Today in Jewish History

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Tammuz 8 

 

In 1840, U.S. President Martin Van Buren protested the Damascus blood libel, in which Syrian Jews were charged with killing two men and using their blood to make Passover matzah. Father Thomas of Damascus (and his Muslim assistant) had disappeared, prompting a blood libel that led to the arrest and torture of 13 Jews. More arrests and atrocities followed, culminating in the kidnapping of 63 Jewish children (compelling them to "reveal" where the blood was hidden), and mob attacks on Jewish communities throughout the Middle East. In England, Jewish leaders Montefiore and Rothschild sought government intervention. In the U.S., Van Buren ordered American diplomats in Turkey and Egypt to lodge an official protest, while thousands of Jews protested in six American cities -- historically the first collective action by American Jews on behalf of their overseas brethren. Bowing to pressure, Syrian officials agreed to release those Jews who had survived the numerous rounds of torture. The story never completely disappeared, and in 1986 Syrian Defense Minister Mustafa Tlass published a book, The Matzah of Zion, reviving this libel against the Jews.

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Tammuz 9 

 

In 423 BCE, Nebuchadnezzar's troops breached the walls of old Jerusalem and entered the city. Four weeks later, the Holy Temple was destroyed, and the Jews were exiled to Babylon. Originally, a day of fasting and mourning was observed on the 9th of Tammuz. Seventy years later, however, when the Second Temple was built, the fast was abolished and the day was turned into a holiday. Some 500 years later when Jerusalem fell on the 17th of Tammuz -- prior to the destruction of the Second Temple -- the Sages decreed the 17th of Tammuz as a fast day to commemorate both tragedies.

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Tammuz 11 

 

Yahrtzeit of Alfred Dreyfus (1859 - 1935), a French army officer who was falsely arrested and charged with treason. Dreyfus was the victim of a frame-up; falsified documents were exposed in a famous open letter entitled J'accuse! (I Accuse!). This scandal, which came to be known as the Dreyfus Affair, bitterly divided French society for many years. Dreyfus was stripped of his rank and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil's Island. (Five years later, he was released and later pardoned.) Theodor Herzl, a Jewish journalist reporting on the trial, was so affected by the anti-Semitism and injustice, that he committed his life to vigorously pursuing the cause of Zionism.

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Tammuz 12 

 

Yahrtzeit of Rabbi Yaakov Ben Asher (1268-1340), author of the seminal book of Jewish law, The Tur. This was a groundbreaking contribution to Jewish scholarship in that it organized all practical Jewish law into four major sections, subdivided into hundreds of chapter headings. This system served as the foundation for all later rabbinic works, including Rabbi Yosef Karo's Shulchan Aruch, the standard Code of Jewish Law. Rabbi Yaakov lived in Spain and was the son of the famous talmudic commentator, the Rosh. He lived in abject poverty most of his life. Rabbi Yaakov also wrote a commentary on the Five Books of Moses, entitled Ba'al HaTurim, which focuses on hidden messages in the Torah -- gematria (numerology), acrostics and word patterns.

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Tammuz 13 

 

Yahrtzeit of Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman (1875-1941), leader of eastern European Jewry before World War II. Rabbi Wasserman was born in Lithuania, and later became one of the closest disciples of the saintly Chafetz Chaim. He then became dean of the yeshiva in Baranovich, growing the student body from 60 to 500. Rabbi Wasserman authored a book of Torah perspectives on contemporary events, Kovetz Ma'amarim, and Talmudic discourses that were published as Kovetz Shiurim. He visited America in 1939, as the Nazi machine was beginning its slaughter of European Jewry. People begged Rabbi Wasserman to remain in America and avoid imminent catastrophe, but with incredible self-sacrifice he declined, saying that he must return to be with his students. He was martyred with them in July 1941, taken to a pit near Kovno and shot.

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Tammuz 14 

 

Francis Salvador of South Carolina (1747-1776), became the first Jew to die for the cause of American liberty. Salvador was born in London and as young man settled on a plot of family land in South Carolina. Within a year, he was elected to South Carolina's General Assembly, the first Jew to hold legislative office in any of the English colonies. At this time, the British were encouraging Cherokee Indian tribes to attack colonial settlements along the frontier. During one such attack, Salvador mounted his horse and rode to sound the alarm, earning him the title of "Paul Revere of the South." On a subsequent attack, Salvador led a small army of 330 men; he was shot by a Cherokee, fell into some bushes, and was promptly scalped. He was only 29 years old, but he is remembered as a Jewish-American soldier and statesman.

