JUNE 14 In History
1287: Kublai Khan defeated the force of Nayan and other traditionalist Borjigin princes in East Mongolia and Manchuria. It is quite possible that there were Jewish soldiers serving under the great Mongol warrior who became Emperor of China. According to Marco Polo, Kubla Kahn celebrated the festivals of the Jews as well as those of the Muslims and Christians, indicating that a Jewish community existed that could make itself felt at the highest level of the Empire.
1514: Azemmour, a city in Morocco, offered privileges to Jews fleeing from Portugal.
1656: Directors of the Dutch West India Company sent a strong letter to Peter Stuyvesant in
New Amsterdam
ordering him to give "more respect" to the "Jews or Portuguese people" in his city. A principle shareholder in the company, a Jew named Joseph d'Acosta had assisted in obtaining this statement.
1796: French forces attacked
Frankfurt
. An artillery barrage aimed at the Austrian arsenal next to the ghetto struck the Judengasse instead. The subsequent fired burned so much of the ghetto that 2,000 of its inhabitants were left homeless. This forced the city’s senate to suspend the decree forbidding Jews from living elsewhere in the city. The fire effectively marked the end of the Jewish Ghetto in
Frankfurt
.
1751 Pope Benedict XIV issued an encyclical “On Jews and Christians Living in the Same Place” in which he bemoans the growing presence of Jews in Poland. (The Pope would seem to be a little late in dealing with this. Jews had been living in Poland for centuries, having been encouraged to settle their by the monarchs who saw them as financial and commercial asset. By the middle of the 18th centuries, the position of the Jews had deteriorated and in less than fifty years, Poland would disappear as an independent Kingdom.
1798(30thof Sivan, 5558): Rosh Chodesh Tammuz
1799(11thof Sivan, 5569): The avoidance of massacre when the French forces withdrew gave rise to the annual observance of Purim Ubrino
1821(14thof Sivan, 5581): Chaim Volozhin (Chaim ben Yitzchok of Volozhin), author of Nefesh Ha-Chaimpassed away. Born in 1749, he studied with the Vilna Gaon before establishing the Volozhin Yeshiva in 1803 in which he applied the methods of his famous master. The Yesshiva outlived its creator, remaining open for 90 years.
1841: Colonel Charles Henry Churchill wrote to Sir Moses Montefiore expressing his support for the creation of Jewish state in Palestine and identifying the first steps that must be taken. First, the Jews must “take up the matter universally and unanimously. Secondly, the European Powers” must aid them in their endeavor by taking Syria and Palestine “under their protection” and governing them “according to the spirit of European administration.” Churchill was a British soldier and diplomat who was among the first people, if not the first person, to propose a practical political plan for the creation of a Jewish state in what is now the state of Israel.
1842(6thof Tammuz. 5602): Dr. Joel Hart passed away today. Born in Philadelphia in 1874 he was trained in London where he married his wife Louisa Levien. He served as U.S. Counsel of Leith, Scotland from 1817 until 1832. He was a charter member of the Medical Society of the County of New York.
1858: Birthdate of the Marquis de Morès, an anti-Semitic French nobleman who attacked Jews in France and Algeria
1868: Birthdate of Karl Landsteiner, the Austrian born American physician who received the Nobel Prize for Medicine for his work on differentiating the blood groups in 1930.
1874: “The Mystery of Metz: An Old Cause Célèbre” an article published today described the blood libel which took place at that ancient German city in 1669. According to the author, who described the even in great detail, this was an example of another groundless attack that Jews had to suffer during the Middle Ages.
1880: Mortiz Hartman, an official of the Simon Benevolent Association went to the morgue in New York and asked for the body of a young Jewess named Kate Ungerleider who had died of whooping cough. Hartman and Louis Davis took the body of the child that had been given to them and brought it to the Bay Ridge Cemetery where they turned it over to the wife of the cemetery caretaker so that she could wash it and prepare it for burial according to Jewish law. The woman took the body into her house and immediately came back out telling the men that the body was that of a Christian boy. They interred the remains in a temporary grave and returned to the morgue in search of Kate’s body. When no action was taken, Hartman went to the Commissioner of Charities and Corrections who instituted a successful search for the body. This was the third known instances of such errors in the last six weeks. The officials returned to the Bay Ridge Cemetery and interred it there in accordance with Jewish law.
