March 18 In History
37: The Roman Senate annuls Tiberius' will and proclaims Caligula emperor. Caligula ruled from 37 until his death in 41. From the Jewish perspective he was not so much an anti-Semite as a lunatic whose crazy behavior affected the Jews. The biggest problems rose from his belief that he was a god and his insistence that the Jews, along with the rest of the Empire worship him. The Jews did not which led to a major confrontation. Additionally, Caligula wanted to place a huge statue of himself in Jerusalem. Fortunately he died before this travesty could take place.
1123: Opening of the First Lateran Council. Unlike later councils, this meeting did not deal directly with issues related to the Jews. However Canon Eleven did give renewed impetus for the Crusades. “For effectively crushing the tyranny of the infidels, we grant to those who go to Jerusalem and also to those who give aid toward the defense of the Christians, the remission of their sins and we take under the protection of St. Peter and the Roman Church their homes, their families, and all their belongings, as was already ordained by Pope Urban II.” Canon Eleven also equates going to fight in Spain with going to Jerusalem because Spain was under control of the Moors and the Church sought bring an end to this.
1160: Hamza ibn Asad abu Ya'la ibn al-Qalanisi an Arab politician and chronicler passed away in Damascus. His writings provide one of the few contemporary accounts of the First Crusade from the Moslem point of view including a description of the sacking of Jerusalem. The Jews had fought along side the Muslims to defend the city against the attackers. At the end, according Ibn al-Qalnisi, "The Jews assembled in their synagogue, and the Franks burned it over their heads.’ (The Franks was the terms easterners used to describe the Crusaders)
1190: Crusaders killed 750 Jews in Bury St Edmonds England. The logic of the Crusaders was why wait to kill infidels in the Holy Land when you can kill them right here at home. Just because these infidels were Jews and the infidels holding the Holy Land were Moslems did not seem to bother these noble Christian knights and their supporters.
1229: Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor declared himself King of Jerusalem during the Sixth Crusade. In what be lesson for modern times, Frederick’s use of diplomacy succeeded where the use of force by others had failed. His sixth crusade was not a military venture; a fact which drew the ire of the Roman Catholic Church. Instead, after landing in Palestine, he negotiated with the Moslems and gained control of Bethlehem, Nazareth and Jerusalem for a period of ten years.
1389: A priest living in Prague, Czechoslovakia was hit with a few grains of sand by small Jewish boys playing in the street. He became insulted and insisted that the Jewish community purposely plotted against him. Thousands were slaughtered, the synagogue and the cemetery were destroyed, and homes were pillaged. King Wenceslaus insisted that the responsibility rested with the Jews for venturing outside during Holy Week.
1478: In Spain, a group of Jews and conversos gathered for a Seder on the first night of Passover. “A young cavalier” discovered the group and reported the matter to the authorities. Since it was holy week, the Spanish decided that the Jews had gathered to “to blaspheme the Chrisitian religion.” When Alonso de Hojeda, the prior of the Convent of San Pablo in Seville and enemy of the Jews and New Christians heard of the event he took the news to Ferdinand and Isabella. Supposedly this was the “straw that broke the camel’s back” and the two monarchs petitioned the Holy See to issue a Bull authorizing an Inquisition. The Bull would be granted and the road to the expulsion of 1492 opend up like a superhighway.
1584: Ivan IV, also known as Ivan the Terrible passed away. Ivan was terrible for the Jews as well as for everybody else. He did all that he could to bar them from Russia, spreading the calumnies of the day, and, when he had the chance, giving them the choice between conversion or a cruel death.
1655: Dutch Minister Johannes Megapolensis wrote a letter to the Amsterdam Classis, a ruling body in the Reform Church attacking the Jews who had recently arrived in New Amsterdam.
1669: In Halberstadt which had been annexed Brandenburg as part of the Peace of Westphalia, a mob aided by the military demolished a synagogue in the Joeddenstrasse. The people claimed that the Jews had built the synagogue without permission from the government. For some time after, the hammer that was used to break the door of the synagogue was “preserved in the parish house.”
1723: Birthdate of Daniel Itzig, the native of Berlin, who became the “Court Jew” of Kings Frederick II the Great and Frederick William II of Prussia.
1767: Myer Myers married Joyce Mears, a cousin of his first wife, Elkalah Myers Cohen of blessed memory. Myers first wife bore him five children and his second wife bore him eight children.
