This Day, November 17, In Jewish History

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This Day, November 17, In Jewish History

284: Diocletian is proclaimed emperor by his soldiers. "According to Jewish tradition, in his youth Diocletian had been a swineherd and when he went past the beis midrash the children would beat him." After he became Emporer, Diocletian spent time in Tiberias where enemies of the Jewish people said they disrespectfully referred to him as 'the swineherd.' Angered by the charges, the emperor demanded that Jewish leaders come to Tiberias and answer for their slanderous remarks. The rabbis conceded that they had acted badly towards Diocletian the swineherd but they had never been disrespectful towards Diocletain, the emperor. The Emperor accepted their argument and apology. Based on this experience the Jerusalem Talmud cautions Jews against treating any Roman disrespectfully, no matter how low his station in life, since one never knew how high he might rise. In an attempt to bring unity to the empire, Diocletian ordered all of his subjects to accept his divinty and to offer sacrifices to his cult. Fortunately, he exempted his Jewish subjects from this decree. Diocletian's reign was a comparitively favorable period for the Jewish people especially when one remembers the fate they would suffer in the next century at the hands of Constantine and his succesors.

331 C.E.: Birthdate of Emperor Flavius Claudius Julianus. Known by some as Julian the Apostate, Julian reigned from 361 until his death in 363. Ironically, he was the nephew of Constantine the Great, the man who made Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire. For some unknown reason, Julian repealed many of the harsh laws that had been promulgated against the Jews by his predecessors. While Julian believed that his paganism was superior to Judaism, he felt that the Jews had suffered unnecessarily at the hands of Rome for the last four centuries and he sought to redress the imbalance. Julian announced plans to rebuild the Temple and Jerusalem. He ordered the local Roman officials to help with the project. Jews returned from as far away as Persia and even built a small synagogue near the Temple Mount in anticipation of this monumental project. Unfortunately, Julian died while on a military campaign before work could begin. Rumor had that he had been killed by a Christian Arab in the pay of those who disliked his support of the Jews. This brief window of hope closed and the Christian Religion joined hands with the power of the Roman state to embitter the lives of the Jews.

473: The future Zeno I is named associate emperor by Emperor Leo I. Leo was the Byzantine Emperor from 457 until 474. Leo was determined to wed the power of the Empire to the Christian Church. In 468 Leo issued a decree banning everyone but Christians from practicing law. Jews were persecuted with combinations of imperial decrees and church canon. Leo, in his desire to outlaw Judasm and force Christianity upon Jewish people, declared in Constitution LV (55) of the Constitutions of Leo, "Therefore We, desiring to accomplish what Our Father failed to effect, do hereby annul all the old laws enacted with reference to the Hebrews, and We order that they shall not dare to live in any other manner than in accordance with the rules established by the pure and salutary Christian Faith. And if anyone of them should be proved to, have neglected to observe the ceremonies of the Christian religion, and to have returned to his former practices, he shall pay the penalty prescribed by the law for apostates." Leo's Constitution became part of the Justinian's Civil Law. Now Jews had to pretend they were Christians and observe Christian ceremonies. The penalties that could be inflicted on Jews included loss of real estate and/or personal possessions, loss of testamentary rights, exile and, in some case, loss of life.

1278: Edward I of England arrested all the Jews for alleged coin clipping and counterfeiting. 680 were arrested, jailed and put on trial. The judges were given prior instructions clearly biased against the Jews. Although many Christians were accused, many more (ten times as many) Jews were hanged than Christians (269 Jews and 29 Christians). Edward received 16,500 pounds from the property of the executed Jews and the fines of those charged. At that time Jews comprised 1% of the English population. 16,500 pounds was almost 10% of the exchequer's national income.

This Day, November 17, In Jewish History
November 17 In Jewish History

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1141 (Tenth of Tevet): After leaving Cairo, Jehuda Halevi arrives at the port of Damietta where he was warmly received by his old friend Abu Said Chalfon.

1531: A Bull was issued by Pope Clement VII establishing the Inquisition in Portugal. Frei Diogo da Silva was made Inquisitor General.

1728: Congregation Shearith Israel purchased a lot on Mill Street in lower Manhattan, to build New York's first synagogue.

