March 16 In History
597
BCE
: On the secular calendar, according to certain archaeological calculations, the first conquest of Jerusalem by Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar occurred. In the Bible, the event is recorded in 2 Kings 24:1ff. and in 2 Chronicles 36:5-8. It is also implied in the early chapters of Jeremiah and Ezekiel.
37: Caligula becomes Roman Emperor after the death of his great uncle, Tiberius. Caligula was a challenge to all those he ruled, including the Jews, because he was “crazy.” Among other things, he appointed his favorite horse to the position of Consul. He did present a special problem for Jews because he believed he was a god and expected to be worshipped by his subjects. Fortunately, he never succeeded in having his golden image installed in the Temple of Jerusalem. After a bizarre meeting with a delegation of Jews from Alexander that included the famous Philo, Caligula said of the Jews, “They’re not so bad after all. They’re just a poor, stupid people unable to believe in my divinity”
455: Valentinian III, Western Roman Emperor passed away. During his reign, the position of Jews continued to worsen. Under one imperial decree, Jews were excluded from government service and were prohibited from practicing law. Another decree made it possible for the children of Jews who converted to Christianity to inherit the property of their Jewish parents.
1190: On the Sabbath eve before Passover ("Shabbat Hagadol") in York, England, a group made up of clergy, barons indebted to the Jews, and crusaders waiting to follow Richard, set Jewish houses on fire and stole all their valuables. The Jews under Josce, a prominent Jew of York, and their Rabbi, Yom Tov of Joigny (a contemporary of Rabbenu Tam and author of the Yom Kippur Hymn "Omnam Ken"), fled to the castle. Richard Malebys (a noble who owed large sums to Jewish moneylenders) commanded the attackers. For 6 days the Jews held out. A monk who came each morning to celebrate mass and inflame the crowd was killed by a stone thrown from the tower. Facing the choice of baptism or death, most chose death. (Josce killed his wife and two children, and was in turn killed by the Rabbi). The vast majority killed themselves after destroying their belongings. Josce was the last to die. The few who remained opened the gate and requested baptism. They were massacred anyway. Over 150 Jews died.
http://www.israelvideonetwork.com/jews-of-york-massacre-of-1190-a-film-by-barry-levinson
1722: The new "Aeltesten-reglement" (Constitution of the Jewish Community) was issued today in Prussia. It was intended to do away with the evils that had become apparent in the administration of the community, and which, in order to be brought home more thoroughly, was to be read every year in the synagogue. Under this constitution the administration consisted of two permanent chief elders, five elders, four treasurers, and four superintendents of the poor, and assistants; new officers were to be elected every three years by seven men chosen by lot from among the community. The committee was to meet every week in the room of the elders, and to keep the minutes of their proceedings; resolutions, passed by them, becoming law by a majority vote. The exclusion of a member of the community from the Passover was made dependent on the unanimous vote of the committee; the ban could be pronounced only with the consent of the rabbi; and both of these measures were to be subject to ratification by the Jews' commission. The elders were held responsible with their own money for the proper collection of the taxes, but could proceed against delinquent payers. Every year the entire board had to report to a committee of five chosen by the community. The college of rabbis was to consist of a chief rabbi, a vice rabbi and two or three assessors. Other taxes were soon added to the existing ones; e.g., on pawnshops, and calendar money for the Royal Society of Science, and marriage licenses. The income from the last was paid into the treasury from which enlisted men received their pay, and its amount (4,800 thalers a year) soon became a permanent tax upon the whole community.
1743: The New-York Weekly Journal reported that a Jewish funeral procession in New York was attacked by a mob. According to "one learned Christian" witness to it, the mob had, "insulted the dead in such a vile manner that to mention all would shock a human ear."