1799: Haifa was captured by Napoleon. This marked “high-water mark” in Napoleon’s conquest of Palestine. The next day French forces reached Acre. It was defended both by British warships and local townspeople including the Jewish inhabitants. By June, Napoleon would give up and return to Egypt.
1817(1stof Nisan, 5577): Rosh Chodesh Nisan
1831: Birthdate of Joshua Glaser, the Postelburg native who trained as a lawyer before converting to Christianity to advance his career. At that time, he changed his name to Jules Glaser, the name by which he gained renowned as a jurist and statesman.
1837: Birthdate of Grover Cleveland, the only man to be elected President of the United States, defeated in his bid for re-election and then to be victorious over the man who had beaten him. In 1887, during his first term, Cleveland appointed Oscar Solomon Straus, “the ranking Jew in America,” envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to Turkey. In 1897, during his second term, Cleveland vetoed a bill that contained a literacy test for immigrants. The bill was an attempt to halt immigration from southern and Eastern Europe. If it had passed it would have a detrimental impact on the Jews of Russia, Romania and the Austro-Hungarian Empire seeking to come to America. Cleveland spoke out against the treatment of the Jews at Kishinev and work to raise money for them after the Pogrom in 1903.
1857: In Pittsburgh, PA, Louis and Henrietta Berkowitz gave birth to Henry Berkowitz the educator and reform rabbi.
1861: The New York Times reported today that the “story floating around the Northern papers” about a rich Jew named Mordecai “declaring himself insolvent, after paying a small per centum to his New-York, Boston and Philadelphia creditors, is a falsehood, cut out of the whole cloth.”
1862: Judah P. Benjamin began serving as Secretary of State for the Confederacy; a position he would hold until the end of the war.
1869: Birthdate of Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister who signed the infamous Munich Agreement with Hitler. He returned to England with the words, “I bring you peace in our times.” Instead there was war within the year. At the same time Chamberlain’s government followed a pro-Arab policy in Eretz Israel which resulted in the infamous White Paper that effectively ended Jewish immigration at the time when the Jews needed a homeland more than ever in their entire history.
1870(15thof Adar II, 5630): Shushan Purim
1874: The Germania Theatre Company will perform tonight at New York’s Terrace Garden Theatre for the benefit of the Ladies’ Hebrew Benevolent Society.
1875(11thof Adar II, 5635): Fast of Esther observed since the 13th of Adar falls on Shabbat.
1877: It was reported today that during 1876, the strength of the British Army averaged 184,669 officers and enlisted men of whom 131 were Moslems, Hindus or Jews.
1878(13thof Adar, II, 5638): Fast of Esther
1879: The defense was scheduled to present its case in attempt to prove that Cohen Davis, an elderly Hebrew glazier, had not committed perjury in the recent trial of Abraham Freeman and Charles Bernstein, two convicted arsonists.
1880: In New York, Dr. J. P. Newman will deliver a lecture at Chickering Hall sponsored by the Young Men’s Hebrew Association.
1886(11th of Adar II, 5646): Leopold Zunz, also known as Yom Tov Lippman, a German-born Jewish intellectual passed away at the age of 91. Born in 1794, Zunz came of age in post-Napoleonic Germany when Reform Judaism was gaining power and many Jews were converting to Christianity to gain acceptance in the New Europe. Zunz was a scholar with a strong Jewish education. He became "the principal of a teacher's seminary established by the Jews of Berlin.” As can be seen from his teaching and writings including The Religious Discourses of the Jews Zunz emphasized the importance of prayer and instruction while contending that Judaism was a religion that had constantly been reforming itself. Zunz also believed that for the most part, Judaism and Jewish culture had been at a higher level than the societies that surrounded it.
1886: Birthdate of German-born Gestalt psychologist Kurt Koffka. He moved to the United States in the 1920’s where he taught at several colleges and universities including Wisconsin and Smith.
1903: Herzl begins a trip to Egypt that lasts until April 9.
1890: Louis Levene represented the Shirtmakers’ Union at the arbitration hearing being held today in an attempt to end the strike. Most of the workers are Jewish as are many of the contractors on the other side.
1891: A five-story tenement building at the corners of Hester and Allen Streets which is located in a neighborhood crowded with Polish Jewish immigrants burned today. At the time of the fire eleven Jewish families composed of forty-nine persons were asleep in the building.
