Today in Jewish History

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Iyar 17 

 

Yahrtzeit of Rabbi Yechezkel Landau (1713-1793), a brilliant scholar and leader known popularly by the title of his commentary, Nodeh BiYehuda. Rabbi Landau was born in Poland, and became rabbi of the large and influential community of Prague. He also authored Dagul Mervavah on the Shulchan Aruch and Tzelach on the Talmud. Rabbi Landau interceded with the government on various occasions to counter anti-Semitic measures. In one famous incident, the local bakers of Prague had secretly plotted to poison the bread and sell it only to the Jews. Late one night, there was a knock on Rabbi Landau's door. It was one on the bakers, who decades earlier Rabbi Landau had reached out to help. Out of gratitude, this man revealed the plot, and thousands of Jewish lives were saved.

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Iyar 18i

 

Yahrtzeit of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai (100-170 CE), the great scholar and leader during the Roman period following the destruction of the Second Temple. After criticizing the Roman government, Rabbi Shimon was forced to go into hiding with his son for 13 years. They lived in a cave, studying Torah, and subsisting on carob and water. Rabbi Shimon is credited with authoring many works of Jewish law, including the Zohar, the primary source of Jewish mysticism, which he revealed to his students on his final day. Lag B'Omer -- literally the "33rd day of the Omer" -- is the yahrtzeit of Rabbi Shimon and, according to his wishes, is observed as a day of great celebration. Jews throughout Israel light huge bonfires, symbolically illuminating the deeper truths of Torah, as revealed by Rabbi Shimon. The main celebration is at Meiron, the Rabbi Shimon's burial site, where tens of thousands of people gather to light torches, sing and dance in his honor.

Iyar 18 is also the yahrtzeit of Rabbi Moshe Isserles (1530-1572), known by the acronym Rema. His most famous work was notes on the Code of Jewish Law (Shulchan Aruch); these opinions are regarded as the definitive source for Ashkenazi Jewry. The Rema was born and died in Krakow, Poland, where he served as rabbi of the city. Not only a Talmudic and legal scholar, he was also learned in Kabbalah, and studied history, astronomy and philosophy. He penned a Torah scroll that was preserved for centuries in his synagogue in Krakow, until being destroyed in the Holocaust.

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Iyar 19 

 

Yahrtzeit of Rabbi Meir of Rotenburg (1215-1293), a great Talmudic commentator and leader of German Jewry, known by the acronym Maharam. When leaving Germany, Rabbi Rotenburg was arrested on false charges, and a huge ransom was imposed for his release. The money was raised, but he forbade it to be paid, on the grounds that it would encourage further hostage-taking of Jewish leaders. At great personal sacrifice, he preferred to remain in prison, in order to save many others from a similar fate. He died in captivity seven years later, however his body was not surrendered for another 14 years, when a Jew named Alexander Suskind gave away most of his fortune to ransom the body -- on condition that he would later have the honor of being buried alongside Rabbi Rotenburg.

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Iyar 20 

 

In 1311 BCE (Hebrew year 2449), the Jewish people left Mount Sinai to go to Israel. If the Jews hadn't complained about the difficulties of traveling in the desert, they would have entered the Land of Israel immediately. As it was, they wandered in the desert for 40 years before entering the land.

On this date in 1800, D.M. Dyte, an English Jew, saved the life of King George III of England. King George was attending a theater presentation, when a lunatic in the audience fired a gun pointblank at the king. Two bullets missed their target, passing harmlessly over the king's head. It was revealed that D.M. Dyte had struck the would-be assassin's arm as he pulled the trigger. As a reward, Dyte asked for (and was granted) a monopoly on the sale of opera tickets.

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Iyar 21 

 

In 1882, the Jewish agricultural settlement of Alliance was founded in New Jersey. Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe proposed this settlement as a utopian experiment, with the thought that through agriculture the Jewish people would become emancipated. Ultimately, the Alliance idea failed, as an industrializing, urban America proved more powerful than the settlers' plan.

