Today in Jewish History

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15 Sivan

This is the traditional date of the birth and the death of Judah (1564-1445 BCE), the fourth son of Jacob and Leah. Judah means "to admit" -- as to admit a mistake, or to acknowledge in gratitude -- and is the source of the English word, Jew. When Joseph was thrown into the pit, it was Judah who saved Joseph's life by suggesting his sale to a passing caravan. As atonement for not rescuing Joseph completely, Judah later offered his own life in place of Benjamin. At the end of Jacob's life, Judah was given the blessing of kingship, and indeed King David, King Solomon, and the future Messiah all descend from the tribe of Judah.

pk

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16 Sivan

In 1716, the ship Restoration arrived in Massachusetts from London, with several Jewish merchants aboard, thus creating the core of a Jewish community in New England. A century earlier, the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay were determined to exclude alien elements from their community, and they hanged four Quakers to prove it. New Amsterdam governor Peter Stuyvesant cleansed his colony of Lutherans and Quakers, and tried to do the same to Jews. Such episodes were largely confined, however, to the 17th century, and by the time of the Revolutionary War, many Jews had settled in Massachusetts. It would not be until 1840, however, that the first synagogue was established in Boston.

pk

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17 Sivan

In the Hebrew year 1656 (2100 BCE), Noah's Ark came to rest on Mount Ararat, as recorded in Genesis 8:4. Though the torrential rains only lasted for 40 days and 40 nights, it would be several months before the waters subsided enough for Noah's Ark to come to rest, and another several months before the dove returned with an olive branch in its beak -- a sign that it was safe to exit the Ark. As symbolized by the rainbow, God promised never to flood the Earth again.

pk

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19 Sivan

In 1855, the first Jewish hospital in America, Jews' Hospital of New York, admitted its first patient. The phenomenon of Jewish hospitals may have been linked to the experience in Europe, where restrictions were placed on the number of Jewish patients admitted to public hospitals, and even in America where quotas were placed on Jewish doctors studying and practicing. Today, Jewish hospitals are found in dozens of major cities including Los Angeles, Cincinnati and Baltimore. These hospitals are often ranked as tops in their field; for example, Barnes Jewish Hospital in St. Louis is the largest hospital in Missouri, is regarded as one of the nation's top three medical schools, and is ranked as one of America's top-10 hospitals overall.

pk

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20 Sivan

In 1648, the rampaging Cossacks, led by Bogdan Chmielnicki (the Jewish pronunciation is Chelminitzki), massacred 6,000 Jews in Nemirov, Poland. Chmielnicki's hatred of Jews was inflamed from the time he planned a revolution against the Polish government; a Jew overheard and reported the plot, and Chmielnicki was led to prison in chains and sentenced to death for treason. But before the verdict could be carried out, the king of Poland died. Chmielnicki escaped and led the Cossacks to defeat the Polish army, attacking and murdering Jews at every opportunity. Hundreds of Jewish communities were destroyed by the Cossack hordes, and approximately 500,000 Jews were murdered. Elegies ("Kinot") written by great rabbis of the time compare this tragic epoch to the destruction of the Holy Temple. This would be the most bitter time for Polish Jewry for several centuries... until 1942.

pk

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21 Sivan

In the Hebrew year 2448 (1312 BCE), Miriam spoke negatively about her brother Moses, and was afflicted with the skin malady, tzarat. In his great humility, Moses then prayed for Miriam to be healed. God instructed that she be quarantined outside the Israelite camp for seven days. In testimony to their great love for Miriam, the entire Jewish nation waited during this period before journeying onward. (Numbers ch. 12)

pk

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22 Sivan

In 1902, the Yiddish daily newspaper, "Die Yidishe Velt," was founded in New York. Yiddish is a colloquial mixture of German and Hebrew, and came to be the spoken language of much of European Jewry. Following the influx of Jewish immigrants to America, Yiddish was increasingly heard on the streets of New York, and by 1925 New York alone had seven daily newspapers printed in Yiddish. According to the U.S. census of 1940, 1.75 million Jews spoke Yiddish at home. Today, Yiddish words like chutzpah, klutz, schmaltz and schlep have crept into mainstream English usage.