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Tammuz 15 

 

In the Hebrew year 2448 (1312 BCE), Chur, the son of Miriam, was killed when he stood up and tried to dissuade the Israelites from building the Golden Calf. As a reward for giving his life to preserve Jewish faith, Chur merited to have a grandson, Betzalel, who became the architect of the Tabernacle; the great King Solomon descended from him as well. During that tense time in the desert, Moses' brother Aaron used a different strategy to stop the Golden Calf: He pretended to agree to building the Calf, but suggested that they wait until the following day. Aaron hoped that by then Moses would return to the camp and resolve the issue peacefully.

Tammuz 15 is also the yahrtzeit of Rabbi Chaim Ibn Attar (1696-1743), a holy man known by the title of his biblical commentary, Ohr HaChaim. Ohr HaChaim earned his livelihood as a silversmith, yet he always made Torah study his primary occupation. He would sit engrossed in study, and only when his last coin was spent did he engage in worldly matters. Ohr HaChaim once mistakenly caused an affront to the King of Morocco, who had him thrown into a pit of lions. Ohr HaChaim put on his tallit and tefillin, and when he was thrown into the pit, the lions gathered around him respectfully. Seeing this, the king proclaimed, "Now I know there is a God of Israel." Ohr HaChaim is credited with initiating the idea of placing a note in the Western Wall; he gave this advice to the Chida, one of his students who was traveling from Morocco to Israel. Ohr HaChaim eventually moved to Italy and spent the final few years of his life in Israel. Legend says that he would study in Jerusalem with Elijah the Prophet, in the same building where the Arizal was born two centuries earlier. Today, the grave of Ohr HaChaim, located on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, is a popular place of pilgrimage and prayer.

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Tammuz 16 

 

In 2000, Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut was nominated as Al Gore's running mate in the presidential election, becoming the first Jew nominated for this post by a major party. Lieberman, an observant Jew, upended the conventional wisdom that to get ahead in secular society, one had to tone down his Jewishness. Indeed, Lieberman was chosen largely because of his Jewish observance, which earned him the appellation, "moral conscience of the Senate." (Lieberman helped to register black voters in the South during the 1960s, and attended Martin Luther King's historic 1963 march on Washington.) In the November 2000 presidential election, the Gore-Lieberman ticket won the popular vote but lost the Electoral College count, as the Supreme Court stepped in to decide the disputed Florida butterfly ballots. Yet the publicity surrounding Lieberman succeeded in communicating Jewish pride to millions of Americans.

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Tammuz 17 

 

Five major catastrophes occurred in Jewish history on the 17th of Tammuz: (1) Moses broke the tablets at Mount Sinai, in response to the building of the Golden Calf. (2) The daily offerings in the First Temple were suspended during the siege of Jerusalem in the 5th century BCE. (3) Jerusalem's walls were breached, prior to the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE. (4) Prior to the Great Revolt, the Roman general Apostamos burned a Torah scroll -- setting a precedent for the horrific burning of Jewish books throughout the centuries. (5) An idolatrous image was placed in the Holy Temple -- a brazen act of blasphemy and desecration.

Tammuz 17 is also the yahrtzeit of Rabbi Shmuel Yaakov Weinberg (1923-1999), dean of the Ner Yisrael Yeshiva in Baltimore. Rabbi Weinberg descended from the Slonimer chassidic dynasty. As a youth, he studied in Tiberias, Israel where his mother's relatives lived, and later in New York under Rabbi Yitzhak Hutner. Rabbi Weinberg married the daughter of Rabbi Yaakov Yitzhak Ruderman, whom he later succeeded as dean of Ner Yisrael. Rabbi Weinberg was known for his unwavering commitment to truth, his masterful logic, and his painstaking clarity in revealing the nuance of every word in the Bible and in Maimonides' code of law. He lived with the reality of the modern world through the lens of Torah, and had supreme confidence in the Torah's ability to stand up against any philosophy or scientific theory. He produced generations of Jewish leaders, and was the mentor of his younger brother, Rabbi Noah Weinberg zt"l, the founder of Aish HaTorah.

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Tammuz 18 

 

In the Hebrew year 2448 (1312 BCE), the day after the making of the Golden Calf, Moses burned the Calf, crushed it into powder, mixed it with water, and had the Jewish people drink it. The next morning, those who had embraced the Calf were found dead, their bellies miraculously swollen from the water.