1751: Birthdate of James Madison author of the Federalist Papers and 4th President of the United States. Madison was also the President during the War of 1812. He was the first President to appoint a Jew to a diplomatic post. “In 1813, President Madison appointed Mordecai Manuel Noah as Consul to Tunis in the Barbary States, where he obtained the release of Americans who had been captured and sold into slavery by the Barbary pirates. It was a difficult task requiring considerable adroitness, but he spent more than his allotment for the purposes and his commission was revoked, the letter of recall affirming that his religion was deemed to disqualify him for the post…In time, however, he got a clan bill of health in the conduct of his mission and the sums he advanced in performing it were reimbursed.” While Noah’s name is known but a handful today, he was considered to be “the most conspicuous figure in the American Jewish community in the period between the War of 1812 and the Mexican War (1846).” When he returned from Tunis, Noah became a power in New York politics. At one point he was elected High Sheriff of New York. One angry citizen complained about Noah saying “What a pity that Christians are to be hung by a Jew.” Noah replied, “What a pity that Christians should have to be hung.”
1802: The United States Military Academy West Point is established. According to recent figures, there are 85 Jewish Cadets among the 4.200 members of the Corps of Cadets. There is an accredited Hillel Chapter at West Point and a Jewish Chaplain. “The West Point Jewish community provides a warm, supportive, nondenominational family to all West Point Jewish cadets and cadet friends. Family night services are very popular. The choir practices once per week and travels several times per semester to other university Hillel Houses and community functions for relaxed overnight trips. The community celebrates nearly all Jewish holidays and the West Point Hillel sponsors parties, retreats and service field trips.” “The completion of the Jewish Chapel in 1984 culminated a twenty year undertaking. The organization responsible for the project was the West Point Jewish Chapel Fund a private, non-profit civilian organization. This group raised more than 7.5 million dollars to erect and furnish the facility. In 1986 the Jewish Chapel was deeded to the Academy. Led by a military chaplain, the congregation serves the needs of various branches of Judaism represented in the Armed Forces. In close connection with the Jewish Welfare Board worship resources are designed to meet the broad spectrum of our faith. The Chapel contains an extensive Judaica collection, a fine library, and special exhibits. Sabbath services are held every Friday evening during the academic year at 7:00 p.m.”
1855: Bates College in Lewiston, Maine is founded. According to recent figures, this small liberal arts college has 150 Jewish students among its 1,700 student body. The school has a Hillel Chapter. The environment on campus is described as follows. “Bates is very supportive of the Jewish Community. Jewish students gather weekly for Shabbat services and dinner at the Multicultural Center. Films, lectures, holidays, and parties are frequent. Highlights include Sukkah Building and campout, Tu B`Shvat Seder, and Parent's Weekend Bagel Brunch. Bates has a Klezmer Band, Gefilte Dog, and speakers are brought to campus for forums and discussions often. Hillel also presents a visiting Rabbi retreat. Programs are also held with students at Colby and Bowdoin. Bates students volunteer at the local synagogue, Temple Shalom.”
1860: Based on reports from the Halifax Sun, “an extraordinary event in the history of the German Jews has just taken place. In the free City of Hamburg, where a Jew, ten years ago, was not even eligible for a night constable, a Jew, by the free suffrages of the citizens, has lately been chosen a chief magistrate, next in station to the highest dignity in that Republic. The gentleman elected is a distinguished juris-consult and writer, Dr. Gabriel Reisser who was Vice-President of the German Parliament that sat at Frankfort in 1848.” Born in 1806, Gabriel Riesser “was the first Jewish judge in Germany and an advocate of the emancipation of the Jews in Germany.”
1868: An article published today entitled “Affairs In England” described the reaction to Benjamin Disraeli who was a member of the Conservative or Tory Party, being selected to serve as Prime Minister. Generally speaking, the “Radical press” has congratulated Disraeli on the appointment and wish him well in his new position. The “Conservative press” has responded coldly, showing distinct dissatisfaction with Disraeli’s appointment. For them, Disraeli’s appointment is not a triumph for the Tories but “a blow to their prejudices and principles.” Instead of being led by Duke or an Earl, the party is now being led by a commoner who “is not an Englishman by descent” but rather by a man “whose grandfather was a Jew of Venice, whose father was a man of letters” and who himself was the editor of a newspaper.
