Today in Jewish History

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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."

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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.

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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.

[John317]

She's been a big influence on my life and one of the people I have admired the most since my teen years. I visited her "secret-annex" in 1970. I still love reading her diary. She had a great heart that wouldn't quit even during the worst of times.

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On a visit to Amsterdam back in '75 we rented a car and drove all over western Europe. The place was closed so we couldn't go in. I think we went passed it in one of those boats that go through those canals. I believe I have a picture of the house but have no idea where it is right now. It is definitely an awesome story.

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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.

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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 (brother of Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu), the leader of the raid, and the only Israeli soldier killed.

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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.

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8 Tammuz

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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9 Tammuz

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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10 Tammuz

In 423 BCE, King Tzidkiyahu was captured by Babylonian troops in the plains of Jericho, as recorded in Jeremiah ch. 39. The evil Nebuchadnezzar forced Tzidkiyahu to witness the slaughter of his sons, and then Tzidkiyahu's eyes were gouged out. Till today, Tzidkiyahu is remembered as a righteous man, while Nebuchadnezzar -- like a long list of tyrants who sought to oppress the Jewish people -- was degraded and reduced to the dustbin of history. The biblical Book of Daniel (4:30) describes how Nebuchadnezzar "was driven from mankind; he ate grass like oxen, and his body was washed by the dew of heaven, until his hair grew like eagles' feathers and his nails were like birds' claws." (Nebuchadnezzar later regained his sanity and returned to rule.)

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11 Tammuz

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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12 Tammuz

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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13 Tammuz

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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14 Tammuz

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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15 Tammuz

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.