1839: Birthdate of Ferdinand James Anselm von Rothschild an English politician and art collector, and a member of the prominent Rothschild family of bankers. He would pass away exactly 59 years later on his birthday.

1830: Simon Bolivar, the liberator of Venezuela and Columbia known as the "George Washington of South America" passed away. "Simon Bolivar found refuge and material support for his army in the homes of Jews from Curaçao. Jews such as Mordejai Ricardo and brothers Ricardo and Abraham Meza offered hospitality to Bolivar as he fought against the Spanish, thus establishing brotherly relations between Jews and the newly independent Venezuelan republic. Several Jews even fought in the ranks of Bolivar's army during the war." "The Jews of Curacao became involved with Simon Bolivar and his fight for the independence of Venezuela and Colombia from their Spanish colonizers. Two Jewish men from Curacao distinguished themselves in Simon Bolivar's army, while another supplied moral and material support to Bolivar, as well as refuge for him and his family."

1862: General Grant, in issuing his infamous Order 11, ordered all "Jews as a class" expelled from his lines. In New York City 7000 Jews marched in protest against his decision. Lincoln rescinded his order. Grant never explained the order. Grant had shown something of a nativist streak in the 1850's when he reportedly supported the No Nothing Party. As President, Grant maintained cordial relations with Jewish leaders. After leaving the Presidency, Grant lent his name to petitions protesting the treatment of Russian Jews and he made a contribution to the newly formed Adas Israel Congregation in its formative years!

1892: Birthdate of American biochemist Edwin Cohn. In 1940 the hard-driving Harvard biochemist Edwin Cohn broke plasma down into its different proteins — and saved millions of soldiers' lives Most fatalities in World War I occurred not from the direct physical damage of bullet wounds but from loss of blood. In the spring of 1940, as another war seemed inevitable, finding a way to replace lost blood became a medical priority. Edwin Cohn, a Harvard biochemist, took on the problem of breaking down blood plasma to isolate a protein called albumin that could be stored for long periods without spoiling, shipped efficiently and used easily on a battlefield to save lives. Patriotic blood drives yielded whole blood from which a small inventory of albumin had been accumulated by December 7, 1941. It was rushed to Pearl Harbor where it proved enormously successful in the first battlefield setting. Cohn headed up a government effort to oversee the production of albumin. His work throughout the war to improve the process and the consequent successes of blood products on the battlefield were one of the keys to victory for the Americans in World War II. He passed away in 1953.

1893: Birthdate of Erwin Piscator. The German born Piscator has been described as one of the most renowned figures of modern theater famous for his avant-garde productions at the Epic Theater in Weimar Berlin and his innovative contributions to the American stage.

1894: Birthdate of Arthur Fiedler. Fiedler gained fame as the conductor of the Boston Pops which he turned into an American institution. He passed away in 1979.

1901: Birthdate of Lee Strasberg. Strasberg was an actor and a director. But his greatest fame came from teaching others to act. He passed away in 19821992: Anniversary of the death of game show creator Mark Goodson. Born in 1915, his stable of creations included Beat the Clock, The Price Is Right, To Tell the Truth and that Sunday favorite, What's My Line

1903 (28th Kislev): On the fourth day of Chanukah The Wright Brothers make their first powered and heavier-than-air flight in the Wright Flyer at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. According to some, the success of the Dayton bicycle men was based on early work by Otto Lielenthal who died during a flight test seven years before. Arthur L. Welsh, a young Jew from Dayton, was one of the early pilots who was taught to fly by the Wright brothers. When Welsh died in 1912 during a test flight, he was the only pilot employed by Wrights who close friends as well as his mentors.

1909: Muslims in Tunis protested when Jews were going to be put under French jurisdiction. Muslims stated that this was discriminatory and a violation of treaties, even though it was the Muslims the French were going to protect the Jews from.

1913: Birthdate of American business man Sol Linowitz. He served as Chairman of the Board of Xerox Corp and negotiated the return of the Panama Canal.

1914: The Turks expelled the Jews of Tel Aviv, sending them to Egypt. Many of the Jews were native Russians. Since Russia and Turkey were enemies during World War I, the Turks saw these Russian Jews as potential enemy agents or worse.

1917: Dov Ber Borochov, one of the founding fathers of the Labor Zionist movement, passed away.