pk

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23 Sivan

On this day in 355 BCE, Haman's edict for destroying the Jewish people was overturned. The date is mentioned three times in the Book of Esther, read every year on Purim. On this day in 1962, the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed the New York State Regent's Prayer in public schools, on the grounds that it violated the separation of Church and State. The New York State board of education had approved the following 22-word "nondenominational prayer" for recitation each morning in public schools: "Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers and our country." The board of education believed that the prayer would help students develop good character and good citizenship. Although reciting the prayer was optional for each student, a group of parents objected, and the case went all the way to the Supreme Court. Organizations such as the American Jewish Congress supported the ban -- due to centuries of religious persecution, Jews tend to oppose government involvement in religion. One of the most ominous reactions came from the Jesuit publication, America, which warned Jews that their involvement in these cases could incite anti-Semitism in American society. The majority Supreme Court opinion held that "classroom invocation of God's blessings... is a religious activity." The dissenting opinion pointed out that each day's session of the Supreme Court starts with the invocation, "God save the United States and this Honorable Court," that the Pledge of Allegiance contains the words "one Nation under God," and that every dollar bill bears the words, "In God we Trust."

pk

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24 Sivan

In 1977, a neo-Nazi group planned to march in Skokie, Illinois, in a largely Jewish neighborhood that was home to many Holocaust survivors. It was believed that the march would be disruptive, and the city refused to allow it. The American Civil Liberties Union came to the Nazis' support, and in 1978 a high court upheld the Nazis' right to march, on the grounds that the public display of the Nazi flag is a constitutionally protected free expression. After winning the court battle, the Nazis decided to march in Chicago's Marquette Park instead. In 1987, a Holocaust Monument and Museum was opened in Skokie. On the night of its dedication, the monument was desecrated with swastikas.

pk

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25 Sivan

Yahrtzeit of Rabbi David Hirsch Frankel (1704-1762), rabbi of Berlin and author of a popular commentary on the Jerusalem Talmud, Korbon Ha'Eida. In the 4th century, due to conflict between the Roman Empire which controlled Israel, and the Parthian Empire which controlled Babylonia, there was limited contact between these two main Jewish communities, The Jerusalem Talmud was redacted in the year 350, and shortly thereafter the yeshivas in Israel were closed due to religious persecution and anarchy in the Late Roman Empire. A separate edition, the Babylonian Talmud, was more carefully edited, as Babylonian Jewry was outside the Roman Empire and thus not subject to the ongoing persecutions. The Babylonian Talmud is the edition most widely studied today. The Jerusalem Talmud is much shorter and more difficult to decipher, and it suffers from a dearth of authentic commentaries. For centuries, Rabbi Frankel's Korbon Ha'Eida has been an indispensable aid to students of the Jerusalem Talmud.

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26 Sivan

In 1942, the advancing German army was stopped at El-Alamein in North Africa. Under the leadership of General Erwin Rommel, the Nazis threatened to annihilate the Jewish community living in Israel. So great was the threat that the Jewish Agency went about destroying its records, and rabbis distributed thousands of burial shrouds throughout the country. During this time, Rabbi Yosef Kahaneman, who lived in the Lithuanian town of Ponevich, escaped Europe and made his way to the Holy Land. Upon arriving on the shores of Tel Aviv, he proudly proclaimed: "I have come to establish a yeshiva. Rommel's troops do not deter me. Even if I am able to spread Torah learning for only a few days, that in itself would be of eternal significance." Rabbi Kahaneman built the Ponevich Yeshiva, and today it flourishes with thousands of students.

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27 Sivan

In 1942, Anne Frank received a diary for her 13th birthday. While hiding for two years in secret rooms in an office building, Anne recorded her personal thoughts, and this Diary of Anne Frank has become the most widely-read account of life during the Holocaust. Anne's family had moved from Germany to Amsterdam after Hitler gained power, but were trapped when the Nazi occupation extended into The Netherlands in 1942. After two years in hiding, the group was betrayed and transported to concentration camps where Anne died of typhus in Bergen-Belsen. It is estimated that of the 110,000 Jews deported from the Netherlands during the Nazi occupation, only 5,000 survived. Anne's father, Otto, survived and returned to Amsterdam after the war, where he relocated Anne's diary and had it published. After Simon Wiesenthal was challenged by Holocaust deniers that Anne Frank never existed, he proved her existence five years later by finding the Nazi officer who had arrested her. Today, the building in Amsterdam where she hid, the Anne Frank House, is a museum visited by nearly one million people each year. Time magazine selected Anne Frank as one of 100 most influential people of the 20th Century.