1880(5th of Tammuz, 5640) A 32 year old tailor named Maurice Moses Heineltrop took his own life today after Seligman & May refused to pay him for a batch of waistcoats he had made for them. Heineltrop’s sense of desperation stemmed from the fact that he employed 16 men and he would not be able to pay them for their work.
1880: It was reported today that Professor Grazidadio Ascoli, the chairman of comparative philology at the Accademia Scientifico-Litteraria of Milan is scheduled “to publish his essay on the Hebrew inscriptions at Venosa, in Calabria. These seem to be the earliest Hebrew inscriptions found in Europe…” [This may be reference to the inscriptions in Hebrew, Greek and Latin found in Jewish catacombs that date from the 4th and 5th centuries of the Common Era.
1881: Based on a Reuter’s dispatch from St. Petersburg, it was reported today that peasants living in a village in the district of Kiev have paid 800 rubles to the Jews as compensation “for the sufferings they have undergone.
1882: In New Orleans, Miss Jessie Green and Isaac Feitel. Born an Episcopalian, she converted before her marriage. The couple had previously been married in a civil ceremony. Today’s wedding was performed by a local rabbi.
1884: It was reported today that a half shekel coin from the time of Simon Maccabeus was sold for $10.25 at an auction conducted this week to dispose of rare coins held by Thomas Warner, a member of the American Numismatic Society. The price compares favorably when you consider that the rarest coin in the collection sold for 25 dollars. The half shekel had a chalice of manna with a Hebrew inscription on one side and a render of a triple lily or Aaron’s Rod on the other side.
1885(1st of Tammuz, 5645): Rosh Chodesh Tammuz
1885: In a demonstration of the impact of Jewish culture on Western civilization Dr. A.P. Peabody chose the words from Nehemiah “Then I consulted with myself” as the text for the Baccalaureate sermon at Harvard. “He could not, he said think of any more appropriate basis for his remarks than these words of the foremost figure in Hebrew history from the time of Moses to the time of Christ.” [Yes, at Harvard, Jesus was apparently considered to be Jewish]
1888: James H. Hoffman and H.M. Leipziger addressed the more than four hundred attendees at the fourth annual exhibition sponsored by the Hebrew Technical Institute located on Stuyvesant Street. The exhibition gave the supporters of the school a chance to examine the projects and accomplishments of the 78 youngsters attending the school.
1891: “Russia’s War On Jews” published today begins with an eyewitness account of the Czar’s plans for his Jewish subjects. “Jews in bands of from 1,000 to 2,000 are being escorted to different points on the German frontier and put across the line into the latter country. There can be no question as to the intention of the Russian Government to expel all the Jews from its domain.”
1891: “Helping Sick Children” published today includes a summary of the annual report issued by the Sanitarium for Hebrew Children. Among other accomplishments, the society sponsored ten free excursions last year for 18,124 sick children and their mothers and is about to begin using the new facility at Rockaway that cost $20,225.
1891: “Browning’s Story Told” published today provides a detail review of Life and Letters of Robert Browning by Mrs. Sutherland Orr. “Mrs. Orr begins this memoir of Robert Browning with a refutation of a story current in his lifetime and revived after his death, that Jewish blood coursed in his veins, active support of which was obtained from his known interest in the Hebrew language and literature and his friendship for many members of the London Jewish Community.”
1893: “Caught In A Death Trap” published today provided details of the fatal fire at building on Montgomery Street that was the home to numerous tailoring operations.
1894: The annual commencement exercises of the Hebrew Technical Institute at Arlington Hall. Abraham Steinberg who worked in the second floor shop of Isidor Shlivek was one of the few who was able to escape down the stairway although he almost suffocated before reaching the street. Benjamin Signel, a Janitor at the Hebrew Free School said he saw two men standing at the third floor window who were afraid to jump. They tried the fire escape instead but one of the men still fell to his death. (The Triangle Shirt Fire made headlines, but fires like this were all too common in the garment district for several decades. It took the labor unions to create safe working conditions. The description of this fire reminds one of those that take place in the 21st century in “third world garment factories” )
1894: The Jewish Theological Seminary hosted its commencement exercises the Music Hall in New York City.
1894: Leopold Minzesheimer continued to serve as the Superintendent of the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York.