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Iyar 22 

 

In 1944, the Nazis began deporting Hungarian Jews to the concentration camps. This would be one of the final tragedies of the Holocaust, as 400,000 Hungarian Jews were taken to the gas chambers in a matter of weeks. Additionally, tens of thousands of Jews died on death marches from Budapest to Austria, and others were shot and thrown into the Danube River. During this time, Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat stationed in Budapest, issued thousands of Swedish identity documents to protect Jews from deportation; he is credited with saving tens of thousands of lives.

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Iyar 23 

 

In the Hebrew year 2448, Moses hit a rock in order to provide water for the Jewish people in the desert (Exodus 17:6). This became the Well of Miriam that miraculously accompanied the Jews for the next 40 years.

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Iyar 24 

 

In 1945, Germany surrendered unconditionally to the Allies, one week after Adolf Hitler committed suicide in a Nazi bunker. World War II had engulfed much of the globe and is considered the most costly war in human history. In total, some 50 million people lost their lives -- 20 million soldiers and 30 million civilians.

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Iyar 25 

 

In 1096, Christian Crusaders reached the city of Cologne, only to find the city gates locked by order of the bishop. The Crusaders were en route to liberate the Holy Land from the "infidels," and turned these Crusades into campaigns of slaughter, rape and pillage. This large-scale mob violence, directed primarily against European Jews, served as the model for later pogroms. Muslims were also victims of the Crusaders, which historians believe planted a deep-seeded hatred of the West. In this first Crusade, an estimated 40% of the Jewish community of Europe was slaughtered; only the Jews of Cologne, with their locked city gates, were completely spared.

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Iyar 26 

 

Yahrtzeit of Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto (1707-1747), author of classic works of Jewish philosophy, known by the acronym of his name, Ramchal. He was born in Italy where he quickly became known for his vast Torah knowledge and beautiful literary style. It is said that by age 14, he already knew the entire Talmud and Midrash by heart. Ramchal's Path of the Just, which describes a step-by-step process to attaining spiritual perfection, is a classical work of Mussar (Jewish ethics) that is studied widely today. Other of Ramchal's important works include The Way of God, a systemized study of Jewish philosophy, and Da'at Tevunot, an exposition on kabbalistic concepts. Ramchal moved to Amsterdam where he worked as a diamond cutter, and later to Israel, where he perished in a plague at the age of 40. He is buried next to the famed Rebbe Akiva on a hillside in Tiberias.

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Iyar 27 

 

In 1945, the Theresienstadt concentration camp was liberated. Theresienstadt was not a death camp by the usual definition. It was the center of a Nazi PR ploy -- a mythic, idyllic city that was supposedly built to protect Jews from the vagaries and stresses of the war. The Red Cross was once allowed to visit Theresienstadt, which was spruced up for the occasion; inmates were dressed up and baked goods suddenly filled the shelves. (The Red Cross concluded that the Jews were being well-treated.) In reality, starvation and disease proved rampant. Of the 200,000 people (mostly Czech Jews) who passed through its gates, thousands died of malnutrition and exposure, and others were sent to Auschwitz.

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Iyar 28 

 

In 1967, Israeli paratroopers completed their capture of the Old City of Jerusalem, restoring Jewish control of the Temple Mount, Judaism's holiest site. Soldiers danced, sang and cried at the Western Wall, the site of Jewish prayers for centuries. A plaza was cleared in front of the Wall, and one week later, tens of thousands of Jews swarmed to the site on the holiday of Shavuot. Iyar 28 is celebrated today as Yom Yerushalayim, commemorating the reunification of the Holy City, which has stood as the capital of the Jewish nation for 3,000 years.

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Iyar 29 

 

Yahrtzeit of Shmuel (Samuel) the Prophet (930-878 BCE). Shmuel was born to Chana, who had been barren for many years and prayed intensely for a child. Shmuel was raised in an atmosphere of great holiness, and became a leading prophet in Israel. Shmuel's greatest contribution was in anointing the first king of Israel, Saul, and later anointing King David in his stead. (Some sources list Shmuel's yahrtzeit as Iyar 28.)

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Sivan 1 

 

In the Hebrew year 2448 (1312 BCE), seven weeks after the Exodus from Egypt, the Jewish people arrived at Mount Sinai. They spent the next five days in intense purification and preparation to receive the Torah.

