History events
1273 BCE (6 Adar 1 2488) — The Creator warned Moses that the day of his death was approaching, and commanded: “Take unto yourself Joshua bin Nun, a man of strong spirit, and lay your hand upon him… Give him of your majesty so that the entire community of Israel will obey him… At his word they shall go out [to war] and at his word they shall return, and all the sons of Israel shall be with him.”
1779 — (24th of Shevat, 5539) Jews were granted right of residence in Stuttgart, Germany
1844 (20 Shevat 5604) — In Russia, a decree was issued prohibiting the appointment of Jews to non‑combatant companies and units.
1882 (21 Shevat 5642) — Diary entry by Dr. H. Khisin, one of the pioneers of settlement in Eretz Israel: “The Jews are going through hard times. News of new pogroms not only fails to outrage anyone, but rather spurs them on further… Until now, I had no concern for my origins; I felt myself a devoted son of Russia, in which I lived and breathed. Every discovery by a Russian scientist, every outstanding literary work, every success of Russia as a state filled my heart with pride; I intended to dedicate my energies to serving the interests of my country and to faithfully fulfill all the duties of a good citizen… And suddenly we are shown the door, and openly told that ‘the western border is open to us Jews.’”
1895 (16 Shevat 5655) — A memorandum titled The Secret of Jewry was submitted to the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs from the Police Department. It proposed combating the revolutionary movement by “publicly exposing, in popular language, the secret Jewish plots against the entire Christian world and Russia in particular.”
1896 (26 Shevat 5656) — Diary entry by Herzl: “Today I read the pamphlet Auto‑Emancipation (by L. Pinsker). A striking coincidence; it’s good that I didn’t know this work before—perhaps I wouldn’t have set out to write The Jewish State.”
1918 (28 Shevat 5678) — The first postage stamps bearing the abbreviation EEF entered circulation in the Land of Israel. Before the mandate, foreign mail entered the country via Egypt, and letters and packages from Eretz Israel also went through Egypt. The British even established a special military unit—the Egyptian Expeditionary Force (EEF) mail service. The first EEF stamp cost one piastre. In 1918, a series of 11 stamps was issued in London; about 339,000 copies were printed in total, and they remained in circulation until 1 July 1920.
1927 — (8st of Adar I, 5687) “A further step toward ameliorating unemployment in Palestine was taken” today when the Zionist Executive, the Centraol Cooperative Bank and the Workers Bank advanced a loan of twenty thousand pounds to the Solel Boneh, the Jewish workers’ cooperative building society
1928 — (19th of Shevat, 5688) The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported today the District Court of Jaffa ruled that “compulsory Sabbath observance is in contradiction with Article XV of the Palestine Mandate that states: “The mandatory shall see that complete freedom of conscience and the free exercise of all forms of worship, subject only to the maintenance of public order and morals are assured to all. No discrimination of any kind shall be made between the inhabitants of Palestine on the ground of race, religion or language. No person shall be excluded from Palestine on the sole ground of his religious belief.” The District Court was overruling a decision by a Tel Aviv magistrate who had fined a Jewish shopkeeper named Altschuler for violating the
1934 (25 Shevat 5694) — Nahariya was founded.
1943 (5 Adar 1 5703) — The Shoah. The U.S. State Department sent telegram No. 354 to all American consulates, ordering them not to accept any “private messages” concerning German actions against Jews. This circular effectively isolated official U.S. circles from any information about the Holocaust city’s ordinance regarding the observance of the Jewish Sabbath
1949 — (11th of Shevat, 5709) Lehi Leader Nathan Yellin-Mor was sentenced to 8 years in prison after having been guilty of being part of the leadership of a terrorist organization for his role in the assassination of Count Folke Bernadotte
1952 (14 Shevat 5712) — The Jerusalem Post reported that Israel had purchased 27 Mustang fighter planes from the Swedish Air Force; and that of the 34,000 immigrants who arrived in Israel between October 1951 and the end of September 1952, 9,800 came from Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria; 3,800 from Libya; 1,350 from Egypt; 5,800 from Iran; 1,000 from Iraq; 650 from Turkey; 6,800 from Romania; 650 from Bulgaria; 160 from Poland; and 170 from the U.S. and other countries
1953 — (25th of Shevat, 5713) The Jerusalem Post reported that a strong explosion shook the Soviet Legation building in Tel Aviv, injuring three members of the staff. Israel expressed «horror and detestation» at this cowardly act. The owner of a Soviet bookshop in Jerusalem was threatened. This violence came as a wave of anti-Semitism swept across the Soviet Union; The Jerusalem Post reported that The Haifa Technion opened a faculty of agricultural engineering
1970 — (4th of Adar I, 5730) Three Arab terrorists attacked an “airport bus head for an El Al plane at the Munich airport” killing 1 Israeli passenger and wounding 8 others including actress Hanna Maron who had to have her leg amputated after being injured in the grenade blast
1983 (27 Shevat 5743) — Terrorist attack. A grenade was thrown at participants in a rally by the “Peace Now” movement. One person died and 10 were wounded. The perpetrator, religious Jew Yona Avrushmi, was sentenced to life imprisonment.
