLO was Yassar Arafat, the "partner for peace."
1970: The Chicago Eight, including Abbe Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, were found not guilty of charges relating to the riots at the 1968 Democratic Convention held in Chicago.
1973: A headline in the New York Times read "Half Baghdad's Jews Said to Apply to Leave; Property Seized." "Half the members of the tiny Jewish community in Baghdad have applied for passports to leave Iraq in recent weeks in the face of a crackdown by Iraqi authorities, according to a first day account.
1973: In Montreal's Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, Naim Kattan, an Iraqi-born Jew spoke at a memorial and protest rally for nine more Jews who had been murdered in Baghdad. (page 300 for the dead)
1981: Israel's 60,000 teachers, who earn an average of $110 a week, staged a one-day strike today to press for a wage increase promised by the Government. The Government's decision in principle last month to grant the raise brought the resignation of Finance Minister Yigal Hurvitz, which resulted in the Government coalition losing its majority in Parliament. Negotiations, however, have continued.
1988(30th of Shevat, 5748): Rosh Chodesh Adar
1990: Dozens of supporters are planning to lie down across the road here in front of Ariel Sharon's northern Negev ranch this morning to stop him from driving to Jerusalem for the Cabinet meeting where he plans to resign. But as the former general sees it, by resigning as Industry and Trade Minister he is not leaving; he is simply opening a new front. And the goal of this new campaign, he said in an interview, is to be Israel's next prime minister replacing Yitzhak Shamir.
1992(14th of Adar I, 5752): Purim Katan
1999(2nd of Adar, 5759): Comedic actor and director Noam Pitlik passed away.
2003: (16th of Adar I, 5763) Isser Harel, head of Mossad from 1952 until 1963, passed away. He was in charge of the operation that brought Eichmann to Israel to stand trial.
2005(9th of Adar I, 5765): Lee Kahn passed away at the age of 101. She was one of the siblings of Helen Reichert, all of whom were centenarians.
2006: Shabbat Shekalim, the Sabbath of the Shekel.
2007: The 23rd International Book Fair opens in Jerusalem and will run until Friday, February 23, 2007, at the Binyanei Haooma Convention Center.
2007: The Sunday New York Times book section featured a review of French Seduction: An American’s Encounter With France, Her Father, and the Holocaust by Eunice Lipton. The book deals, in part with the sense of conflict that art historian Eunice Lipton, the offspring of Jews who fled the rising tide of pre-war anti-Semitism, feels when chooses to live in Paris, city rich in art and rife with the memories of the roundup of Jews by the Nazis and their French partner.s
2007: The Sunday Washington Post book section “Poet’s Choice” by Robert Pinksy features a commentary on "The Amen Stone" and The Jewish Time Bomb" that appeared in Yehuda Amichai's last collection of poems, Open Closed Open.
2007: The Sunday Chicago Tribune book section included a review of Amanda Vaill's Somewhere, a biography of Jerome Wilson Rabinowitz who came to be known as Jerome Robbins the man who “conquered--and in many ways defined--both the musical and modern American ballet, a genius by nature…”
2008: In New York, Dror will perform his graduation Recital at Mannes Concert Hall.The program includes the favorites of all times- Beethoven's Waldstein Sonata and Chopin's 'Funeral March' Sonata.Dror will perform his graduation Recital at Mannes Concert Hall.The program includes the favorites of all times- Beethoven's Waldstein Sonata and Chopin's 'Funeral March' Sonata.Dror will perform his graduation Recital at Mannes Concert Hall.The program includes the favorites of all times- Beethoven's Waldstein Sonata and Chopin's 'Funeral March' Sonata.Dror will perform his graduation Recital at Mannes Concert Hall.The program includes the favorites of all times- Beethoven's Waldstein Sonata and Chopin's 'Funeral March' Sonata.Dror will perform his graduation Recital at Mannes Concert Hall.The program includes the favorites of all times- Beethoven's Waldstein Sonata and Chopin's 'Funeral March' Sonata.Dror will perform his graduation Recital at Mannes Concert Hall.The program includes the favorites of all times- Beethoven's Waldstein Sonata and Chopin's 'Funeral March' Sonata.Dror will perform his graduation Recital at Mannes Concert Hall.The program includes the favorites of all times- Beethoven's Waldstein Sonata and Chopin's 'Funeral March' Sonata.Dror will perform his graduation Recital at Mannes Concert Hall.The program includes the favorites of all times- Beethoven's Waldstein Sonata and Chopin's 'Funeral March' Sonata.Dror will perform his graduation Recital at Mannes Concert Hall.The program includes the favorites of all times- Beethoven's Waldstein Sonata and Chopin's 'Funeral March' Sonata.Dror will perform his graduation Recital at Mannes Concert Hall.The program includes the favorites of all times- Beethoven's Waldstein Sonata and Chopin's 'Funeral March' Sonata.Dror will perform his graduation Recital at Mannes Concert Hall.The program includes the favorites of all times- Beethoven's Waldstein Sonata and Chopin's 'Funeral March' Sonata.Drior Baitel performs his graduation recital at Mannes Concert Hall. The performance includes such favorites as Beethoven’s Waldstein Sonata and Chopin’s Funeral March Sonata.
2008: In the United States, FBI domestic terror squads remain on the alert for any threats against synagogues and other potential Jewish targets in the United States after the assassination of the top Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyah and the movement's leader threatened to attack Israeli and Jewish institutions around the world.