1891: The Trustees managing the funds sent to the United States by Baron Hirsch for the aid of Jewish immigrants from Russia and Romania are scheduled to meet today in New York.
1892: Rabbi Stephen S. Wise will deliver a lecture entitled “The Jew, Past, Present and Future” this evening at Temple Israel of Harlem.
1892: Jose S.K. Mitrachee, the Syrian Jewish beggar who shot Rabbi Mendes on March 5th, returned to New York from Philadelphia today in the custody of Detective Sergeants Jacobs and Heidelberg. The prisoner was immediately taken to the rabbi’s home where Dr. and Mrs. Mendes and their 3 servants positively identified as the attacker.
1895: New York Mayor Strong appointed Jacob W. Mack, the secretary and treasurer of Nathan Manufacturing Company, to serve as a School Commissioner.
1897(14thof Adar, 5657): Purim
1897: A.S. Solomons, the manager of the Baron de Hirsch Fund oversaw today’s Purim Celebration for the students which was held in the auditorium of the Educational Alliance Building.
1897: The feast of Purim was celebrated today with “the formal opening of the new wing of the Home for Aged and Infirm Hebrews” which was attended by 200 visitors.
1899: In a letter to the editor published today “A.C.” takes issue with the statement that Henry Irving plays the part of the Polish Jew in “The Bells.” Irving actually plays the part of Mathias, the murder of the Polish Jew which “is not quite the same thing.”
1899: It was reported today that “some of the French journals intimate that anti-Semitism is at the bottom of the new movement, which is that no Jew is to be permitted either to adopt a career in art, or, having painted a picture, to exhibit it.”
1899: “The Colored Race and Illiteracy” published today provides a summary of an article by Wallace C. Hamm in The North American Review that includes the notation that “The Russian and Polish Jews are never illiterates.” (This stands in stark contrast of the portrait painted of the Jews of eastern Europe being semi-literate disease laden parasites)
1905: Birthdate of Mollie Parnis. Although she never had any formal education in design, Mollie Parnis became an influential women's fashion designer whose prestigious Seventh Avenue firm provided dresses for first ladies Bess Truman, Mamie Eisenhower, Lady Bird Johnson, and Patricia Nixon. Parnis was raised on New York's Lower East Side. She started working in fashion at age eighteen, when she was hired as an assistant saleswoman for a wholesale blouse manufacturer. Her ability to tailor and add distinctive finishing touches to blouses for retail customers earned Parnis her first recognition. She moved from the blouse business to a dress house, but in 1933, she opened an independent designer dress firm with her husband, Leon Livingston. Although she could not cut and sew fabric or draw, Parnis's acute eye for detail and perceptive knowledge of what women wanted allowed her to provide the creative vision for the company. Even in the midst of the Great Depression, the Parnis Livingston label was successful. Parnis's designs were said to combine elegance and beauty with form and function, and they were frequently featured in the style pages of magazines such as Harper's Bazaar, Vanity Fair, and Life. After Livingston's death in 1962, Parnis reshaped her company to cater to a new demand for more informal clothes. New labels targeted working-class women and young professionals. She closed the doors of her business in 1984.Throughout her life, Parnis was as dedicated to humanitarian work as she was to fashion. In 1971, she funded a program to clean up New York neighborhoods and establish small parks throughout the city. A similar program for Jerusalem followed two years later. She also contributed scholarships to fashion schools, and created the Livingston Awards, which honor young journalists in memory of Parnis's son. Mollie Parnis died in 1992.
1905: Birthdate of Benny Friedman the native of Cleveland, Ohio known as “the Jewish Johnny Unitas” who played quarterback for the University of Michigan before going to a career as a head coach.
1906: As conditions worsened in Bialystok, two policeman named Rubansky and Syrolevich were killed, probably by anarchists. This was part of the unraveling situation that would lead to a pogrom in June of that year.
1906: A dark day in history since it marked the birth of Adolf Eichmann, the Gestapo officer who contributed so much to the Final Solution. Eichmann is the only person to ever be executed by the state of Israel.
1907: As the peasants of Romania rose up against the landed gentry, the government declared a state of emergency and began a general mobilization of the army. The revolt was tainted by anti-Semitism because in some parts of the country the Jews collected the rents from the Christian peasants for the Christian landlords. The Jews, of course, could not own the land.