2007 (22 Shevat 5767) — At around 00:15, a 4.2‑magnitude earthquake (Richter scale) struck southern Israel. The epicenter was south of the Dead Sea. Aftershocks were felt across most of the country
2010 — (26th of Shevat, 5770) Today, the Antiquities Authority said that “archaeologists in Jerusalem have discovered an ancient street which confirms the accuracy of the 1,500 old Madaba Map which depicted in a mosaic floor of a church in Madaba, Jordan, that shows Jerusalem as it was in the Byzantine period, between the 4th and the 7th centuries
2012 — (17th of Shevat, 5772) Israel’s Defense Ministry said this morning that it had conducted a successful test of the Arrow 2 missile defense system
2023 (19 Shevat 5783) — Terrorist attack in Jerusalem. An Arab deliberately drove his car into people standing at a bus stop. A man and two children (aged 6 and 8) died.
2024 (1 Adar 1 5784) — Gaza War, Day 127. Intense fighting across Khan Yunis, in the north, and in the center of the Gaza Strip. Targets were struck by artillery, tanks, and the Air Force
People
401 (11 Adar 1 4161) — Theodosius II, Byzantine emperor, was born. He ended Jewish leadership in Eretz Israel: by decree in 426, he deposed the last head of the Sanhedrin, Gamliel VI, and ordered donations to the Sanhedrin to be transferred to the imperial treasury. After this, the center of Jewish thought definitively shifted to Babylon.
1218 (13 Adar 1 4978) — Judah ben Samuel, scholar known for his books on mysticism and ethics (including The Book of the Pious), died. He was considered one of the most respected thinkers of his time
1660 — (28th of Shevat, 5420) Saul Levi Morteira passed away. Born in 1596, he was a Dutch rabbi of Portuguese descent. In a Spanish poem Daniel Levi, de Barrios speaks of him as being a native of Germany («de Alemania natural»). When in 1616 Morteira escorted the body of the physician Elijah Montalto from France to Amsterdam, the Sephardic congregation Bet Ya’aḳob elected him ḥakam in succession to Moses ben Aroyo. Morteira was the founder of the congregational school Keter Torah. He taught Talmud and Jewish philosophy to the older students. He had also to preach three times a month.. Among his most distinguished pupils were Baruch Spinoza and Moses Zacuto. Morteira and Isaac da Fonseca Aboab (Manasseh ben Israel was at that time in England) were the members of the bet din which pronounced the decree of excommunication («ḥerem») against Spinoza. Some of Morteira’s pupils published Gibeat Shaul a collection of fifty sermons on the Pentateuch, selected from 500 derashot written by Morteirа
1662 — (1st of Adar I, 5422) Shabbatai ben Meir HaKohen ”a noted 17th century talmudist and halakhist” b known as the Shakh which is an abbreviation of his most important work, Siftei Kohen ((literally Lips of the Priest) on the Shulchan Aruch passed away today
1667 (26 Shevat 5427) — Rabbi David Halevi Segal, renowned legal scholar and commentator on the Shulchan Aruch, died at age 81.
1728 (11 Adar 1 5488) — David Nieto, rabbi and from 1702 head of the Spanish and Portuguese community in London, died at age 74.
1888 (28 Shevat 5648) — Zelig Brodetsky, mathematician and Zionist activist, was born. In 1948, he succeeded Chaim Weizmann as president of the British Zionist Federation. From 1949 to 1952, he was president of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He died on 18 May 1954.
1890 (20 Shevat 5650) — Feiga Roydman (better known as Fanny Kaplan), revolutionary accused of the failed assassination attempt on Lenin on 30 August 1918, was born. She was executed by the Bolsheviks on 3 September 1918
1890 — The poet Boris Pasternak was born. He passed away on May 30, 1960.
1894 — Yakov I. Frenkel, a theoretical physicist, was born. He died on January 23, 1952.
1898 — Bertolt Brecht, a writer, was born. He died on August 14, 1956.
1903 — The composer Mikhail Blanter was born. He passed away on February 27, 1990.
1916 — In Brooklyn, L. Gutman was born — an Israeli sociologist and statistician. He was a laureate of the Israel Prize and died on October 25, 1987.
1919 — Alexander Volodin (Levshits), a playwright and screenwriter (known for «Five Evenings» and «The Elder Sister»), was born. He passed away on December 17, 2001.
1922 — (12 Shvat 5682) In Tel Aviv, Eliyahu Beit-Zuri was born — one of the militants who assassinated Lord Moyne in Cairo on November 6, 1944. He was executed by the British on March 22, 1945.
1938 — The writer Grigory Vainer was born. He passed away on June 11, 2009.
1941 — In a New York hotel, former Soviet illegal intelligence officer Walter Krivitsky (Samuel Ginsburg) was killed; he had remained in the West.
1945 — (27 Shvat 5705) Giovanni Palatucci, an Italian police officer and Righteous Among the Nations, died in Dachau. During the war, as an inspector of the Foreigners’ Department of the police station in Fiume, he saved 5,000 Jews from death. He was arrested by the Gestapo in 1944 for his efforts.
1950 — (23 Shvat 5710) Mark Spitz, an American swimmer and seven-time champion of the 1972 Munich Olympics (with a total of nine gold medals across two Olympics), was born.
1952 — (14 Shvat 5712) Tzvi Gringold, an Israeli officer awarded the highest military honor in Israel — the Medal of Valor, was born
1980 — (23rd of Shevat, 5740) Nathan Yellin-Mor, the leader of Lehi who had been born at Grodno in 1913 and whose political transformation led him to become “a radical pacifist who support negotiations with the PLO” passed away today
2022 — (9 Adar-1 5782) A monument to the Jewish financier Licoricia of Winchester from the 13th century was unveiled in London