Today in Jewish History

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Av 16 

 

In 1946, the British government ordered all illegal immigrants bound for Palestine to be deported to camps on the island of Cyprus. According to the terms of the British White Paper of 1939, immigration to Palestine was limited to 75,000 Jews over a period of 10 years. Following the end of World War II, many Holocaust survivors had nowhere else to go, so they crammed onto old ships bound for the Holy Land. Some ships succeeded in slipping through the British naval blockade and unloading their human cargo on desolate beaches. Several ships sank in tragic circumstances. Other ships were apprehended and the passengers sent to British detention camps -- complete with barbed wire, military towers and guards. The Exodus is the most famous immigrant ship from this era. Today, one of the ships, the Af-Al-Pi ("in spite of it all"), stands in a museum in Haifa.

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Av 17 

 

In 1889, 800 Jews arrived in Buenos Aires, marking the birth of the modern Jewish community in Argentina. These immigrants were fleeing poverty and pogroms in Russia, and moved to Argentina because of its open door policy of immigration. By 1920, more than 150,000 Jews were living in Argentina. Juan Peron's rise to power in 1946 was an ominous sign, as he was a Nazi sympathizer with fascist leanings. Peron halted Jewish immigration to Argentina, introduced mandatory Catholic religious instruction in public schools, and allowed Argentina to become a haven for fleeing Nazis. (In 1960, Israeli agents abducted Adolf Eichmann from a Buenos Aires suburb.) Today, Argentina has the largest Jewish community in Latin America with 250,000, though terror attacks have prompted many young people to emigrate. In 1992, the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires was bombed, killing 32 people. In 1994, the Jewish community headquarters in Buenos Aires was bombed, killing 85 people. The perpetrators have never been apprehended.

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Av 18 

 

In 1929, Arab mobs attacked Jewish communities throughout Israel. False rumors -- fueled by inflammatory sermons in the mosques -- declared that the Jews were preparing to take control of the holy places, and that Jews were carrying out "wholesale killings of Arabs." Muslims mobs went on the attack, killing 17 Jews in Jerusalem and 18 in Tzfat. The worst atrocities occurred in Hebron, where only one British policeman guarded the entire city and was powerless to stop the rampage. In Hebron, 67 Jews including 12 Americans were murdered. The survivors were relocated to Jerusalem, leaving Hebron barren of Jews for the first time in centuries.

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Av 19 

 

On this date in 1955, Bar Ilan University was founded with the mission of blending ancient Torah tradition with modern scholarship. Bar Ilan is currently Israel's largest academic community with 32,000 students, scientists and staff. Bar Ilan has been at the forefront of archeological research, social work, and Torah-dissemination projects. The Bar Ilan Responsa Project places a vast computerized library of thousands of rabbinic commentaries at the easy disposal of scholars around the world. The university's name was chosen in honor of Rabbi Meir Bar Ilan (Berlin), who led Jews from the ashes of Europe to rebirth and renaissance in Israel.

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Av 20 

 

In 2001, an Arab terrorist detonated a guitar case filled with explosives in Sbarro's pizzeria at the corner of King George Street and Jaffa Road, the busiest area of downtown Jerusalem. The heinous attack killed 16 people and wounded 100. Among the dead were five members of the Schijveschuurder family, and Shoshana Greenbaum, an American who was pregnant with her first child. A few months later, Al-Najah University in Nablus opened a public exhibition, a gruesome reenactment of the Sbarro bombing, strewn with fake blood and body parts.

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Av 21 

 

Yahrtzeit of Rabbi Chaim Soloveichik (1853-1918), a Talmudic genius who developed the "Brisker" approach to Torah study. This is a method of highly analytical study, with emphasis on the legal writings of Maimonides. At the young age of 27, Rabbi Soloveichik was chosen as senior lecturer in the Lithuania's Voluzhin yeshiva, the center of Jewish scholarship at the time. His wrote a commentary on Maimonides, entitled Chidushei Rebbe Chaim HaLevi.

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Av 22 

 

In 2003, an Arab terrorist blew himself up on the #2 bus en route from the Western Wall in Jerusalem, killing 23 people and wounding 136, many of them children. The attack occurred on a double-length bus crowded with families on a summer vacation outing, and became known as the "family massacre." The bomber, from a Hamas cell in Hebron, was apparently disguised as an Orthodox Jew. Following the attack, the Israeli government decided to wage an all-out war against Hamas and other terrorist elements, and to freeze the diplomatic process with the Palestinian Authority.