1894: Herman Baar continues to serve as the Superintendent of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum. The officers are Emanuel Lehman, President and Henry Rice, Vice President. The trustees are Morris Tuska, Nathan Necarsulmer, Julian Nathan, Myer Stern, H.S. Allen, Theodore Seligman and S. J. Bach.
1894: It was reported that the daughter-in-law of Moses Levy, had obtained a judgment of $12,000 after suing him “for alienating the affections of her husband.
1896: Based on information that first appeared in the London Chronicle it was reported today that fortune of the late Baron Hirsch will eventually be inherited by an unnamed “little Roman Catholic girl” who has been recognized of the heir of Lucien de Hirsch, the Baron’s son who predeceased his father.
1896: Louis Michael filed a response in the Chancery Court at Paterson, NJ in which the Jewish husband is being sued for divorce by his Christian wife.
1897: When the British steamship Scot arrived at the Island of Madeira off the west coast of Morocco, it was announced that Barney Barnato, the South African “diamond king” had committed suicide by jumping overboard.
1898: The government dispatched troops to Lemberg in response to anti-Semitic riots.
1900: Hawaii was organized as a territory of the United States. There were approximately four hundred Jews living in
Honolulu
at this time. A German Jew named Paul Neumann had served as an advisor to the last King of Hawaii. In 1899, the first Jew born in
Hawaii
was married in
Honolulu
. The first synagogue would be established in 1901.
1901(27th of Sivan, 5661): Frederick Knefler passed away. A native of Hungary, Knefler settled in Indiana where he worked as a carpenter before becoming a lawyer. When the Civil War broke out, Knefler enlisted in the 11th Indiana Infantry under the command of his friend Lew Wallace. He served with the Union Army in the west fighting in a series of battles including Stones River, Chickamauga, and Missionary Ridge. He then played a leading role in Sherman’s Atlanta Campaign where he commanded a brigade. His finest moment may have come at the Battle of Franklin where is bravery earned him the rank of Brevet Brigadier General making him one of the highest ranking Jewish officers to serve during the war. After the war, he returned to Indianapolis where he practiced law, worked for the government and devoted his spare time to veterans’ affairs.
1903: Macedonians attacked the Jewish quarter of Sophia, Bulgaria.
1904(1stof Tammuz, 5664): Rosh Chodesh Tammuz
1904: Birthdate of Margaret Bourke-White, whose father was from an Orthodox Jewish family and whose mother was Irish. For those who grew up in a world of hand-held video cams, satellite communications and cable network news, it is hard to appreciate the important role played photographers and photo-journalists like Bourke-White. Her photos filled the pages of such publications as Life Magazine, which brought the world of natural disasters, war and high fashion to
Middle America
1905: Sailors aboard the Russian Warship Potemkin mutiny. These events will provide the material for Battleship Potyomkin, a 1925 silent film classic directed by Sergei Eisenstein
1906: Start of three days of anti-Jewish violence known as the Bialystok Pogrom. The violence began when “two Christian processions took place; a Catholic one through the market square celebrating Corpus Christi and an Orthodox one through Białystok’s New Town celebrating the founding of a cathedral. The Orthodox procession was followed by a unit of soldiers. A bomb was thrown at the Catholic procession and shots were fired at the Orthodox procession. A watchman of a local school, Stanislaw Milyusski, and three women Anna Demidyuk, Aleksandra Minkovskaya and Maria Kommisaryuk, were wounded. These incidents constituted signals for the beginning of the pogrom. Witnesses reported that simultaneously with the shots someone shouted “Beat the Jews!” Once the shots were fired, the violence began immediately. Mobs of thugs, including members of the Black Hundreds, began looting Jewish owned stores and apartments on Nova-Linsk Street. Policemen and soldiers who had earlier followed the Orthodox procession either allowed the violence to happen or participated in it themselves. The first day of the pogrom was chaotic. While units of the Czarist army, brought to Białystok by Russian authorities, exchanged fire with Jewish paramilitary groups, thugs armed with knives and crowbars dispersed throughout the main areas of the city to continue the pogrom.[10] Some Jewish sections of the city were protected by self-defense units, usually organized by the labor parties, which moved against the thugs and looters. They were in turn fired upon by Czarist dragoons. Thanks to the Jewish self-defense units several working class sections of the city were spared the violence and thousands of lives were saved.”