1929: Birthdate of William Safire. Unique among the Jews of his generation, Safire was a conservative Republican who was a speech writer for President Nixon. He spent almost three decades as a political columnist for The New York Times.

1931: The meeting of the World Islamic conference came to an end in Jerusalem. The conference agreed to deny Jews access to the al-Akso Mosque as a first step to undermining efforts of the Zionists to live peacefully side by side with their Arab neighbors.

1937: The Palestine Post reported that three Arabs were killed when British troops and police fought a large Arab gang near Tulkarm.

1937: The Palestine Post reported that a Jewish boy of 16 was killed when a Polish hooligan shot him and threw a bomb at a shop in the village of Czarna, near Warsaw, completely demolishing it. Polish officials were reported to be planning to deport, with French approval, some 30,000 Jewish families, 120,000 persons to Madagascar, within the next six years. France demanded that the refugees be supplied with sufficient capital to make their planned farms profitable.

1940: Drunken SS guards at the Sachsenhausen labor camp awaken Jews during a frigid night and order them to roll in the snow.

1941: German Christian church leaders of Saxony, Nassau-Hesse, Mecklenburg, Schleswig-Holstei, Anhalt, Thuringia and Lubeck announced that the "severest measures" should be taken against the Jews, who should be expelled from German territories.

1941: Dr. David Dubslo and two of his colleagues died of spotted typhus while treating Gypsies who had been sent to the Lodz ghetto. The Gypsies lived in a special section of the ghetto and had no doctors of their own.

1942: The Yishuv announces a 30-day period of mourning to commemorate the tragedy of the Jews in Europe.

1942: Pressure from members of Parliament, from Jewish groups in England, from the Anglican Church, from the British press, and from the Polish government-in-exile persuades the Allied governments to publish their first official recognition of atrocities in Poland. The Allied nations--Great Britain, United States, Soviet Union, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Luxembourg, Holland, Norway, Poland, Yugoslavia, and the French National Committee--officially condemn the Nazis' "bestial policy of cold-blooded extermination." They vow to punish those responsible. Several U.S. State Department officials try to block this declaration. All previous and following declarations neglect to mention Jews.

1942: Accepting the United States government position that the Jews being massacred by the Germans can be helped only by a total and unconditional Allied victory over Germany, the American press continues to treat the Holocaust as just another war story, and is unwilling to discuss the systematic annihilation of the Jews. Given the Allied governments' knowledge of the Holocaust at this time, waiting until the Allied Armed Forces have achieved a total victory over the Germans indicates that the Allied governments have accepted the probability that the majority of European Jews will be killed before the Germans can be stopped.

1942: Jewish inmates at the labor camp at Kruszyna, Poland, near Radom, attack guards with knives and fists. Six prisoners are killed and four escape.

1942: The Allies issued a statement saying Jews were being taken to at Birkenau, the part of Auschwitz devoted to extermination and killed.

1943: Transport 63 departed with a cargo of French Jews being sent to Nazi-Germany

1943: Jews are executed at Kovno, Lithuania, as reprisal for an escape of several Jews from the ghetto.

1946: Birthdate of Eugene Levy. A native of Hamilton Canada, this writer and comedic actor is best known to Americans for his role in "American Pie."

1947: Birthdate of Eddie Antar. He was the cofounder of the electronics retail chain Crazy Eddie, Inc. He fled to Israel in February, 1990 to avoid. Later, he was extradited and convicted of securities fraud and racketeering.

1947: In face of mounting violence and fearing that worse was to come, the Jewish leaders of Jerusalem opened a blood bank with goal of producing 1000 doses of plasma.

1952: According to a report issued today by Moshe Kol, co-treasurer of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, and chairman of the Youth Aliyah management committee in Israel twenty million dollars has been expended by Hadassah, the Women's Zionist Organization of America, on its Youth Aliyah (youth immigration) activities in Israel in the last eighteen and a half years.

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that the new Mapai-General Zionists coalition won 73 seats in the Knesset.

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that in New York, more than 19,000 persons, attending the Hanukkah Festival of Lights, at the Madison Square Garden, purchased $2,575,000 worth of Israel Bonds.

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that officers and men of the Jerusalem Area Police Force contributed IL 136 to the Post's Hanukkah Toy Fund, the largest amount given by any organized group of workers, and assisted the newspaper's volunteers in the distribution of toys and sweets in the Jerusalem Corridor's outlying ma'abarot.