1872: Emily Catherine and Josiah Wedgwood gave birth to Josiah Clement Wedgwood the British political leader. During the 1930’s Wedgwood took the politically unpopular positions of opposing the appeasement of Hitler and the limitations on Jewish settlement in Palestine that climaxed with the White Paper of 1939. Although he passed away in 1943, the Jewish people honored his memory by naming several things in his honor including Moshav, an INS destroyer and streets in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa.
1874: It was reported today that the Germania Theatre Company will be performing at the Terrace Garden Theatre in two days for the benefit of the Ladies’ Hebrew Benevolent Society
1875: Mayor Wickham Chamberlain Tappan was among the dignitaries who attended tonight’s charity ball organized by the Purim Association. The event raised $13,000 for the various Hebrew charities in New York City.
1878: On Shabbat Zachor, rabbis at several synagogues addressed the appeal that has been issued by the Board of Delegates of American Israelites to raise funds to aid their suffering co-religionists trapped in war torn Eastern Europe and parts of the Ottoman Empire. They did not make a direct appeal for funds. Instead the urged them to respond to the appeal that has been sent to all congregations by the Executive committee of the Central Relief Committee whose members include Meyer S. Isaacs, Moritz Ellinger, Jacob H. Schiff, Leonard Lewisohn and Hyman Blum
1883: Sir George Jessel, who was fighting a variety of chronic illnesses, sat as the Master of Rolls for the last time. He was the first Jew to hold this important judicial position.
1885: Birthdate of Sydney Chaplin, half-brother of Charlie Chaplin
1890: The Mageburg Israelitishes Wochenblatreported “that a petition is in circulation among the rabbis of Europe and America begging the Pope to end the calumny that the Jews use human blood in religious sacrifice by ordering a formal denial throughout the Catholic churches.”
1890: Birthdate of Solomon Mikhoels, Soviet actor and chairman of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee.Solomon Mikhoels was a Soviet Jewish actor and director in Yiddish theater and the chairman of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. Born Shlioma Vovsi in Dvinsk (now Daugavpils), Latvia, Mikhoels studied law in Saint Petersburg, but left school in 1918 to join Alexander Granovsky,s Jewish Theater Workshop, which was attempting to create a national Jewish theater in Russia based on the Yiddish language. Two years later, in 1920, the workshop moved to Moscow, where it established the Moscow State Jewish Theater. This was in keeping with Lenin's policy on nationalities, which encouraged them to pursue and develop their own cultures under the aegis of the Soviet state. Mikhoels, who showed outstanding talent, was the company's leading actor and, as of 1928, its director. He played in several memorable roles, including Tevye in an adaptation of Sholom Aleichem's comic short stories about Tevye the Milkman(which were adapted for an American audience as Fiddler on the Roof) as well as in many original works, such as Bar Kochba, and translations. Perhaps his most noted role was as King Lear in a Yiddish translation of the play by William Shakespeare. These plays were ostensibly supportive of the Soviet state, however, closer readings suggest that they actually contained veiled critiques of Stalin's regime. It is noteworthy that two of the Shakespearean plays put on by the theater company were King Lear and Richard III, both studies in tyranny. It is now believed that the Ukrainian director Les Kurbas contributed to the original King Lear production after he was ousted from his Berezil theater in 1934. He seems to have had a lasting influence on Mikhoel's directing style. By the mid-1930s, Mikhoels' career was threatened because of his association with other leading intelligentsia, who were victims of Stalin's purges, notably author Isaac Babel. Mikhoels actively supported Stalin against Hitler, and in 1942, he was made chairman of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. In this capacity, he travelled around the world, meeting with Jewish communities to encourage them to support the Soviet Union in its war against Nazi Germany. While this was useful to Stalin during World War II, after the war, Stalin opposed contacts between Soviet Jews and Jewish communities in non-Communist countries, which he deemed as "bourgeoisie." The Jewish State Theater was closed and the members of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee were arrested - all except for two were eventually executed in the purges shortly before Stalin's death. Mikhoels was the most visible of the intellectual Jewish leadership, and a show trial would have cast aspersions on Stalin's rule. Such claims lead most people to a suggestion that Stalin had him assassinated in Minsk in January of 1948 masking his death as a car crash, and Mikhoels received a state funeral. According to documents unearthed by the historian Gennady Kostyrchenko, the organizers of the assassination were L.M. Tsanava and S. Ogoltsov, and the "direct" murderers were Lebedev, Kruglov and Shubnikov. Mikhoels' brother Miron Vovsi was Stalin's personal physician. He was arrested during the Doctors' plot affair but released after Stalin's death in 1953, as was his son-in-law, the composer Mieczyslaw Weinberg.