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Av 23 

 

Yahrtzeit of Rabbi Yaakov Yisrael Kanievsky (1899-1985), a Talmudic genius known as the Steipler Gaon. His father was widowed at age 60, and then remarried, fathering Yaakov Yisrael. Yaakov Yisrael was conscripted into the Russian army where he continued strict Jewish observance, despite the harsh conditions. After the army, he was appointed to a leadership post in the Novardak yeshiva. He wrote a multi-volume Talmudic commentary, Kehilos Yaakov, which is studied widely today. He married the sister of the saintly Chazon Ish, and later moved to Israel. Though he held no official position, he was consulted by individuals from all walks of life on every imaginable issue -- business, marriage, health, and matters of Torah law. His son, Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, is a leading Torah authority in Israel today.

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Av 24 

 

In 1938, the Italian government passed a law banning Jews from teaching in public schools. A few months later, Italian leader Benito Mussolini formed an axis with Adolf Hitler. Discrimination continued against thousands of Italian Jews, and in 1943 many were deported to German camps. Fortunately, 80% of Jews in Italy were spared during the war, having been interned in small camps in Italy or rescued by righteous Gentiles. Recently, anti-Semitism has again flared in Italy; in 2003, Holocaust archives were destroyed at a school in Varese, and school walls were painted with graffiti such as "burn the Jews."

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Av 25 

 

In 1315, King Louis X of France called back the Jews who had been expelled a few decades earlier by King Louis IX. This marked a theme in Jewish-French life: expulsions and subsequent invitations to return. The French monarchy was trying to establish their land as the "new Jerusalem," and to fulfill this mission attempted several crusades to Israel. In 1615, King Louis XIII ordered that Christians were forbidden to speak with Jews, upon penalty of death. Eventually, in 1683, King Louis XIV expelled the Jews from the colony of Martinique.

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Av 26 

 

In 1809, a group of 70 disciples of the great Lithuanian sage the Vilna Gaon, arrived in Israel, after traveling via Turkey by horse and wagon. The Vilna Gaon set out for the Holy Land in 1783, but for unknown reasons did not attain his goal. However he inspired his disciples to make the move, and they became pioneers of modern settlement in Israel. (A large contingent of chassidic Jews arrived in Tzfat around the same time.) The leader of the 1809 group, Rabbi Israel of Shklov, settled in Tzfat, and six years later moved to Jerusalem where he founded the modern Ashkenazic community. The early years were fraught with Arab attacks, earthquakes, and a cholera epidemic. Rabbi Israel authored, Pe'at Hashulchan, a digest of the Jewish agricultural laws relating to the Land of Israel. (He had to rewrite the book after the first manuscript was destroyed in a fire.) The location of his grave remained unknown until it was discovered in Tiberias, 125 years after his death. Today, the descendants of that original group are amongst the most prominent families in Jerusalem.

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Av 27 

 

In 1868, the Ku Klux Klan lynched a Jew, S.A. Bierfield, in Franklin, Tennessee. The KKK was created at the end of the American Civil War, and quickly adopted violent methods, murdering some 1,300 people in 1868. Enemies of the KKK included African Americans, Jews, homosexuals and others, scapegoated to explain the lack of economic success among whites. Even today, the KKK lists among its enemies the Jews, who they believe secretly operate the New World Order.

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Av 28 

 

Yahrtzeit of Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Yehuda Berlin (1817-1893), a leader of Lithuanian Jewry, known by the acronym of his name, Netziv (which also means "pillar"). Legend says that as a child he was in danger of dropping out of school, but he applied himself diligently to his studies and emerged as the star student. He married the granddaughter of Rabbi Chaim of Voluzhin when he was 14 years old. He was later appointed head of the Voluzhin yeshiva, a position he held for 40 years. The yeshiva became the worldwide center of Jewish scholarship, and it was said that 10,000 students studied there during the Netziv's tenure. Tragically, the yeshiva was forcibly closed by the Russians in 1892. The Netziv then intended to travel to Israel, but his medical condition made this impossible. He spent his final weeks in Warsaw, and is interred in a cemetery there. He wrote Ha'emek Davar, a commentary on the Bible, and other scholarly works that are widely studied today. His oldest son, Rabbi Chaim Berlin, was Chief Rabbi of Moscow, and his youngest son was Rabbi Meir Bar-Ilan, after whom Israel's Bar Ilan University is named.