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Tammuz 19 

 

Yahrtzeit of Rabbi Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog (1889-1959), Chief Rabbi of Ireland and later the Chief Rabbi of Israel during the years of Israeli independence. His father was the Chief Rabbi of Paris, and his son, Chaim Herzog, was later president of Israel. Rabbi Herzog studied Oriental languages at the Sorbonne in Paris, and classics and mathematics at the University of London. His doctoral dissertation claimed that the Murex snail is the source for Techelet, the long-lost blue dye used for making tzitzit. After World War II, Herzog went on a rescue mission to redeem Jewish children from the churches and monasteries where they had been hidden during the war. Rabbi Herzog authored a book of talmudic discourses, Divrei Yitzhak.

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Tammuz 20 

 

This date marks the passing of Theodor Herzl in 1904. Upon witnessing the Alfred Dreyfus trial in France, Herzl was so affected by the anti-Semitism and injustice, that he committed his life to vigorously pursuing the cause of Zionism. Herzl promoted his vision in two books, The Jewish State, and Old New Land, a novel which pictured the future Jewish state as a socialist utopia. Herzl coined the phrase, "If you will it, it is no dream," which became the motto of the Zionist movement. During his career as president of the World Zionist Organization, he never took a salary and paid for all expenses out of his own pocket. Herzl died, penniless, of heart disease at the age of 44. In 1949, Herzl's remains were brought to Israel and reinterred on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem.

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Tammuz 21 

 

In 1963, the State of Israel instituted a law prohibiting the raising of pigs on Jewish farms. According to Jewish law, one is not allowed to make his livelihood by dealing in non-kosher products. Beyond this, the Talmud states that one should not raise a pig, even as a pet. Why such great opposition against the pig? The answer may be rooted in the fact that the pig is the only animal in the world possessing the outward symbol of kosher (split hooves), but not the inward symbol (chewing cud). The pig therefore represents that which is kosher in outward appearance, but is in fact unclean on the inside. This type of hypocrisy is described by the Talmud as one of the behaviors that God most detests. For that moral reason, the pig is universally viewed as reprehensible to the Jew.

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Tammuz 22 

 

Yahrtzeit of Rabbi Moshe Cordovero (1522-1570), a great kabbalist known by the acronym of his name, Ramak. He was born in Tzfat, Israel, to a distinguished family of Spanish descent, originally from the town of Cordova. In Tzfat, he studied with Rabbi Yosef Karo, author of the Code of Jewish Law, and he headed his own academy of mysticism, during the time of the great Arizal. Ramak's classic book, Pardes Rimonim (Garden of Pomegranates), written when he was only 26, presents the primary kabbalistic topics in an orderly system. He also authored the popular Palm Tree of Devorah, an ethical treatise devoted to the idea of emulating God. (Some sources list his yahrtzeit as Tammuz 23.)

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Tammuz 23 

 

In 1099, Crusaders captured Jerusalem. The Crusades were a Catholic Church-sponsored movement to "liberate the Holy Land from the infidels." (En route, the Crusaders carried out a campaign of rape and pillage; an estimated 40% of European Jewry was slaughtered in the process.) The day following their conquest of Jerusalem, the Crusaders murdered all the city's Jews, by herding them into a synagogue and setting it on fire. Jews were barred from Jerusalem for the next century. Muslims were also victims of the Crusaders, which historians believe planted a deep-seated hatred of the West.

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Tammuz 24 

 

Yahrtzeit of Rabbi Jacob Joseph (1840-1902), one of the only "chief rabbis" of New York City. A revered leader in Lithuania, Rabbi Joseph was invited to come to America and lead a fledging group of Eastern European immigrants -- at a time when America had little infrastructure for Jewish education, kashrut, and other keys to Jewish continuity. Rabbi Joseph fought vigorously to uphold Jewish tradition, but it was an uphill battle against a Jewish community that was assimilating, and against a government that was not yet fully supportive of religious rights. Tragically, Rabbi Joseph often bore the brunt of mockery and scorn from Jews who saw him as clinging to the "old ways," and he withdrew from public life after suffering a debilitating stroke. A crowd estimated at 100,000 lined the route of his funeral; as the procession passed through an Irish neighborhood, the mourners were attacked by a barrage of bottles and buckets of water. The police were called in and over 300 Jews required medical attention. After Rabbi Joseph's death, a dispute ensued who should be his successor; it went unresolved and the office of Chief Rabbi ended.

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Tammuz 25 

 

Yahrtzeit of Rabbi Aryeh Leib Gunzberg (1695-1785), popularly known by the title of his book of responsa, Sha'ages Aryeh (the Lion's Roar). Rabbi Gunzberg was born in Minsk, served as rabbi in the town of Voluzhin and later in Metz. His writings, marked by their brilliant insight and depth, are studied widely today.