1964: Nobel Prize winner Victor Francis Hess passed away. A native of Austria, the non-Jewish Hess fled his native country because his wife was Jewish.

1965: Astronomer David H. Levy began his search for comets

1974: Birthdate of super chef Duff Goldman.

1982: Opening of "Tootsie," starring Dustin Hoffman.

1992: As violence from Palestinian terrorist escaleted 415 terrorist leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad were flown to Israel's northern border and deported to Lebanon.

1996: Song writer Irving Caesar passed away. Born in 1895, he was originally known as Isidor Caesar. He wrote lyrics for "Swanee," "Sometimes I'm Happy," "Crazy Rhythm," and "Tea for Two," one of the most frequently recorded tunes ever written.

2000: The New York Times book section featured books by Jewish authors and/or about subjects of Jewish interest including Maestro: Greenspan's Fed and the American Boom by Bob Woodward, Freud: Darkness in the Midst of Vision by Louis Breger, Schmidt Delivered by Holocaust survivor Louis Begley and Sex and Power by Susan Estrich.

2006: The Times of London names Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky (translated by Sandra Smith) as number one on its list of "The Best Books of 2006." This recently discovered volume written by a French Jewish author describes life in France in the early days of World War II. The book was written as Nemirovsky fled from the Nazis. She perished in the death camps before she had a chance to complete the work or edit it.

2006: The Jewish people should develop a long-term strategic planning mechanism to address the threats that endanger all Jews, according to recommendations submitted at Sunday's cabinet meeting. According to former US envoy to the Middle East Dennis Ross "The nature of the threats to the Jewish people put a premium on better planning," Ross is chairman of the board of the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute, a Jewish Agency think tank presenting the recommendations to the cabinet in the framework of its third annual assessment of the state of the Jewish people. The presentation focuses on several "emerging trends." These include the rise of Islamic terrorism and its widespread use of anti-Semitic themes; the danger to Israel and the Jewish world as a whole from an Iranian nuclear bomb; a shift of power toward emerging nations such as China and India; and worrying demographic trends within the Jewish people. For Ross, the issues are closely intertwined. "At a time when radical forces question Israel's right to exist - and this is tied to anti-Semitism - it's a reason to strengthen the Israel-Diaspora relationship," he said. "In light of the general decline of Jewish identity, these relations are especially important. "At a time when the majority of Jews live in Israel, the Diaspora is more influenced by what happens in Israel," he said. "We want the government of Israel to understand the impact of its actions on the relationship between Israel and the Diaspora." The presentation includes four central policy recommendations: strengthening pan-Jewish identity by setting a shared Jewish agenda; improving the demographic situation by encouraging conversion and childbirth; improving Israel-Diaspora relations through Israeli government policy and education; and the development of a mechanism to create a joint political strategy. The presentation noted the effect of the Lebanon war on world Jewry, specifically the different reactions the war elicited from European and American Jews. Both communities were shaken by the perception that the war was not won decisively, but European Jews, "living side-by-side with large minority communities of Muslims," felt the lack of an Israeli victory more powerfully, according to the presentation. American Jews, on the other hand, were surprised at what they perceived as Israeli military vulnerability. They also expressed concern over high-level calls for a more "balanced" approach to US policy in the Middle East, which would come at the expense of Israel. The report, authored by Hebrew University demographer Sergio Della Pergola, confirms that Israel has the largest Jewish community in the world. Totaling 5,309,000, Israeli Jewry consists of 40.6 percent of the world's estimated 13.1 million Jews, according to the report. According to Della Pergola, if present trends continue, Israel will have more than 50% of the world's Jews by 2030. The report also notes that 92% of Jews reside in the 20 countries ranked highest in the UN's Quality of Life Index, indicating that most Diaspora Jews no longer need to move to Israel for economic reasons. According to institute director Avinoam Bar-Yosef, the proposed strategic planning mechanism would bring together agencies such as the American Jewish Committee and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, organizations capable of fielding "not just the hard power, but also the soft power, of the Jewish people" and which have already served as "de facto managers of a pan-Jewish foreign policy." A senior official in a major US Jewish organization told The Jerusalem Post that the idea seemed misguided. "The Jewish people have a history of creating bureaucracies that cannot easily be dismantled long after the Jewish community has outgrown the need for them," the official said. Ross, however, defended the proposal. "We don't need a new bureaucratic level," he said, but there was an urgent need for "better coordination."