1910(7th of Adar II, 5670): Adolphus Simeon Solomons passed away in Washington, D.C. Born in 1826 John Solomons, a native of London who emigrated to the United States in 1810, Julia, daughter of Simeon Levy, “Solomons was educated in the University of the City of New York, and entered the employ of a firm of wholesale importers of stationery and fancy goods, becoming within two years its head book-keeper and confidential man. At the age of fourteen he had enlisted as a color-guide in the Third Regiment Washington Greys (New York State National Guard); he was promoted sergeant five years later” “In 1851 Daniel Webster, then secretary of state, appointed him "Special Bearer of Despatches to Berlin." On his journey he visited for the first time a Jewish ward in a hospital, at Frankfort-on-the-Main, and determined to establish a similar institution in New York. Upon his return home he became a member of a committee of young men who arranged a ball for charity in Niblo's Garden. The sum of $1,034 realized therefrom was, upon Solomons' motion, placed in the hands of Simpson Simson of Yonkers, who, with others, had recently taken out a charter for a Jewish hospital in New York, the present Mt. Sinai Hospital. In 1859 Solomons established the publishing-house of Philp & Solomons in Washington, D. C., which held for a number of years the government contracts for printing. Solomons was in 1871 elected a member of the House of Representatives for the District of Columbia, serving as chairman of the committee on ways and means. As a representative of the central committee of the Alliance Israélite Universelle, Solomons at a public meeting held in New York advocated the establishment of the Montefiore Home for Chronic Invalids to mark the one-hundredth anniversary of Sir Moses Montefiore's birth. As trustee and, subsequently, as acting president of the Jewish Theological Seminary Association of New York, he was influential in bringing about a successful reorganization of the society's finances. In 1891 he became general agent of the Baron de Hirsch Fund and director of its many activities in America; and in 1903, when relieved of active work, he was made honorary general agent. Solomons was an incorporator and for seventeen years an active member of the National Association of the Red Cross, and was also one of its two vice-presidents. President Arthur appointed him and Clara Barton as representatives of the United States government in the International Congress of the Red Cross, held at Geneva, Switzerland, in 1881; and Solomons was elected vice-president of that congress. He was one of the five original members of the New York executive board of the Red Cross Relief Committee, which board was in session during the Spanish-American war and consisted of twenty-five members presided over by Bishop Potter. Solomons has been a member of the central committee of the Alliance Israélite Universelle, and its treasurer for the United States. He has been for twenty years a director, and for some time treasurer, of the Columbia Hospital and Lying-in Asylum in Washington, D. C.; he is also a charter member of the Garfield Memorial Hospital, acting president of the Provident Aid Society and Associated Charities, founder and president of the Night Lodging-House Association, and trustee of the first training-school for nurses in the District of Columbia; he has been identified also with nearly all the prominent charities in the United States capital. Solomons has taken active part in all inauguration ceremonies” starting with Abraham Lincoln.
1913: The King of Greece was assassinated at Salonica. False charges ran in the Greek newspapers that the killer was Jewish. The killer would turn out to be a Greek who was not Jewish but who was reported to be mentally ill.
1922: In Cairo, the first meeting was held between a Zionist Delegation and representatives of the “Executive Committee of the Congress of Parties of the Confederation of Arab Countries.”