1907: Jacob Weinberger married Blanche Solomon. Blanche was the daughter of I.E. and Anna Solomon one of the earliest and most successful Jewish families to settle in the Arizona Territory
1909: The Order of Brith Abraham held its Golden Jubilee dinner at the New Star Casino in New York. The dinner was attended by 2,000 guests including several notables the most important of which was the District Attorney Jerome who was the featured speaker for the evening.
1909: Rabbi Judah Magnes addressed the Zionist convention being held at the Terrace Garden. Pointing to the changes that had come about in the Ottoman Empire due to the recent Turkish revolution Magnes urged the Jews to “work for an autonomous state under Turkish suzerainty rather than an independent government.”
1912: Educator and advocate for social change, Julia Richman arrives in
France
following an ocean crossing on the Victoria Louise and is taken to the American hospital where she was immediately operated on for appendicitis.
1916: Samuel Utermeyer attended the Democratic National Convention which opened today as a delegate from New York
1919: Birthdate of Gene Barry. Born Eugene Klass in Brooklyn, New York, Barry went on to a long, commercially successful career in film and television. He often played suave, sophisticated types whose voices never betrayed even a bit of Brooklyn. Barry played a starring role in the 1950’s version of War of the Worlds.
1920: Birthdate of Dr. Arnall Patzin an ophthalmologist whose research upset medical convention but ended up saving countless babies from blindness. He was born in rural Elberton, Ga., the youngest of seven children. His father, an immigrant from Lithuania, was a peddler who insisted on maintaining Jewish customs in Elberton, where his was the only Jewish family. He passed away in 2010 at the age of 89.
1921: During a speech in the House of Commons, Winston Churchill, who had just returned from a visit to the Middle East, praises the accomplishments of the Zionist settlers and describes how the Arabs have benefited from their efforts. He denounced as “disgraceful” any action of the British government that would such progress to “fanatical attacks” by outsiders.
1921: During a debate on Palestine, Lord Winterton “warned Churchill that once you begin to buy land for the purpose of settling Jewish cultivators you will find yourself up against the hereditary antipathy which exists all over world to the Jewish race.” It would seem that from the earliest days, there was a direct connection between being anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic.
1927: Flag Day celebrated today commemorates the 150thanniversary of the adoption of the design for the American flag by Congress. On the previous Shabbat, in response to a resolution adopted by the Synagogue Council of America, rabbis devoted their sermons to this topic.
1929: Birthdate of Seymour Kaufman who gained fame as Cy Coleman the Tony Award winning composer and pianist.
1929(6th of Sivan, 5689): Shavuot
1931: Deadline for submitting results of delegate election to the Executive of the Jewish Agency which is making plans for the Seventeenth Zionist Congress.
1934(1st of Tammuz, 5694): Rosh Chodesh Tammuz
1934: A Nuremberg court sentenced a non-Jewish wife of a Jew to four months in prison as a ‘race-defiling female.'
1934: Hitler met with Mussolini for the first time. Hitler was the junior partner at this first meeting. As the thirties progressed the roles would be reversed and Mussolini would shift his policies to satisfy the Nazi dictator.
1934: With a Star of David on his boxing shorts, Max Baer KO'd Primo Carnera in 11rounds to win the World Heavyweight Championship. However, Baer’s Jewish persona was considered to be more of a box office thing than a religious reality. Born in 1909 in
Nebraska
, his mother was Scotch-Irish and his father was described as "only nominally Jewish." Baer himself married a Catholic and did not take part in Jewish activities.
1936: Birthdate of Avraham Shochat, the Tel Aviv native, who helped found the city Arad and has served as an MK and held several cabinet posts.
1936: The Palestine Post reported that once more the
Jezreel
Valley
settlements of Kfar Yehezkel and Tel Yosef were singled out for concentrated Arab attacks. The settlement of Sejera in
Lower Galilee
suffered its stormiest night ‚ grain and cornfields were set on fire and over 250 old olive trees were cut down. After all Arab train passengers left a train at Kalkilya, a bomb thrown inside one of the coaches injured 18 Jews near Tulkarm.
1936: In attacks in and around Jerusalem today Arabs wounded five Jewish truck and bus drivers as well as an additional number of and workers, two of whom are in a serious condition. Only recently, in the same vicinity, Jewish travelers were killed in similar attacks.
1937: Chaim Weizmann wrote to Winston Churchill thanking him for the support he had given to Zionist cause by trying to convince Colonial Secretary William Ormsby-Gore that the Southern part of
Palestine
should not be incorporated into any future Arab state that would be set up in
Palestine
.
