Today in Jewish History

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5 Sivan

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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6 Sivan

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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7 Sivan

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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8 Sivan

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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9 Sivan

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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10 Sivan

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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11 Sivan

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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12 Sivan

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.

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13 Sivan

In 1948, 20 Jews were killed by a bombing of the Jewish Quarter in Cairo, Egypt. (In the coming months, more bombings in Cairo killed an additional 50 Jews.) In the period following Israel's declaration of independence, anti-Jewish riots broke out across the Arab world. Jews were attacked and imprisoned, Jewish property was seized, and most of these centuries-old Jewish communities were forced to disband. In 1948, the Jewish population of Egypt was 75,000; it now numbers less than 100.

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14 Sivan

Yahrtzeit of Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin (1749-1821), the most prominent student of the Vilna Gaon. Rav Chaim established the Volozhin yeshiva in 1803, which was Judaism's main Talmudic study center throughout the 19th century, with tens of thousands of students passing through its doors. The Volozhin yeshiva remains the model of yeshivas today. Rav Chaim's most famous work was Nefesh HaChaim, a kabbalistic work which emphasizes the importance of Torah study and mitzvah observance for coming close to God. He also authored Ruach Chaim and Nishmat Chaim.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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18 Sivan

In 1944, Jewish day schools in America got a major boost when Rabbi Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz founded Torah Umesorah, the National Society for Hebrew Day Schools. Though Jewish day schools existed at the time (the first full-time day schools were Etz Chaim, founded in 1888, and Rabbi Jacob Joseph School in 1900), the idea was generally rejected by American Jews who saw it as 'parochial' and a step back to the European shtetl. Rabbi Mendlowitz, however, felt that "afternoon Hebrew schools" were failing to transmit Judaism in a compelling manner to students who arrived tired in the afternoons, and who were subjected to assimilationist influences in American culture. He set out to create schools that emphasized Jewish studies, without compromising its secular studies program. In recent decades, enrollment in Jewish day schools has thrived: Of the estimated 850,000 Jewish school-age children in America, about 200,000 are presently enrolled in some 900 Jewish day schools -- more than triple since the 1960s. Many recent studies have shown that giving a child a Jewish day school education is the single greatest hedge against assimilation.

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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.

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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.

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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)

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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.

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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.

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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.