1922: Judith Kaplan, age 12, became the first American to celebrate a bat mitzvah. Judith was the oldest daughter of Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, the founder of Reconstructionist Judaism. Believing that girls should have the same religious opportunities as their brothers, Rabbi Kaplan arranged for his daughter to read Torah on a Shabbat morning at his synagogue, the Society for the Advancement of Judaism. The Kaplan bat mitzvah marked a turning point for Conservative Judaism in America. Always torn between tradition and modernity, the movement struggled for many decades with women's roles in the synagogue. Judith Kaplan herself was not allowed to read from the Torah scroll, as modern bat mitzvah celebrants do; instead, she read a passage in Hebrew and English from a printed Chumash (first five books of the Bible) after the regular Torah service. Still, Rabbi Kaplan's innovation gained followers, and about a third of Conservative congregations held bat mitzvah ceremonies by 1948. By the 1960s, bat mitzvah was a regular feature of Conservative congregational life; today it is a mainstay in synagogues from Reform to Modern Orthodox. After her ground-breaking bat mitzvah, Kaplan Eisenstein (she married Ira Eisenstein who became Kaplan's successor in leading the Reconstructionist movement) went on to a successful career in Jewish music. After studying at the Institute of Musical Art (now the Julliard School) in New York, she attended the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) Teachers Institute and Columbia University's Teachers College, where she earned an M.A. in music education in 1932. She later earned a Ph.D. in the School of Sacred Music at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR). Kaplan Eisenstein taught music pedagogy and the history of Jewish music at JTS, HUC-JIR, and the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College for many years. She also created the first Jewish songbook for children, Gateway to Jewish Song (1937). Her other published works include Festival Songs (1943) and Heritage of Music: The Music of the Jewish People (1972). In 1987, she created and broadcast a thirteen-hour radio series on the history of Jewish music. In 1992, at age 82, Kaplan Eisenstein celebrated a second bat mitzvah, surrounded by leaders of the modern Jewish feminist movement. This time, she read from a Torah scroll. Kaplan Eisenstein died on February 14, 1996.
1927: Birthdate of Lillian Vernon. Born Lilly Menasche in Leipzig, Germany, Lillian Vernon fled with her family first to Amsterdam and then to New York to escape Hitler. In the U.S., her father manufactured leather goods, which would become the base of Vernon's first foray into mail-order commerce. Married and pregnant, Vernon began the business that would become Lillian Vernon, Inc., in 1951. She took $495 out of her wedding gifts to place an advertisement for personalized belts and handbags in Seventeen magazine. Her father's company manufactured the belts and bags, and Vernon embossed, packaged, and shipped them. The ad brought in over $32,000 worth of sales, and Vernon's company was born. She mailed her first catalogue two years later. Taking monogramming as its trademark, and catering mainly to women, Lillian Vernon mail-order grew rapidly, generating $200,000 in sales in 1956, the year Vernon opened her first manufacturing plant. By 1990, sales had risen to $238 million, and the mailing list had grown to 17 million names. After pioneering her successful mail-order business, Vernon continued to keep the company at the forefront of commercial changes. She began opening retail outlets in 1985, and went online a decade later. Hers was also the first woman-owned business to be listed on the American Stock Exchange. The company continues to introduce new catalogs regularly, and now produces special lines of items for children, teens, and gardening, as well as its traditional products for the home. Vernon has used her wealth to support over 500 charities, and has been recognized by, among others, Big Brothers/Big Sisters, which awarded her its National Hero Award. She has also received the NAACP Medal of Honor, and has been inducted into the Direct Marketing Association Hall of Fame. In 1997, she was named one of 50 leading women entrepreneurs by the National Foundation for Women Business Owners. Though she no longer embosses items herself, Vernon is still active as the CEO of her company and as its main spokesperson.
1927: Birthdate of Broadway composer and dance arranger John Kander. Some of his credits include “Chicago” and “Cabaret.”
1927(14thof Adar II, 5686): Purim
1928: The New York Times described the controversy surrounding the decision of a court in Jaffa to fine a storekeeper for violating local ordinances concerning the observance of the Jewish Sabbath.
1930: Arthur James Balfour passed away at the age of 81. Balfour was a prominent British politician who served as Prime Minister from 1902 to 1905. During World War I, Balfour served as Foreign Minister. It was while serving in this position that he gained his place in Jewish History by giving his name to the Balfour Declaration, which read in part, "His Majesty's Government view with the favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object..." The Balfour Declaration came to be one of the basic documents in the Jewish diplomatic efforts to establish what would become the modern state of Israel.
1937: The Palestine Post reported that 17 Jews, two policemen and one British soldier were injured by a bomb thrown at the Egged bus terminal on Jerusalem’s Jaffa Road. Two Arabs were detained on suspicion. Later four Arabs were injured when bombs were thrown into Arab-frequented cafes on Mamilla Road and in Romema. Police dogs picked an Arab farmer, Mohammed Kamel, as the murderer of Samuel Gottfried, 26, of Rosh Pina.
1940: Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini meet at the Brenner Pass in the Alps and agree to form an alliance against France and the United Kingdom. [Editor’s Note – For some strange reason, Italy was never held accountable for its role as Hitler’s willing ally and all that that meant.]
1941: This week, 200 Jews would die from hunger in Warsaw ghetto. The prior week, 400 died of hunger.