1892: Based on information that first appeared in the Hartford Courant and the New Haven Evening Post it was reported today that when he is not lecturing on military topics Professor Charles Totten of Yale, devotes his time to Biblical work including study of the Hebrew Prophets. Furthermore, this early supporter of Jewish settlement in Palestine says in the preface to the published copy of his Yale Military Lectures that “the whole series was written in the spirit of Anglo-Saxon identity with the ten lost tribes of Israel.”
1892: “A Russian Banker Fails” published described the impact of the failure of the Russian-Jewish banker J.E. Guenzburg. The firm dates back to the Crimean War when Guenzburg’s father supplied “vast quantities of spirits to the Russian Army. While Guzenburg currently has extensive holdings in lands and mines, his financial setbacks are due in no small part to “the expulsion of the Jews who were employed in the firm’s immense sugar factories” and the hostility of the current government towards its Jewish citizens.
1893: “A Contented Colony” published today described conditions “in the Jewish colony at Chesterfield” which is eight miles from New London, CN. Contrary to previously published reports the colonists are not destitute and that most of the 32 families are “comparatively contended people” The colony already has 180 cows which will provide milk for the new creamery; something that will produce “considerable revenue.” The colony is supported by the Baron Hirsch Fund.
1897: It was reported today that “a recent and clever English novel represents the rector of a struggling parish as having a written a book assailing the moral character of the Hebrew patriarchs.” The purpose of the novel is to acquaint the reader with “higher Biblical criticism” and demonstrate “that Moses did not write the Pentateuch.”
1898: Oscar S. Straus said today that the “a large sum of money that had recently” been received by the Trustees of the Baron de Hirsch funds “was not a new gift “but the second installment of $1,000,000 which the Baroness had promised him last year” to help “the Jews in the crowded districts of New York.”
1898: The recital of Aristide Franceschetti in the Carbon Studio on West Sixteenth Street began “with an evening prayer,’Vegna reba’ in the Hebrew text, which preserved by tradition in the synagogue of Leghorn.”
1899: Those attending the meeting of Rabbis belonging to the Reform Movement in Cincinnati will have to decide if this conference “will supersede the conference which” had been scheduled to be held in Boston this year. While the current conference has included several general reports, its primary purpose was to celebrate the 80th anniversary of Rabbi Wise, who favors holding the Boston conference.
1899: “Credit Men Meet At Dinner” published today described the event sponsored by the New York Credit Men’s Association which included the statement by one of the speakers declared that “No man in business life respects” Jewish merchants “more than I do. I have lost less money by them than by Gentiles, at the ratio of 4 to 1. They often pay 100 cents on the dollar when they fail.
1899: Simon Wolf of Washington, DC delivered a lecture at Temple Israel in New York at a meeting of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association entitled “American Jewish Philanthropy.”
1900: Herzl, in his never ending quest to have the rich and powerful support the creation of a Jewish homeland in Eretz Israel, had a luncheon with Eulenburg-Hertefeld, the German ambassador in Vienna.
1906: Birthdate of Henny Youngman. Born in London, England, this comedian was known for his signature line, 'Take my wife, please. Youngman was had to drop out of school as a youngster and was not Bar Mitzvahed at age 13. When he was well past the age of seventy, Youngman studied and proudly participated in the rites that he had missed out on as a youngster.