1938: All Jewish businesses that have not already been registered and marked must now comply with the Reich requirement
1940:
Auschwitz
was opened. Approximately 2.5 million people were killed and another 500,000 died of starvation and disease there. The first inmates, included teachers, priests, and other non-Jewish Poles,
1940:Artist Jan Komskiwas in the first group of about 750 prisoners assigned to Auschwitz, in southern Poland, on the day it opened. His number, 564, was tattooed on his forearm.
1940: German Forces entered Paris. At the time
France
housed 300,000 Jews. Ernst Weiss, noted novelist and German-Jewish refugee who was living in
Paris
commits suicide.
1940: In Paris, Gestapo officers went to the flat of Walter Benjamin with the intent of arresting the expatriate German intellectual. They failed because Benjamin and his sister had already left Paris for Lurdes.
1941: Etty Hillesum, a student at
Amsterdam
University
described the treatment of Dutch Jews by the Nazis. “More arrests, more terror, concentration camps, the arbitrary dragging of fathers, sisters, brothers. Everything seems so menacing and ominous, and always that feel of total impotence.”
1941: As the Final Solution came into full fury, 400 Jews were deported from Estonia.
1941: In the Netherlands, based on a decree by the German occupiers, today was the last day on which doctorate degrees could be issued to Jews. Physicist Albert Pais, who had completed his doctoral work on June 9, was the last Jew to earn a doctorate in the Netherlands until World War II came to an end.
1942: Anne Frank begins to keep a diary
1942: Two thousand Jews break out of
Dzisna
,
Byelorussia
1944: Two thousand Jews are deported from
Corfu
,
Greece
, to
Auschwitz
.
1944(23rd of Sivan, 5704): Leon Sakkis was killed by German machine-gun fire while aiding a wounded comrade in Thessaly, Greece. Sakkis was part of a group of Jewish resistance fighters, who along with other partisans were working to keep the Germans from enjoying the “fruits” of the harvest taking place in Greece.
1945: In London, Randolph Churchill, Winston Churchill’s son, tells Chaim Weizman that he ‘had tried to save 115 Jews in Yugoslavia; he has save 112, but 3 had perished.’ In 1944 Randolph Churchill had parachuted behind German lines to worth Marshall Tito and his Yugoslav partisans in the fight against the Nazis. As part of that mission, young
Randolph
worked to have Palestinian Jews parachuted into
Europe
to help the partisans and to try and rescue the Jews who had not gone to the Death Camps.
1946: Bernard Baruch - widely seen by many scientists and some members of Truman's administration as unqualified for the task - presented his Baruch Plan, a modified version of the Acheson-Lilienthal plan, to the UNAEC, which proposed international control of then-new atomic energy. The Soviet Union rejected Baruch's proposal as unfair given the fact that the U.S. already had nuclear weapons, instead proposing that the U.S. eliminate its nuclear weapons before a system of controls and inspections was implemented. A stalemate ensued.
1948(7thof Sivan, 5708): Second Day of Shavuot
1950: An Israeli army spokesman denied Jordanian charges that Arabs who had infiltrated Israel “had been mistreated while being returned across the frontier” to Jordan. What the Jordanians have not explained is why the Hashemites allow their Kingdom to be used as base for those who want to enter Israel with the intention to attack the Jewish population.
1951: The Jerusalem Post reported that Mapai won eight of 11 seats in Migdal Gad's first municipal council elections. Hapoel Hamizrahi won two and Mapam one. While there were 1,973 eligible voters, only 1,543 actually voted. Nine additional clothing points and 11 shoe points were released for the month of July. The Kaiser-Frazer plant in Haifa which was hailed as a model of American production efficiency assembled the first cars for sale in Israel.
1952: Birthdate of Leon Wieseltier, editor of The New Republic and the author of “Kaddish” one of the finest books of its kind which Theodore Bikel did a marvelous job of recording.
1952: The keel is laid for the nuclear submarine USS Nautilus. This was a major milestone in the creation of America’s ace-in-the-hole in the Cold War – the fleet of nuclear attack submarines against which the Soviets never did develop an effective defense. Admiral Hyman Rickover, who suffered his share of anti-Semitism in the Navy, was the father of the nuclear Navy and the submarine fleet.