1942: Forty-five year old Charles A. Levine who was “the first trans-Atlantic plane passenger” was in front of a federal judge in Los Angeles over a $500 fine that had been levied against him over a violation of immigration law.
1943(11th of Adar II, 5703): Fast of Esther observed since the 13th of Adar is on Shabbat.
1943(11th of Adar II, 5703): The hiding place of Dr. Julian Charin, age 30, of Lapy, Ukraine, was betrayed to the Nazis, and Charin was shot.
1943(11th of Adar II, 5703): At Auschwitz, 26-year-old underground fighter Lonka Kozibrodska died of typhus.
1944: Birthdate of Amnon Lipkin-Shahak the 15th Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces, Member of the Knesset and Minister of Transportation and Tourism.
1944: Hitler summons the Hungarian Regent, Admiral Horthy for talks. Horthy guaranteed the delivery of 100,000 Jewish workers for the German war effort. Yet he was still hesitant about a general deportation of the rest of the country's 750,000 Jews. At 9:30 that evening, German troops begin to enter Hungary.
1946: Former Prime Minister Winston Churchill was “the guest of honor at a dinner given by” Jewish financier and unofficial advisor to numerous Presidents, Bernard Baruch.
1947: Birthdate of Steve Schiff, Congressman from New Mexico’s First District.
1947: Efforts to overturn the death sentences of Dov Rosenbaum, Eliezer Kashani and Mordecai Kashani suffered a setback today when the “Palestine High Court rejected an application for an order for the commissioner of prisons, the British commanding general, the attorney general and the chief secretary to show cause” for why the sentence should not be set aside.
1949: James Grover McDonald was appointed U.S. Ambassador to Israel by President Harry Truman.
1950: “Dr. George Josephthanal, director of the Absorption Department of the Jewish Agency” announced “that a sea and air operation aimed at moving 90,000 Jews out of Iraq into Israel would be initiated next month at a cost of sixty million dollars.”
1951: Birthdate of Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream Empire.
1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that Agriculture Minister Levi Eshkol promised self-sufficiency in animal fodder, increased tobacco production, and intensification of cattle raising for meat, as the immediate policy goals of his ministry. He noted a general improvement in fruit production, although he warned that it could take a couple of years until the full impact of last year¹s planting was felt on the market.
1961:The New York Times reports that the French government awarded Rabbi Simon Langer the Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur for his "...extraordinary contributions to the advancement of better French-American relations before and after the Second World War. He is credited with rescuing many French children from the Nazis." His tireless work with Bikur Cholim continues.
1962: The Evian Accords put an end to the Algerian War of Independence, which began in 1954. The end of the Algerian War marked the beginning of a change in French policy towards the Arabs, and therefore, towards Israel. While fighting the Arab nationalist in Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria, the French saw the Israelis as allies. This accounts for French willingness to supply the IDF with military equipment including jet fighter planes and to join in the Suez War of 1956. Once De Gaulle decided to end French fighting with Arab nationalist, he sought to create a French sphere of influence among its former colonies. Supporting Israel was now a detriment to French policy aims. In 1967, De Gaulle would oppose Israel’s right to defend itself in what would become the Six Days War going so far as to deny delivery of naval vessels to the Israelis for which the Jewish state had already paid.
1964(5th of Nisan, 5724): American mathematician Norbert Wiener passed away. Born in 1894, he was known as the founder of cybernetics. He created the term in his book Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (MIT Press, 1948), widely recognized as one of the most important books of contemporary scientific thinking
1965: Death of King Farouk, former ruler of Egypt. While King of Egypt, Farouk led his country to war against Israel in 1948. The defeat of Egyptian forces along with his total corruption, led to Farouk’s overthrow in 1952 in a coup masterminded by Nasser.
1977: The Jerusalem Post reported from Cairo that Yasser Arafat made it clear that the PLO had no intention of giving up its aim of creating a "secular state" in Palestine ¬ its roundabout expression for the destruction of Israel. In Washington, despite Israeli repeated requests, the State Department declined to say what President Jimmy Carter had in mind when he called for a Palestinian "homeland." Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was reportedly worried by Carter¹s statement that there had to be a homeland provided for Palestinian refugees who have suffered for many, many years.
1979: Birthdate of Adam Levine an American singer-songwriter and guitarist who is the frontman for the pop rock band Maroon 5.