1908: The New York Times reported that the Passover Relief Association has arranged to buy 10,000 pounds of matzoth, 3,000 pounds of coffee, 5,000 pounds of sugar and 500 pounds of tea which will be distributed among the city’s poor Jews at a distribution center at the Continental Hall during the week prior to the celebration of Passover which begins on the evening of April 15.
1908: In Haifa, "bitterness against the Jews led to a clash between Jews, Ottoman soldiers and local Arabs in which thirteen Jews were injured, some of them severely."
1911: Election for Grand Council of the Jewish Community of Constantinople takes place. Ashkenazim boycott the elections. Five Ashkenazim who were elected by the votes of Sephardim do not accept office.
1911: Birthdate of Josef Mengele. This is was a dark day in history, marking the birth of the German Nazi doctor at Auschwitz extermination camp. To make matters worse, Mengele escaped justice and lived out his days in South America. He died in 1979.
1913: Birthdate of Natalie Goldstein the native of Chicago’s south side who gained fame as Natalie Goldstein Heinmen, “a pioneering national champion for children’s welfare and respected community and national leader, changed the lives of thousands of children through her innovative and thoughtful leadership.” (As reported by Pastora San Juan Cafferty)
1916(11th of Adar II, 5676): Rabbi Moses Guedalia passed away at the age of 76. Born in Gibraltar, Guedalia lived in Brazil before coming to New York City when he was nine years old. This “prominent Jewish scholar” was the founder of the Moses Montifore Congregation and during “the last few years of his life served as the lay-reader for the Free Synagogue established by the Spanish-Portuguese congregation.
1917: It was reported today that Herman Bernstein, the editor of The American Hebrew, believes the condition of the Jews would improve under the revolutionary government that has taken control of Russia. He also believes that the new government will seek a separate peace with Germany while seeking to sign a treaty with the United States that guarantee the Russian government would allow all Americans to visit and do business in Russia.
1917: Provisional government of Russia voided many anti-Jewish laws and restrictions. This was the so-called Kerensky Government which replaced the Czar. Unfortunately, Kerensky and the forces of democracy were overthrown by Lenin and his Bolsheviks.
1918: Birthdate of Frederick Reines winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1995.
1919(14th of Adar II, 5679): Purim
1919(14th of Adar II, 5679): Yakov Mikhaylovich Sverdlov, Chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the Congress of Soviets of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic(SFSR) passed away at the age of 33.
1925(20th of Adar, 5685): Fifty-nine year old August Paul von Wassermann, the Bamberg native, who developed the Wassermann test that remains “a staple of syphilis detection” passed away today.
1926: Mrs. Abram I. Elkus, wife of the former United States Minister to Turkey, was appointed chairman of the Women's Division of the New York drive in the United Jewish Campaign. Mrs. Jacob H. Schiff heads the Division as its honorary chairman, according to an announcement made by William Fox, chairman of the New York drive. An organization meeting will be held today at the Hotel Biltmore, where headquarters of the New York drive are located. Fifty women, leaders in women's clubs, professional groups, syiagogue organizations, and others making up a representation of all varied women's interests in the Jewish life of the city, will be present. They will be addressed by David A. Brown, national chairman of the United Jewish Campaign. Each of these fifty will head a unit of workers in the active drive, which opens April 11th. Mrs. Elkus served in the great Jewish War Relief Campaign of 1918, and led a group of 1,000 women workers in the Red Cross Drive of that year. Her life abroad in the years immediately after the war in Eastern Europe brought her into personal contact with the tragedy precipitated by the war upon European Jewry.(As reported by JTA)
1926: Birthdate of Jerry Lewis. Born Joseph Levitch, in Newark NJ, Lewis teamed with Dean Martin to form one of the most popular comedy duos of the post-war period. After the team broke up, Lewis honed his comedic craft and is especially loved by French audiences. He is best known for his Labor Day
MDA
Telethons which have raised untold millions for research and care of those suffering from this disease.
1933: Birthdate of Sandy Weil financer and
CEO
of Citigroup until 2003. The son of Polish immigrants, Weil became one of the wealthiest individuals in America. Recent revelations have shown that while Weil made a lot of money, some his methods were of a questionable nature.