1953(1stof Tammuz, 5713): Rosh Chodesh Tammuz
1953: One hundred and eight bachelor’s degrees were awarded during the commencement ceremony at Brandeis University. It was the newly created school’s second commencement ceremony. Rabbi Louis Ginzberg, Professor of Talmud and Rabbinics at JTS and George Alpert, Chairman of the Brandeis Board of Trustees received honorary degrees during the ceremony.
1954: U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs a bill into law that places the words “under God" to the United States’ Pledge of Allegiance. Despite its apparent invocation of the divinity, this insertion did not evoke a storm of protest in the name of separation of church and state. Everybody knew that this was a political statement, not a religious one. At the height of the Cold War, it was a line in the stand between the West and the forces of “mindless, godless Communism.
1958: Birthdate of Wafa Sultan a Syrian born American author and critic of Muslim society and Islam who trained as a psychiatrist in Syria. Following one of her critiques of Moslem culture in which she said "no Jew has blown himself up in a German restaurant" the American Jewish Congress invited her to visit Jerusalem.
1959: David Joel Horowitz, the founder of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, married Elissa Krauthamer in a Yonkers, NY synagogue.
1967(6th of Sivan, 5727): First Day of Shavuot
1967(6th of Sivan, 5727): On the First Day of Shavuot an estimated 200,000 gathered in and around the Wall to celebrate the first major festival following the reunification of Jerusalem. When Teddy Kollek appeared at the Wall he was hailed “as the first Mayor of Greater Jerusalem.”
1967: A contingent of Mossad agents that had fanned out across the
West Bank
to meet with members of the Palestinian elite immediately following the Six Day War submitted their classified report to the head of Military Intelligence. It argued that an independent Palestinian state should be established as quickly as possible in the
West Bank
and Gaza Strip, "under the auspices" of the Israel Defense Forces and "in agreement with the Palestinian leadership." They suggested that the borders of the Palestinian state be based on the 1949 armistice lines that had served as the border until earlier that month, with some minor adjustments. "In order to enable an honorable agreement," the document continued,
Israel
should "take upon itself the initiative to solve the [refugee] problem once and for all" by organizing an international effort to resettle them in the new Palestinian state.
1972: Martin Dies, former member of the House of Representatives from Texas passed away and Chairman of the House Un-American Activities Committee. A man of considerable influence in his day, Dies was a red- baiting reactionary who, among other things, was an anti-Semite.
1976: The Jerusalem Post reported that Ephraim Katzir became the first president of
Israel
to be entertained at the
Windsor
Castle
by Queen Elizabeth of
England
. A British naval vessel arrived in Haifa to purchase provisions for the Royal Navy in the eastern Mediterranean. The British military attaché told the Post that "
Haifa
is a friendly port" and was therefore chosen. Such purchases have not been made in
Haifa
in the past.
1982: Israeli tanks cut off Muslim West Beirut, trapping leaders of the PLO,
1985:
TWA
Flight 847 is hijacked by Hezbollah. Long before 9/11, Moslem fanatics were making war against the West. Supported by Iran, Hezbollah splits its time between terrorist activities aimed at Israel, trying to control Lebanon and making war against Western civilization.
1986(7th of Sivan, 5746): Sixty-seven year old composer Alan Jay Lerner passed away. In one of the many cultural ironies that are so much a part of the American scene, Lerner composed with fellow Jew to write “Camelot,” a musical about English king that became a Broadway and cinematic classic that was loved by JFK, the first American Catholic President. (As reported by Samuel G. Freedman)
http://www.nytimes.com/1986/06/15/obituaries/alan-jay-lerner-the-lyricist-and-playwright-is-dead-at-67.html?pagewanted=print
1986(7th of Sivan, 5746): Second Day of Shavuot
1987:The annual International Israel Festival which began on May 18 is scheduled to come to an end today.