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28 Sivan

Yahrtzeit of Rabbi Yisrael Zev Gustman (1908-1991), a modern talmudic genius. As a young man, Rabbi Gustman married the daughter of a top rabbi in Vilna, the center of Jewish life in the early 20th century. Rabbi Gustman's father-in-law died shortly before the wedding, and thus as a young 20-year-old he inherited a seat on the illustrious rabbinical court of Rabbi Chaim Ozer. When the Nazis invaded Vilna, Rabbi Gustman was brutally beaten, but managed to escape with his family. They hid in the forest for three years, subsisting on vegetation; years earlier, Rabbi Gustman's own rabbi had prophetically instructed him on techniques of wilderness survival. Rabbi Gustman's most tragic moment was seeing the Nazis shoot his only son dead. Rabbi Gustman lived in America, and eventually made his way to Jerusalem where he headed a prominent yeshiva. In gratitude for having been spared in the forest, he personally served as gardener for the yeshiva building.

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29 Sivan

In the Hebrew year 2448 (1312 BCE), Moses sent 12 men -- one from each tribe -- to scout out the Land of Israel. Their mission seemed rather innocuous: devise a strategy for battling the Canaanites and for settling 3 million Jews in the new land. In Israel, God showed the spies encouraging signs that the land is plentiful and rich -- e.g. clusters of grapes so enormous that eight men were needed to carry it (Numbers 13:23). God also made sure the spies encountered heavily fortified Canaanite cities -- which in fact is a sign of Canaanite weakness, since the truly powerful do not need to hide behind walls. Yet after 40 days, the spies came back and recommended against entering the land. The Jews accepted the report, and as a consequence, God said: Because you don't want to enter the land, then all Israelites will die out over the next 40 years in the desert, and only your children will enter the land. The spies delivered their negative report on the calendar day of Tisha B'Av. Hundreds of years later, the destruction of the First Temple occurred on Tisha B'Av, and 500 years after that, the Second Temple was also destroyed on Tisha B'Av. Today, Tisha B'Av is observed as a national day of mourning for the Jewish people.

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30 Sivan

In 1920, Henry Ford issued an "apology" for publishing excerpts from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in his newspaper, Dearborn Independent. Protocols is an anti-Semitic forgery purporting to be the conspiratorial discussions of the Jewish elders plotting to take over the world. Thanks in large part to Ford, Protocols was -- next to the Bible -- the best-selling book in the world during the 1920s. The Independent also published, in Ford's name, several anti-Jewish articles; these were published in the 1920s as a 4-volume set entitled, The International Jew, the World's Foremost Problem. These books were distributed through Ford's car dealerships. Prior to World War II, Ford lavished praise on Adolf Hitler and the Nazi philosophy, and there is evidence that Ford gave Hitler direct financial backing. In 1938, Ford was awarded (and accepted) the Grand Cross of the Order of the German Eagle, Nazi Germany's highest honorary award given to foreigners. Even today, Ford's writings are used as propaganda by neo-Nazi groups.

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1 Tammuz

This is the traditional date of the birth and the death of Joseph (1560-1450 BCE), the son of Jacob and Rachel. Joseph's father gave him a multi-colored coat, which aroused the envy of his half-brothers. They suspected that Joseph would try to assume family leadership when he told them of his two dreams, in which the brothers all bowed down to him. The brothers sold Joseph into slavery, where he was brought to Egypt and eventually rose to the post of Prime Minister. Twenty years later, the family was reunited in Egypt, and Joseph forgave the brothers, saying that it was all part of God's plan. Shortly before Joseph's death he made the Israelites take an oath that they would bury him in Israel. His remains were eventually buried in Shechem, and throughout the millennia, Joseph's Tomb was a place of pilgrimage and prayer. The tomb was destroyed by Arab mobs in the Intifada of 2000.

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2 Tammuz

In 1927, the town of Nablus (biblical Shechem) was convulsed by an earthquake measuring 6.2 on the Richter Scale. Nearly 300 people were killed, 1,000 injured, and many of Shechem's historical buildings were destroyed. The flow of the Jordan River stopped for 21 hours due to landslides, and the quake caused damage in Jerusalem, Jericho and Amman. In Israel, a zone of intense seismic activity is located along the Dead Sea Transform fault, rupturing the boundary between the Arabian and the Sinai plates. The geologic stress is evident by the radically folded strata exposed in the hills around Jericho. This zone includes numerous volcanoes and hot springs.