1935: Fourteen Jewish American athletes and their manager David White set sail on the SSConte di Savola. The athletes will participate in the Maccabiah, the Jewish Olympics, scheduled to open in April in Tel Aviv. Due to unexpected financial difficulties, it was not known until the last minute if the team would be able to go. Thirty teams are expected to compete in the games up from the twenty-five teams that competed in the inaugural games held in 1932.
1935(11th of Adar II, 5695): Aron Nimzowitsch passed away. Nimzovichor Niemzowitsch was born in Latvia in 1886 when it was part of the Russian Empire. He was a chess grandmaster and was the foremost figure amongst the hypermoderns. Nimzowitsch came from a wealthy Jewish family and learned chess from his father. He travelled to Germany in 1904 to study philosophy, but began a career as a professional chess player that same year. After tumultuous years during and after World War I, Nimzowitsch moved to Copenhagen in 1922 and lived there until his death. He is buried in Bispebjerg Cemetery in Copenhagen, Denmark.
1936: Jews in Palestine protested the worsening conditions under which the Jews of Poland were living. Polish Jews were dealing with everything from a government threat to end Kosher slaughtering to actual Pogroms. The Jewish National Council of Palestine conducted a mass protest meeting and the Jews of Tel Aviv shuttered their shops for one day.
1937: Birthdate of cognitive psychologist Amos Tversky. Born in Haifa, Amos Tversky, a Stanford psychology professor and his longtime colleague, Princeton psychologist Daniel Kahneman, jointly won the 2003 Grawemeyer Award for Psychology. The $200,000 prize, awarded for the third time by the University of Louisville in Kentucky, recognizes outstanding contributions to the field of psychology. Working as a team for nearly three decades, Kahneman and Tversky revolutionized the scientific approach to decision making, ultimately affecting all social sciences and many related disciplines. Tversky died of cancer in 1996. His untimely death prevented him from sharing in a Nobel Prize with his longtime colleague, Daniel Kahneman.
1938(13th of Adar II, 5698): Fast of Esther
1938: Jewish Professors Kicked Out of Austrian Universities
1938: Adolf Eichmann Goes to Austria to Begin Removal of Jews
1939: As Arab violence continues unabated, 3 Arabs were killed today and another 250 were arrested by British forces who also seized a large quantity of rifles, ammunition and explosives.
1940(6th of Adar II, 5700): Samuel Untermyer passed away. It is difficult to do justice to the life and career of this lawyer, self-made millionaire and leader of the Jewish community born in Virginia who found success in New York City. The following lengthy obituary in the New York Times provides a picture of his life and accomplishments
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=F40A16FF3C54117A93C5A81788D85F448485F9 Untermyer was the grandfather of Samuel Untermyer II. Born in 1912, he was “a United States nuclear engineer who theorized that steam bubble formation in a nuclear reactor core would not produce unstable reactions but would instead result in an inherently stable and self-controlling reactor design. He was responsible for the BORAX Experiments and in recognition of his fundamental development work on safe, water-cooled reactors the American Nuclear Society now has an award named after him for work in this field.” He won the Newcomen Medal in 1980 and passed away in 2001.
1942: The first 1,600 Jews were deported from Lublin to Belzec. Another 10,000 would follow the next week
1943(9th of Adar II, 5703): An SS officer was killed by a Jew named Kotnowski at Lvov. In reprisal, the Germans hung 11 Jewish policemen from the balconies overlooking the main street of the Ghetto. Also over 1,000 Jews were taken away and shot.
1946: Today The Acheson-Lilienthal Report Report on the International Control of Atomic Energy was published. Lilienthal is David Lilienthal who had gained fame as the creator of TVA. His involvement in how the United States should deal with Atomic Energy in the post-war world is another example of Jewish involvement in a whole raft of issues dealing with the creation and use of both the Atomic and Hydrogen bombs.
1947: The British announce plans to end Martial Law in Tel Aviv and adjacent areas effective tomorrow.