1980(1st of Nisan, 5740): Eric Fromm passed away.
1984(14thof Adar II, 5744): Purim
1986(7th of Adar II, 5746): Author Bernard Malmud passed away. The prolific author may be best known for The Fixer for which he won the Pulitzer Prize and The Natural which was made into a movie starring Robert Redford. The movie and the book have different endings. The film version makes Hollywood happy. The book ends in a manner consistent with Malmud’s view of life.
1993: The Sisters Rosensweig a play written by Wendy Wasserstein opened on Broadway at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre.
1992: Leona Helmsley was sentenced to 4 years for tax evasion.
1997: It was reported today that President, Chancellor, Boards of Governors and Overseers, faculty, administration and students of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion record with profound sorrow the death in Jerusalem of Dr. S. Zalman Abramov, Chairman of the Board of Overseers of our Jerusalem School.
1997: The Landmarks Preservation Commission held a public hearing on the proposed designation as a Landmark of the Pike Street Synagogue (Congregation Sons of Israel Kalwarie), and the proposed designation of the related Landmark Site
1999: Marcel Marceau day is established in New York City.
2001: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporationby Edwin Black and The Voice of Memory: Interviews 1961-1987 by Primo Levi; edited by Marco Belpoliti and Robert Gordon
2003(14thof Adar II, 5763): Purim
2006: Shabbat Parah
2006: The family and multitude of friends of Betty Levin gather in Chicago to celebrate her birthday. Wife, mother, grandmother, aunt, teacher, pillar of the Jewish community and so much more – she is the complete package. She redefines the term Ashesh Chayil giving the term a meaning far beyond anything that Solomon could have possibly imagined.
2007: The Jerusalem Circus performs at the Gerard Behar Center as part of the Jerusalem Arts Festival.
2007: At Manhattan’s 92nd Street Y, Zvi Gotheiner and Dancers present the last performance of “Gertrud,” a tribute to Gotheiner’s late teacher, Gertrud Kraus.
2007: The Sunday New York Times features a review of Waiting for Daisy by Peggy Orenstein.
2008: Eric Alterman, a professor of English and journalism at the City University of New York, discusses and signs Why We're Liberals: A Political Handbook for Post-Bush America at Borders Book Store in Washington, D.C.
2008: German Chancellor Angela Merkel becomes the first foreign head of government to address the Knesset. In the past, the honor has been reserved only for heads of state and monarchs.
2008: A special meeting of the Committee for the Advancement of Women will be convened to mark International Agunah Day, led by the new chairperson of the committee - Knesset member Lia Shemtov.
2008(11th of Adar II, 5768): Henry A. Fischel, a “professor emeritus of Near Eastern languages and cultures at Indiana University,” passed away. “Fischel was an influential figure in founding the Jewish Studies Program at Indiana University. Under his direction, the Lilly Endowment gave the university a grant in 1972-73 to develop a Jewish Studies Program.”
2008: A 49 year old Israeli rabbi identified as Rabbi Yechezkel Greenwald was stabbed and wounded by an Arab assailant near the Damascus Gate in the Old City of Jerusalem.
2009: The Leo Baeck Institute hosts “Regina Resnik Presents: Covert or Convert” a film that pays “homage to composers who converted to Christianity but who wrote on Jewish themes, and to composers who did not convert, but wrote on Jewish themes in secret, often at the risk of their lives. Presented and narrated by the legendary mezzo-soprano Regina Resnik, the film shares the proud and often difficult history of such composers as Anton Rubinstein, Otto Klemperer, and Felix Mendelssohn, whose statue outside the Gewandhaus in Leipzig was destroyed by the Nazis.
2009: Book World columnist Michael Dirda discusses and signs his most recent book, Classics for Pleasure, at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Washington in Rockville, Md.
2009: The Orange Prize, given annually to a female fiction writer, announced its list of 20 contenders, including Allegra Goodman author of “Intuition.”The finalists for the Man Booker International Prize, a lifetime achievement award given every other year, have been announced including E. L. Doctorow and Joyce Carol Oates.
2009: "The North American United Jewish Communities, in cooperation with the State Department...set funds aside to absorb 110 Yemenite Jews in to the United - more than a third of all the Jews remaining in Yemen."