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Av 29 

 

In the Hebrew year 2448 (1312 BCE), Moses carved the second set of Tablets out of sapphire, as recorded in Exodus 34:4. After seeing that the Israelites had made the idolatrous Golden Calf, Moses broke the first set of tablets (Exodus 32:19) and God then instructed Moses to carve new tablets. (The Midrash says that Moses was allowed to keep the extra scraps of sapphire, and from that he became personally wealthy.) The second set of tablets was placed in the Ark of the Covenant, along with the first broken set. This second set symbolizes the ability of every person to make amends and rebuild anew. In fact, it was on the day of Yom Kippur that Moses came down from Mount Sinai holding the second set of Tablets, and it is on every subsequent Yom Kippur day that we have a special opportunity to make amends.

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Av 30 

 

In 1903, the 6th Zionist Congress met in Basle, Switzerland. Herzl presented a British proposal for a temporary Jewish homeland in Uganda, as a refuge for Russian Jews in immediate danger. This settlement would be politically independent, with a Jewish governor and a Jewish administration. Herzl believed that the plan conferred an important stamp of legitimacy upon Zionism. The Zionist Congress approved the plan, and decided to dispatch an exploratory expedition to Africa. However, the idea was met with stiff opposition, and it split the Zionist movement. The Uganda Program was rejected two years later, but later exploratory missions were sent to Iraq, Libya and Angola. One project that gained traction was the Galveston plan which sent 9,300 Jews to Texas. In the end, it was understood that only the Land of Israel, with its deep historical and spiritual connections, would succeed as the Jewish homeland.

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Elul 1 

 

In 1942, the ghetto of Mir, Poland was liquidated by the Nazis. Mir was a center of Jewish scholarship in pre-War Europe, the site of the famed Mir Yeshiva that was founded in 1815. Jews first began to settle in Mir in the 17th century, and by the end of the 19th century, Jews comprised 62% of the town’s population. The Germans captured Mir in June 1941, and executed large numbers of Jews. By May 1942 the remaining Jews were confined to an ancient fortress in the city and murdered. As for the students and staff of the Mir Yeshiva, they had fled to Lithuania with the fall of Poland in 1939. There, they were able to obtain visas from the Japanese consul-general in Lithuania, and made a miraculous escape across Siberia by train, arriving in Shanghai where they spent the remainder of the war years. After the war, new Mir yeshivas were established in New York and Jerusalem, which today is the largest yeshiva in the world with over 5,000 students.

On this same day in 1942, Metropolitan Andrei Szeptycki, a bishop with the Greek Catholic Church in Nazi-occupied Lemberg (Lwow), Poland, issued orders for the clergy in his jurisdiction to shelter Jewish children. Ignoring risks to his position and his life (in Poland there was an automatic death penalty for aiding Jews), Szeptycki spoke out against Hitler, and threatened "with Divine punishment" anyone who "shed innocent blood.” Szeptycki led by example: He hid 21 Jews in his own cathedral, and 183 more in convents and monasteries. (Szeptycki was waging his own battle against the Nazis: Hitler resolved to exterminate Polish culture and identity, and his first step was the elimination of the intelligentsia, including the clergy. Many priests were killed or placed in concentration camps, where an estimated 3,000 Polish clergy died.) Szeptycki was later honored by Yad Vashem as a Righteous Among the Nations.

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Elul 2 

 

In 1555, the first printing of the Rabbi Yosef Karo's Shulchan Aruch (Code of Jewish Law) was completed near Tzfat, Israel. Shulchan Aruch is divided into four sections, dealing with daily life, prohibitions, marriage, and monetary law. He wrote the Code in his old age, for the benefit of those who were unable to understand his more comprehensive work, Beit Yosef. Since its publication, Shulchan Aruch has become the gold standard of Jewish law, upon which all subsequent commentaries and responsa are based.

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Elul 3 

 

Yahrtzeit of Rabbi Abraham Yitzhak Kook, (1865-1935), talmudic scholar and the first Chief Rabbi of Israel (then Palestine). Born in Latvia, he embodied a unique blend of the mystical and the rational. He saw the Jewish return to Israel as not merely a political phenomenon to save Jews from persecution, but an event of great theological significance. He believed that building up the physical land was laying the groundwork for the messianic redemption. He called for a spiritual renaissance where "the ancient would be renewed, and the new would be sanctified." Over 30 volumes of Rabbi Kook's writings have been published, and he is considered as the philosophical father of the religious-Zionist movement.