1947: An explosion ripped through press room and tourist information center in the Jerusalem offices of the Jewish agency. While some said the attack was the work of “Jewish terrorists” and highlighted the split between Yishuv and militant extremists, the Irgun denied responsibility and said the attack may have been the work of the British.
1948: As Arab forces waged a war of terror designed to undo the UN Partition Resolution, the Palmach attacked al-Husayniyaa in response to the explosion of land mine.
1949: Birthdate of Canadian born actor Victor Garber
1952: Birthdate of French American businessman, Philippe Kahn, founder of Borland Software Corporation
1962: The “Golani Brigade raided Syrian outposts to the north of the Sea of Galilee in order to stop Syrian shelling of Israeli Villages. Seven Israeli soldiers and thirty Syrian soldiers were killed during the battle.” The raid did not end the shelling. It would continued sporadically until 1967 when the IDF heroically took the Golan Heights.
1965: Israel Votes to Have Diplomatic Relations with West Germany
1965: As bagel bakers clashed over how to deal with the changing world of Bagel Baking, Morris Skolnick was defeated in his bid to be elected business agent for famed local 388.
1968(16th of Adar, 5728): Italian Jewish composer Mario Castelnuovo-Tedescopassed away. Born in Florence in 1895, he was descended from a prominent banking family that had lived in the city since the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492. Like many artists who fled fascism, Castelnuovo-Tedesco ended up in Hollywood, where, with the help of Yasha Heifetz, he landed a contract with
MGM
as a film composer. Over the next fifteen years, he worked on scores for some 200 films there and at the other major film studios. He was a significant influence on other major film composers, including Henry Mancini, Jerry Goldsmith, Nelson Riddle, John Williams, and André Previn. His relationship to Hollywood was ambiguous: later in life he attempted to deny the influence that it had on his own work, but he also believed that it was an essentially American art form, much as opera was European. In the United States, Castelnuovo-Tedesco also composed new operas and works based on American poetry, Jewish liturgy, and the Bible.
1980(28th of Adar, 5740): Allard Lowenstein, Congressman from New York’s 5th district and noted liberal Democrat was murdered.
1984: William Buckley, the CIA station chief in Beirut, Lebanon, is kidnapped by Islamic fundamentalists and later dies in captivity.
1985: Associated Press newsman Terry Anderson is taken hostage in Beirut.
1987: Israel radio reported today that the Israeli Government has helped to pay the legal bills of Jonathan Jay Pollard, the American intelligence analyst sentenced to life in prison last month for spying for Israel. The radio said ''state elements in Israel'' transferred $80,000 by unspecified indirect means to the defense of Mr. Pollard and his wife, Anne Henderson-Pollard. Mrs. Henderson-Pollard was sentenced to five years for helping her husband to pass hundreds of top-secret American documents to the Israeli Government. The couple's total legal expenses were reported to be somewhere between $120,000 to $200,000. The radio report did not say when the transfer took place or whether the Israeli Government planned to make additional payments to the Pollards. Israel radio said the funds were provided to James Hibey, a Washington lawyer, whom it described as the lawyer for Mr. Pollard and his wife.
1987: Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin today denied reports that Israel may still be spying on the United States. Mr. Rabin was responding to a story in The Washington Post which said American investigators became suspicious during their questioning of Mr. Pollard that Israel had another agent working in an American intelligence operation.
1991: "Underground," a new work by the Israeli playwright Joshua Sobol, directed by Adrian Hall, is scheduled to have its last performance today at the Yale Repertory Theater.
1992: Loretta Weinberg began serving as a Member of the New Jersey General Assembly from the 37th Legislative District
1998: The Vatican expressed remorse for the cowardice of some Christians during the Holocaust, but defended the actions of Pope Pius XII.
1999(28th of Adar, 5759): Rhoda Mendelson Faffer passed away today at the age of 87. The deceased was the wife of the late Samuel Faffer and the late, well-known Chazan, Cantor Nathan Mendelson of Montreal Canada.
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