2009(22ndof Adar, 5769): Terry Schwarzfeld died of brain injuries today, two weeks after being airlifted to a hospital in Ottawa from Barbados where she had been brutally by Curtis Joel Foster while on vacation with her daughter-in-law. At the time of the attack she had just started her term as president of Canadian Hadassah WIZO and was executive director of Ottawa's largest synagogue, Agudath Israel.
2010: Jacques Pépin, author of more than a dozen cookbooks and host of a trio of celebrated cooking shows, is scheduled to serve as a celebrity judge today during the finals of the Man-O-Manischewitz Cook-Off, hosted in New York City by the kosher food giant. The kosher recipe contest will award prizes worth $25,000. Open to contestants from across the country, the competition is limited to original recipes that are kosher, can be prepared in less than an hour and contain no more than 8 ingredients including one of the three varieties of Manischewitz’s new, kosher, all-natural broths. The winner of the fourth annual Man-O-Manischewitz Cook-Off will get a trip to New York, a kitchen’s worth of new appliances — at a value of roughly $25,000 — as well as a check for $5,000 and a gift card for groceries.
2010: An auction of several rare early American Jewish books is scheduled to begin at 1:30 p.m. in New York. Among the offerings at the sale being conducted by Swann Auction Galleries is an early Jewish-American cookbook and the first Hebrew Bible printed on American soil.
2010: Itzhak Perlman joins the IPO for a performance in Concert in Jeans Series in Tel Avi.
2010: As part of The Levin/Rosenstein Lecture Series held in Memory of Mr. & Mrs. Joseph B. Levin, Dr. Jacob L. Levin, and Larry and Judy (Levin) Rosenstein, The Jewish Studies Program at Tulane University is scheduled to present “From Berlin to New York: Jewish Culture in Pre-Nazi Germany and Jewish Culture in Post-War America.”
2010: A migrant worker in the northern Negev was killed by a rocket fired by Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.The rocket struck Moshav Nativ Ha'asara this morning, killing a 30-year-old Thai man working in a hothouse. It was third rocket fired from Gaza in 24 hours.Five rockets have struck southern Israel in the past two days, according to the Israel Defense Forces. No injuries or damages were reported from the attacks. Today's attack came an hour after Catherine Ashton, the EU's high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, crossed into Gaza from Israel. Ashton condemned the rocket firing during her visit to Gaza, according to reports. A Gaza group affiliated with al-Qaida, the Ansar al- Suna Brigades, claimed responsibility for the attack, as well as one that hit southern Israel last week, according to reports.
2010: Israeli actor and television host Eyal Kitzis and his wife Tali gave birth to their first son.
2011: In Buenos Aires, Argentina Jewish leaders, “Jewish school groups, local and federal government officials met in the square where the embassy once stood, to remember the attack on the Israeli Embassy which took place on March 17, 1992, killing 29 people, and injuring 242. The attack was the work of Iran.
2011: The Five finalists on the Man-O-Manischewitz Cook-Off who have won an all-expense paid trip to Manhattan are scheduled to compete today at the Jewish Community Center of Manhattan. A panel consisting of food media and other culinary experts will judge the contestants. Chef Jacques Pepin, the celebrity guest of honor, will act as emcee, head judge, and prize awarder. The cooking contest has a $25,000 grand prize package including a GE Profile kitchen appliances and cash.
2011: Lorin Sklamberg with Dublin-born chanteuse Susan McKeown and guitarist Aidan Brennan are scheduled to present Saints and Tzadiks, a program of rare songs from the Yiddish and Irish traditions in Bielefeld, Germany.
2011(12 Adar II, 5771): Sixty-seven year old Knesset Member and educator Ze'ev Boim passed away today.
2011(12 Adar II): On the Hebrew calendar, anniversary the “Dedication of Herod’s Renovated Temple” in 11 BCE. For those who know how Herod lived his life the Talmud’s declaration that "He who has not seen Herod's edifice has not seen a magnificent edifice!" is difficult to understand.
2011:Projectiles land in open areas with no injuries, damaged reported; shots fired at IDF soldiers near southern Gaza border.
2011: In “In Novels, an Ex-Spy Returns to the Fold,” Jules Bosman describes the upcoming literary efforts of Valery Palme Wilson, the CIA employee who happened to Jewish and who was identity was scandalously exposed by those upset with her husband
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/19/books/valerie-plame-wilson-to-write-series-of-spy-novels.html
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