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Elul 4 

 

In 1391, the Jews of Barcelona, Spain were victims of a massacre. This was part of three months of deadly riots throughout Spain, which left the Jewish community crushed and impoverished. Incredibly, on this same date 70 years later, a bishop named Alfonso de Espina urged the establishment of the Spanish Inquisition. The Inquisition was designed to uncover those Jews who continued to practice Judaism in secret (called Conversos or Marranos). During the years of brutal Inquisition, an estimated 32,000 Jews were burned at the stake and another 200,000 were expelled from Spain.

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Elul 5 

 

In 1915, the Jewish Battalions of the British Royal Fusiliers was formed, consisting of Jewish volunteers from America, England, and Israel. Their goal was to join the efforts of the British Army in World War I to liberate Israel from Turkish rule. The idea was first proposed by Zev Jabotinsky, and by 1919, some 5,000 Jewish volunteers were participating in the battalions.

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Elul 6 

 

Yahrtzeit of Rabbi Yom Tov Lipman Heller (1579-1654), author of Tosfot Yom Tov, one of the classic commentaries on the Mishnah. At age 13, Heller went to study in Prague with the famed sage, Maharal, and at 18 he was appointed a member of the Maharal's rabbinical court, a position he held for 27 years. He also authored Tzurat HaBayit, a detailed explanation of the Third Temple as described in Ezekiel, chapters 40-43. He later served as Chief Rabbi of Vienna, and then as Chief Rabbi of Prague. In 1629, some members of the Jewish community -- angry at Rabbi Heller for determining how a federal tax should be paid -- had him framed and thrown in prison. Forty days later he was released, penniless, and was forbidden from practicing as a rabbi. The ban was later lifted and he went on to become rabbi of Krakow, Poland. He is buried in the Krakow cemetery, in the section devoted to the poor and needy.

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Elul 7 

 

In the Hebrew year 2368 (1392 BCE), the parents of Miriam and Aaron -- Amram and Yocheved -- re-married. After Pharaoh had issued a decree that all Jewish baby boys be drowned in the Nile, Amram despaired of bringing more children into the world, and he divorced his wife Yocheved. Since Amram was the leader of the Jewish community, other men follow suit. Miriam argued that Pharaoh's decree was against the males, but to not procreate also went against the females. Convinced by her argument, Amram and Yocheved re-married, and this union produced Moses, the greatest prophet of all-time, who 80 years later would deliver the Jewish people out of slavery in Egypt, and on to receive the Torah at Mount Sinai.

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Elul 8 

On this date in 1893, kosher slaughter was declared illegal in Switzerland -- a ban that continues until today. That same year, kosher slaughter was prohibited in the German region of Saxony. Today, Norway also bans kosher slaughter, and other European countries such as the UK have taken the matter under consideration. Sometimes these laws are anti-Semitic in nature, but couched in humanitarian terms. The issue is one of great sensitivity for the Jewish community, being that one of the first enactments of the Nazis in 1933 was to outlaw kosher slaughter -- an act of horrible irony that preceded the slaughter of 6 million Jews.

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Elul 9 

 

In 1654, Jacob Barsimson became the first Jewish settler in New Amsterdam (New York), and a few months later a group of 23 Jews arrived from Brazil. At first, Governor Peter Stuyvesant denied Jews the right to engage in trade, own real estate, serve in the military, and conduct public religious services. Barsimson, an observant Jew, filed an appeal to the Dutch West India Company, and succeeded in gaining equal rights for Jews. In one incident, Barsimson was summoned to court on Shabbat and courageously refused to appear. In a landmark decision that extended the limits of religious freedom, the court did not hold him accountable. Barsimson's Jewish pride and pioneering spirit paved the way for generations of Jewish immigrants yet to come.

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Elul 10 

 

In 1991, in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, a 7-year-old black child was accidentally killed by a car driven by a chassidic Jew. Within hours, mobs of African American youths took to the streets, setting fires, smashing cars, looting stores, and chanting, "Get the Jews." Yankel Rosenbaum, a 29-year-old rabbinic student from Australia, was beaten and stabbed by a mob, and later died of his wounds. It took hundreds of police officers three full days to quell the riots. Lemrick Nelson Jr. was convicted for the killing of Rosenbaum, but an appellate court later reversed the decision on technical grounds. In Crown Heights, the incident has come to symbolize long-standing tensions between black and Jewish residents.