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Tammuz 26 

 

Yahrtzeit of Rabbi Shlomo Ganzfried (1804-1886), author of the popular Kitzur Shulchan Aruch (Concise Code of Jewish Law). He was born in Carpathia, and later became a rabbi in Ungvar, Hungary. Ganzfried wrote the Concise Code to provide an easy guide to practical Jewish law, for those Jews who were not in a position to study and comprehend Rabbi Yosef Karo's original Code and its many commentaries. The Concise Code became immensely popular, and it is estimated that over two million copies have been printed. (Other sources list his yahrtzeit as Tammuz 28.)

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Tammuz 27 

 

In 1205, Pope Innocent III published official Church doctrine that saw Jews doomed to eternal damnation for the crucifixion of Jesus. This charge of deicide was the basis for much anti-Semitism throughout the Middle Ages. It wasn't until 1963, with the Second Vatican Council, that Church doctrine was revised.

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Tammuz 28 

 

In 1922, the League of Nations confirmed the British Mandate of Palestine, territory taken from the Ottoman Empire following World War I. The Mandate charged Britain with securing the establishment of the Jewish national home, and safeguarding the civil and religious rights of all the inhabitants of Palestine. Just a few months later, Britain decided to lop off 77% of the land and use it to establish the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan (today called Jordan). In ensuing years, Jewish immigration to Palestine created much Arab resentment, and the British responded by placing strict limitations on Jewish immigration. This policy had lethal consequences for Jews fleeing Hitler's ovens. When the British continued to placate the Arabs, for example by restricting Jewish land purchases, a revolt was organized by Zionist groups. By 1948 this pressure had forced the British out of Palestine, clearing the way for an independent State of Israel.

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Tammuz 29 

 

Yahrtzeit of Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaki (1040-1105), pre-eminent rabbinic commentator known by the acronym, Rashi. His commentary on the Five Books of Moses is studied till today by almost every Jewish child and adult, layman and scholar alike. And his monumental commentary on the Talmud, which appears in every standard edition, is the basis upon which nearly all Talmud study is based. Rashi lived in France, where his grandchildren composed the Tosfot commentary on the Talmud, which is second only to Rashi in being indispensable for a proper understanding of the text. Amazingly, Rashi accomplished all his work during the period of the Crusades, when life was extremely dangerous for the Jews. Just as amazing, Rashi made his living as a wine merchant, and wrote rabbinic commentaries in his spare time. Incidentally, Rashi's commentaries are the primary source of information for the study of French language and culture in the Middle Ages. The recent 900th anniversary of his death was widely commemorated in France, with public ceremonies, conferences, and a postage stamp issued in his honor.

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Av 1 

 

Yahrtzeit of Aaron (1395-1272 BCE), the elder brother of Moses and the first High Priest of Israel. Aaron was a great prophet and righteous man, who was known for bringing peace between people. During the period of Jewish slavery in Egypt, Aaron accompanied Moses in deliberations with Pharaoh. After the giving of the Torah, when Moses spent 40 days on Mount Sinai and the people became impatient, Aaron worked to minimize damage from the building of the Golden Calf. All Kohanim in history are descended from Aaron; indeed, DNA research in recent years supports this tradition.

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Av 2 

 

In 1942, the first trainload of Jews in Holland were sent to concentration camps. A few years earlier, tens of thousands of Jews had fled from Germany to Holland, which maintained an open-door immigration policy. But soon after, the Nazis occupied Holland and proceeded to make it Judenrein (clean of Jews). Perhaps the most famous Dutch Jew was Anne Frank, a teenage girl whose diary has become the most widely-read account of life during the Holocaust. In 2005, Holland's prime minister apologized for his country's collaboration with the Nazis.

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Av 3 

 

In 1881, the first shipload of Russian Jewish immigrants arrived in New York City. This began the mass immigration of eastern European Jews to America, and in the next half-century over 2 million Jews would flee Russian pogroms for the safety of the U.S. This influx indelibly altered the demographics of American Jewry; according to the U.S. census of 1940, 1.75 million Jews spoke Yiddish at home.

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Av 4 

 

In 333 BCE, the prophet Nechemia began to rebuild the destroyed wall around Jerusalem, as recorded in the biblical Book of Nechemia. This was a first stage in the restoration of the Jewish capital, crowned by the construction of the Second Holy Temple a few years later.