2009:In, Manhattan’s East Village, the fourth and final part of a four part series The Comedy and Kabbalah of Relationships featuring Rabbi YY Jacobson
2009: At New York University, Professor Yoram Peri, head of the Chaim Herzog Institute for Media, Politics and Society at Tel Aviv University delivers a public lecture entitled "New Leadership in Israel and the Peace Process"
2009: Today, the IDF announced that apples grown by Israeli farmers in the Golan Heights will be exported to Syria.. The move followed a request from the Red Cross, and was approved by relevant government departments in Jerusalem and Damascus. The transfer has been carried out yearly for the past four years. The first such delivery took place in 2005, marking the first time Syria had traded with territory Israel captured in 1967.
2009:The New York Times reported that the American Tennis Channel will not televise the Barclays Dubai Tennis Championships this week to protest the United Arab Emirates' refusal to grant an entry visa to Israeli player Shahar Peer. Peer was scheduled to play Russia's Anna Chakvetadze in the first round.
2009:Holocaust survivors voiced criticism of Yad Vashem's announcement that it will bestow its highest honor on a Nazi officer who helped save a Polish Jew, whose story became the basis for the film "The Pianist. "Yad Vashem said it would posthumously name ex-Wehrmacht officer Wilm Hosenfeld as Righteous Among the Nations - a title reserved for non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust. While serving in Poland in 1944, Hosenfeld is believed to have helped pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman find a hiding place, providing him with, "blankets, food and moral support." According to Yad Vashem, another Jew, Leon Wurm, testified that Hosenfeld - who died in 1952 in a soviet prison - employed him after Wurm escaped from a train headed to Treblinka."
2010: The 92nd St Y is scheduled to present another in the series Spiritual Journeys: Feminine Reflections on the Rhythms of Our Lives entitled “Adar: Increasing Joy” with Rabbi Joyce Reinitz.
2010: Today, while the media is filled with stories about supposed Israeli resonsiblity for the death of Hamas leader in Dubai, Israeli tennis player Shahar Peer advanced to the semifinals of the Dubai Championship, after beating 10th seed Na Li in the quarterfinal match.
2010: An IDF soldier was lightly wounded today by a bomb which exploded near a patrol unit on the security fence near the central Gaza Strip.
2010: Terrorists hurled a Molotov cocktail at an Israeli bus in Gush Etzion yesterday evening. There were no casualties, but the bus was damaged.
2010: The Washington Post features a review of Bible Babel: Making Sense of the Most Talked About Book of All Timeby Kristin Swenson in which the reviewer recommends “Robert Alter’s books…as well as the exhilarating Richard Elliot Friedman’s Who Wrote the Bible?
2011: Einsatzgruppen The Death Brigades, the “harrowing two-part documentary yhat meticulously details the Nazi killing squads charged with destroying entire Jewish populations in occupied Eastern Europe during WWII” is scheduled to be shown at the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival.
2011: A Small Act is scheduled to be shown at the 21st Annual San Diego Jewish Film Festival.
2011: The Portland Jazz Festival is scheduled to start today. “This year's theme is 'Bridges and Boundaries', which refers to bridging the two minority communities of Jewish Americans and African Americans.”
2011: A German prosecutor said today that he has opened a murder investigation against a key witness in the trial of alleged Nazi war criminal John Demjanjuk. The probe is based on evidence Alex Nagorny may have been involved in mass killings at the Nazis' Treblinka concentration camp in occupied Poland.
2011: Friends and family celebrate the birthday of Joel Barnum, an unpressuposing pillar of the Cedar Rapids Jewish Community.
2011: The United States used its veto this afternoon to block a Security Council resolution declaring Israel’s settlement construction in the West Bank illegal. The other 14 members of the council voted in favor of the resolution. The Obama administration has criticized Israel’s settlement policy for the past two years, but in the end it chose to use the veto rather than allow the split between the United States and Israel to deepen. (As reported by Neil MacFarquhar)
2011: In “Auschwitz Shifts From Memorializing to Teaching,” Michael Kimmelman described the changing role of the site of the worst of the Death Camps.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/19/arts/19auschwitz.html?pagewanted=all
2012: Shabbat Shekalim, 5772
2012: “Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldbeerg is scheduled to be shown at Beth El Temple Center in Belmont, MA
2012: “Jewish Soldiers in Blue and Gray” is scheduled to be shown at Congregation Beth-El Jewish Film Festival in Fort Worth, TX!
2012: In Iowa City, Hillel is schedyked to present a concert by University of Iowa School of Music faculty members, Uriel Tsachor and Rachel Joselson.
2012:Palestinian terrorists in Gaza took advantage of stormy weather conditions to fire rockets towards large southern cities in Israel.
2012:British Foreign Secretary William Hague said that Iran is clearly trying to develop a nuclear weapons capability, and if it succeeds it will set off a dangerous round of nuclear proliferation across the Middle East while the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army General Martin Dempsey said that an Israeli strike on Iran "wouldn’t achieve its long-term objectives" and would be "destabilizing."
2013: In London, Professor Neil Gregor is scheduled to deliver a lecture entitled “Mockery as Politics: The Degenerate Art Exhibition, 1937” in which he examines how the Degenerate Art Exhibition of 1937 was used to prepare people intellectually for the Holocaust
2013: Hadassah’s National Center for Attorneys’ Councils and the Greater Washington Area Chapter Attorneys’ Council are scheduled to host a dinner honor those who are to be sworn into the U.S. Supreme Court
<span