1997(9thof Sivan, 5757): Seventy-seven year old Jay Ziskin, the California psychologist and lawyer who was the father of movie producer Laura Ziskin passed away
1998: The New York Timesfeatured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “Ghost Country” by Sara Paretsky
2005(7th of Sivan, 5765): Second Day of Shavuot
2004(25th of Sivan, 5764): Max J. Rosenberg, “an American film producer, whose film career stretched across six decades” passed away in Los Angeles at the age of 89. “He was particularly noted for his horror or supernatural films, and found much of his success while working in England. Rosenberg was born in the Bronx, New York. In 1945 he entered the film business by becoming a foreign film distributor. Although he primarily produced horror or supernatural films, his first film Rock, Rock, Rock (1956) was a musical. His partner in this film was Milton Subotsky, and the two would start the British company Amicus Productions in 1964. During his career he produced more than 50 films, on some of which he was not credited. Among the horror and supernatural films he produced were such titles as Tales from the Crypt (1972), The Land That Time Forgot (1975), and its sequel, The People That Time Forgot (1977). In 1957 he produced the first horror film in color, The Curse of Frankenstein. Rosenberg also produced a children's film, Lad, a Dog (1962), a pair of films based on the Doctor Who series, and director Richard Lester's first film, It's Trad, Dad! (1962). He was particularly proud to have produced the 1968 film of Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party, starring Robert Shaw and directed by William Friedkin. He worked well into his 80s; his final film credit was 1997's Perdita Durango aka Dance With the Devil.
http://www.ducts.org/12_06/html/profiles/evanier.html
2006:Leaders of the largest Orthodox rabbinical organization in the U.S. have reached a compromise regarding overseas conversions with Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar.
2007(28thof Sivan, 5767): Shirlee Mages, whose father owned a thriving Roosevelt Road restaurant in the 1930s and '40s and whose husband put his name on a sporting goods chain, died today at the age 88 “in her Gold Coast home of natural causes, said her daughter, Lili Ann Zisook. Mrs. Mages was the widow of Morrie Mages, a 1950s Chicago television staple who was often in the company of the late broadcaster Jack Brickhouse touting his sporting-goods stores through the sponsorship of a late-night movie called "Mages Playhouse." Morrie Mages and his family had a chain of 14 stores in the 1960s, but the business ran into hard times and was sold. That led Mrs. Mages to take a job managing the Pompian Shop, a ladies boutique on Michigan Avenue, her daughter said. "My mother was just a woman who did what she had to do," Zisook said. Morrie Mages subsequently rebounded with a smaller chain, anchored by a store at LaSalle and Ontario Streets. He died in 1988 at 72. Mrs. Mages, born Shirlee Gold, grew up in the Lawndale neighborhood. Her father, Meyer, owned Gold's Restaurant at 810 W. Roosevelt Rd. Gold's had a ballroom where many weddings were celebrated and future musical star Benny Goodman would sometimes play clarinet there, Zisook said. After her graduation from Marshall High School, Mrs. Mages attended Northwestern University before getting married in 1939. Always strong with numbers, she worked as a stock broker in the 1950s, her daughter said. In retirement, during which she wintered in Palm Springs, Calif., she was devoted to the mastery of canasta and mah jongg. Mrs. Mages survived bouts with breast and colon cancer and quadruple bypass surgery, her daughter said. "She was such a strong woman, not so much physically, but her mind," Zisook said. When her husband was alive, the couple organized the Morrie and Shirlee Mages Foundation, which provided sports equipment to needy youths. After his death, she led the charge to name a playground in Lincoln Park after her late husband.
2007: An exhibition entitled The Other Promised Land: Vacationing, Identity, and the Jewish-American Dream opens at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York.
2007: In a press release,
Hebrew
University
announces that “the valuable and unique Nuremberg Mahzor of 1331 has been scanned and uploaded to the Internet site of the Jewish National and University Library of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The Nuremberg Mahzor can be viewed at: http://jnul.huji.ac.il/dl/mss-pr/mahzor-nuremberg/
2008: “State Renews Efforts to Bring Disputed Jewish Manuscripts From Russia published today described theefforts by the state of Israel to bring the Ginzburg Collection from Russia to a permanent home in the Jewish state.
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/features/state-renews-efforts-to-bring-disputed-jewish-manuscripts-from-russia-1.247641
2009: Esther M. Sternberg, a doctor and the author of The Balance Within: The Science Connecting Health and Emotions, discusses and signs her new book Healing Spaces: The Science of Place and Well-Beingat Politics and Prose, in Washington, D.C.
2009: The Washington Post featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including “Rosenfeld’s Lives: Fame, Oblivion, and the Furies of Writing” by Steven J. Zipperstein and “The American Future: A History” by Simon Schama.
2009: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War by Benny Morris, Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy by Eric D. Weitz and Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen.
2009: <span s