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A little history of the Jews in Ireland -  Today in History -- CSR
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December 19 In Jewish History

1154: Coronation of Henry II, King of England. With the restoration of order under Henry II, condtions of the Jews improved markedly. Within five years of his accession Jews are found at London, Oxford, Cambridge, Norwich, Thetford, Bungay, Canterbury, Winchester, Newport, Stafford, Windsor, and Reading. Yet they were not permitted to bury their dead elsewhere than in London, a restriction which was not removed till 1177. Their spread throughout the country enabled the king to draw upon them as occasion demanded; he repaid them by demand notes on the sheriffs of the counties, who accounted for payments thus made in the half-yearly accounts on the pipe rolls (see Aaron of Lincoln). Richard "Strongbow" de Clare's conquest of Ireland in 1170 was financed by Josce, a Jew of Gloucester; and the king accordingly fined Josce for having lent money to those under his displeasure. As a rule, however, Henry II does not appear to have limited in any way the financial activity of Jews. The favourable position of the English Jews was shown, among other things, by the visit of Abraham ibn Ezra in 1158, by that of Isaac of Chernigov in 1181, and by the resort to England of the Jews who were exiled from France by Philip Augustus in 1182, among them probably being Judah Sir Leon of Paris. When he asked the rest of the country to pay a tithe for the crusade against Saladin in 1186, he demanded a quarter of the Jewish chattels. The tithe was reckoned at £70,000, the quarter at £60,000. In other words, the value of the personal property of the Jews was regarded as one-fourth that of the whole country. It is improbable, however, that the whole amount was paid at once, as for many years after the imposition of the tallage arrears were demanded from the recalcitrant Jews. The king had probably been led to make this large demand upon English Jewry by the surprising windfall which came to his treasury at the death of Aaron of Lincoln. All property obtained by usury, whether by Jew or by Christian, fell into the king's hands on the death of the usurer; Aaron of Lincoln's estate included £15,000 of debts owed to him. Besides this, a large treasure came into the king's hands, which, however, was lost on being sent over to Normandy. A special branch of the treasury, constituted in order to deal with this large account, was known as "Aaron's Exchequer". In this era, Jews lived on good terms with their non-Jewish neighbours, including the clergy; they entered churches freely, and took refuge in the abbeys in times of commotion. Some Jews lived in opulent houses, and helped to build a large number of the abbeys and monasteries of the country. However, by the end of Henry's reign they had incurred the ill will of the upper classes. The anti-Jewish sentiment fostered by the crusades, during the latter part of the reign of Henry, spread the anti-Jewish sentiment throughout the nation.

1878: Joseph Pulitzer begins publishing "St Louis Dispatch." Pulitzer's father was Jewish. His mother was Roman Catholic.

1919: Zionist office opened in Constantinople for Jews wanting to move to Palestine.

1919: The SS Ruslam reached Jaffa with 671 people aboard. The ship was loaded with doctors, artists, and academics and had been called Israel's Mayflower. Its arrival marked the period of what is known as the "Third Aliyah," which lasted four years. Approximately 50% of the 35,000 immigrants were from Russia and 35% from Poland. The "Third Aliyah" was idealistic and marked the time when the first Kibbutzim and Moshavim were established.


1939: Three months after the German invasion of Poland, Chaim Weizmann meets with Winston Churchill who is now a member of the British Cabinet. Weizmann thanks Churchill for his consistent support of the Zionist cause. Churchill reiterates his support by agreeing that after the war he will support the Zionist "wish to have a State of some three or four million Jews in Palestine."

1947: In an attempt to deal with the looming threat to its water supply, Jerusalem householders respond to a request by communal leaders to open and clean their cisterns "in preparation for water storage."

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that the resolution of the UN General Assembly's Political Committee urging direct Arab-Israeli peace negotiations was hindered by a sudden Philippine and Catholic Bloc countries' amendment demanding the implementation of all old UN resolutions, including the internationalization of Jerusalem. Israel complained to the US and Britain that they continue to arm the Arab states, despite their promise that there should be no arms race in the region.