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3 Tammuz

In 1272 BCE (Jewish year 2489), Joshua commanded the sun to "stand still at Gibeon" (Joshua 10:12). Joshua was involved in conquering the southern part of Canaan, and Shabbat was fast approaching. Not wanting to do battle on Shabbat, Joshua prayed for a miracle, and the sun stopped twice -- once at midday and once before sunset, giving the Israelites extra time to complete the battle.

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4 Tammuz

Yahrtzeit of Rabbi Yaakov Ben Meir Tam (1100-1171), talmudic commentator known as Rabbeinu Tam. A grandson of Rashi, Rabbeinu Tam was the greatest sage of his time, and Jews flocked to his academy in France to hear his Talmudic discourses. These lectures served as the basis for the Tosfot commentary, which was compiled by his students and today is printed on every standard page of the Talmud. Rabbeinu Tam was an extremely successful wine merchant and financier. When his home was attacked by Crusaders in 1146, he was stabbed repeatedly in the head, and dragged out to a field to die. He miraculously survived, and lived another 25 years.

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5 Tammuz

In 1946, Jewish refugees from the Holocaust, with no other place to go, returned to their hometown of Kielce, Poland -- and were attacked by the townspeople in a bloody pogrom that left 42 Jews dead and 80 wounded. The pogrom began when rumors spread that Jews had kidnapped a Polish child. Polish policemen and soldiers entered the Jewish residences and began the violence; the Jews were then attacked outside by mobs in a fray that lasted five hours. Some 3 million Polish Jews had been murdered in the Holocaust, yet this pogrom -- occurring 15 months after the end of World War II -- was a horrific aftershock.

[doug yowell]

5 Tammuz

In 1946, Jewish refugees from the Holocaust, with no other place to go, returned to their hometown of Kielce, Poland -- and were attacked by the townspeople in a bloody pogrom that left 42 Jews dead and 80 wounded. The pogrom began when rumors spread that Jews had kidnapped a Polish child. Polish policemen and soldiers entered the Jewish residences and began the violence; the Jews were then attacked outside by mobs in a fray that lasted five hours. Some 3 million Polish Jews had been murdered in the Holocaust, yet this pogrom -- occurring 15 months after the end of World War II -- was a horrific aftershock.

pk, Is this story common knowledge in Jewish circles? I wonder if this is what Helen Thomas was referring to?

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6 Tammuz

On July 4, 1976, as America was celebrating its bicentennial, Israeli commandos performed a spectacular raid to rescue 100 Jews held hostage at Entebbe airport in Uganda. One week earlier, an Air France flight was hijacked by Palestinian terrorists, who landed the plane in Uganda with the support of dictator Idi Amin. The terrorists threatened to kill the Jewish hostages if the Israeli government did not release convicted Palestinian terrorists. (Amazingly, the flight crew all voluntarily chose to stay with the Jewish captives rather than be released; upon their return to Paris, they were reprimanded by Air France executives and temporarily suspended from duty.) The government of Israel refused to negotiate with the terrorists, and quickly planned a rescue mission. Conveniently, Israel had the blueprints for the building in which the hostages were held -- it was built by an Israeli construction firm. Two hundred Israeli soldiers were flown to Entebbe; they brought along a black Mercedes disguised to look like Idi Amin's personal car. The raid took a total of 58 minutes, in which all the terrorists were killed, and all but three of the hostages were safely rescued. The raid, dubbed Operation Thunderbolt, was subsequently renamed Operation Yonatan -- after Col. Yonatan Netanyahu, the leader of the raid, and the only Israeli soldier killed.

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pk, Is this story common knowledge in Jewish circles? I wonder if this is what Helen Thomas was referring to?

Not sure Doug, You'd have to let me know what she said. The only thing I heard was that Jews needed to go back to where they came from.

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7 Tammuz

In 1938, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt initiated a conference at Evian, France, where 32 world leaders discussed the problem of Jewish refugees. Unfortunately, little was accomplished, as nation after nation offered excuses for their refusal to accept Jewish refugees. Chaim Weizmann was quoted as saying: "The world seemed to be divided into two parts -- those places where the Jews could not live, and those where they could not enter." The conference failed to pass even a resolution condemning German treatment of Jews. The lack of action further emboldened Hitler, proving to him that no country had the moral fortitude to oppose the Nazi assault on European Jewry.

[doug yowell]

Originally Posted By: doug yowell

pk, Is this story common knowledge in Jewish circles? I wonder if this is what Helen Thomas was referring to?

Not sure Doug, You'd have to let me know what she said. The only thing I heard was that Jews needed to go back to where they came from.

Germany and Poland were specifically named.