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Sivan 2 

 

In 1946, Rumanian leader Ion Antonescu was executed for his role in World War II. Antonescu passed dozens of anti-Jewish laws, and directly ordered pogroms and deportations to concentration camps. Antonescu, whose stepmother and wife were both Jewish, said: "I give the mob complete license to massacre [the Jews]. I will withdraw to my fortress, and after the slaughter, I will restore order." Under his governance, approximately 300,000 Jews were killed in Romania and Transnistria, where many had been deported. Toward the end of the war, Antonescu was arrested and put on trial by the Communist government in Bucharest -- on the primary charge of having supported the German invasion of the USSR. He was sentenced to death and executed.

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Sivan 3 

 

Yahrtzeit of David "Mickey" Marcus (1902-1948), an American Jew who volunteered to fight for the Israeli army in the 1948 War of Independence. Marcus was a tough Brooklyn street kid who attended West Point and then law school. In World War II, Marcus rose to the rank of Colonel in the U.S. Army, where he helped draw up surrender terms for Italy and Germany. While serving in the occupation government in Berlin, he was responsible for clearing out the Nazi death camps, and then as chief of the War Crimes Division, where he helped arrange the Nuremberg trials. Seeing the Jewish suffering first-hand, Marcus became a committed Zionist, and in 1947 he volunteered to help secure the Jewish settlements which were under attack from hostile Arabs. Marcus designed a command structure for Israel's new army and wrote manuals to train it. His most famous achievement was ordering the construction of the "Burma Road," a winding mountainous path which allowed Jewish convoys to reach Jerusalem and relieve the Arab siege. Tragically, on the day that the war's cease-fire took effect, Marcus was mistakenly shot by a Jewish guard. His story became the subject of a movie, Cast a Giant Shadow, starring Kirk Douglas, John Wayne, Frank Sinatra and Yul Brynner.

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Sivan 4 

 

In the Hebrew year 2448, Moses wrote the first part of the Torah, from Genesis up until the revelation at Mount Sinai. By the end of his life, Moses had written 13 Torah scrolls -- one for each tribe, and one more to place in the Ark of the Covenant. The existence of multiple scrolls in multiple locations ensured the integrity of the Torah text, as scrolls could be checked against one another for accuracy. Indeed, this method has continued for millennia, and Torah scrolls from Morocco to Russia, Australia to Iraq, all contain the same letter-for-letter text.

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Sivan 5 

 

In 1981, Israel bombed and destroyed the Iraqi nuclear reactor in Baghdad. Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had pronounced himself as the reincarnation of Babylonian tyrant Nebuchadnezzar, and named the nuclear reactor "Tammuz" -- the name of the calamitous Jewish month when Nebuchadnezzar's troops laid siege on Jerusalem 2,500 years earlier. Ilan Ramon (later to become Israel's first astronaut, who died in the explosion of the Space Shuttle Columbia) and seven other pilots executed the daring raid -- flying over enemy Arab territory for hours, and avoiding detection with their tight formation that emitted a radar signal resembling a commercial airliner. However, even as Israel celebrated the successful raid, condemnation was nearly universal. One prominent U.S. senator called it "one of the most provocative, ill-timed and internationally illegal actions taken in that nation's history." Two decades later, as the world feared Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, the Israeli action was vindicated.

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Sivan 6 

 

In the Hebrew year 2448 (1312 BCE), 50 days after the Exodus from Egypt, the Torah was given in Divine revelation to the entire Jewish people at Mount Sinai. (The name of this holiday, Shavuot, means "weeks," in recognition of the weeks of anticipation leading up to the Sinai experience.) The Torah's ideas of monotheism, justice and peace have changed mankind forever. Today we celebrate Shavuot by staying up the entire night learning Torah -- eager to receive it anew.

Sivan 6 is also the yahrtzeit of King David (ca. 907-837 BCE), a humble shepherd who became the second king of Israel. David was famous as a warrior, scholar and psalmist. He courageously battled the Philistine giant Goliath, killing him with a slingshot. David reigned for 40 years, during which he made Jerusalem the Jewish capital, purchased the future site of the Holy Temple, and made preparations for the Temple's construction. David composed the biblical Book of Psalms, songs of praise to God and poetic expressions of love, fear, triumph and disaster. David was promised an eternal dynasty of Jewish kingship; he was succeeded by his son Solomon, and according to tradition, the Messiah will ultimately be descended from David. His life story is recorded in the Book of Samuel.

Sivan 6 is also the yahrtzeit of Rabbi Israel Ben Eliezer (1698-1760), known the Baal Shem Tov. He is regarded as the founder of the chassidic movement, which placed mysticism, celebration and prayer at the center of Jewish observance (as opposed to the primacy of Talmud study). The Baal Shem Tov preached the concept of devekut (cleaving) -- nullifying one's feeling of a separate existence, and joining in total oneness with God. He was said to have traced his lineage back to King David; appropriately, he died on the yahrtzeit of King David.

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Sivan 7 

 

Yahrtzeit of Avraham Ben Avraham, a righteous convert who was burned at the stake in 1749. He was known as Count Valentine Potocki, whose conversion was a source of embarrassment to the Roman Catholic Church and the Polish noble class from which he came. After converting, he disguised his identity and moved to Vilna, Lithuania, then the center of Jewish life. When his true identity was discovered, he was arrested, and after a long imprisonment and trial for heresy by an Inquisition court, he was burned alive in Vilna. Potocki was so well-respected that his ashes are buried in the same gravesite as the revered Jewish sage, the Vilna Gaon, and prior to the Holocaust, all the synagogues of Vilna commemorated his yahrtzeit.

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Sivan 8 

 

In 1834, Druze rioters attacked and killed Jews in the northern Israeli town of Tzfat and in other communities throughout Israel. Only three years later, Tzfat was practically wiped out by an earthquake. After the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492, many prominent scholars settled in Tzfat, and the standard Code of Jewish Law ("Shulchan Aruch") was written there. Tzfat also became the center of Jewish mysticism, bolstered by the presence of the great Arizal. Tzfat is one of the four holy cities in Israel, and today remains a popular center of Jewish learning and mysticism.

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Sivan 9 

 

Yahrtzeit of Rabbi Yaakov Chaim Sofer (1870-1939), author of the 8-volume work of Jewish law, Kaf HaChaim. He was born in Baghdad and studied under great sages such as the Ben Ish Chai. In 1904, Rabbi Sofer embarked on a long and arduous journey to Israel, where he became one of the great kabbalists of the 20th century.

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Sivan 10 

 

Yahrtzeit of Kalonymus Z. Wissotzky, a famous Russian Jewish philanthropist who died in 1904. Wissotzky once owned the tea concession for the Czar's entire military operation. Since the Czar's soldiers numbered in the millions and tea drinking was a daily Russian custom, this concession made Wissotzky very rich. One day, Wissotzky was approached by the World Zionist Organization to begin a tea business in Israel. He laughed at this preposterous idea: the market was small, the Turkish bureaucracy was strict, and tea leaves from India were too costly to import. Jewish leaders persisted, and Wissotzky started a small tea company in Israel. After his death, the tea company passed to his heirs. Then in 1917, the communists swept to power in Russia, seizing all of the Wissotzky company's assets. The only business left in their possession was the small tea company in Israel. The family fled Russia, built the Israeli business, and today Wissotzky is a leading brand of tea in Israel, with exports to countries worldwide -- including Russia.

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Sivan 11 

 

In 1924, the Israeli town of Bnei Brak ("Sons of Lightning") was founded just east of Tel Aviv. Bnei Brak is known as a center of Talmudic scholarship, and was home to the famed 20th century sages, the Chazon Ish and Rabbi Elazar M. Shach of the Ponevitch Yeshiva. Bnei Brak is mentioned in the Bible (Joshua 19:45), and is famous in the Passover Haggadah as the site of the all-night Seder of Rabbi Akiva and his colleagues.

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Sivan 12 

 

In 1948, the government of Costa Rica gave diplomatic recognition to the new State of Israel. Due to its political balance, Costa Rica is often referred to as the "Switzerland of Central America." For years, Costa Rica was one of the only countries to house its embassy in Jerusalem. Of the 184 nations with which United States has diplomatic relations, Israel is the only one where the U.S. embassy is not located in the capital city.