History events
1779 — ((24th of Shevat, 5539) Jews were granted right of residence in Stuttgart, Germany
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 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
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
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
People
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
1903 — (13th of Shevat, 5663) Birthdate of Russian born composer, Matvey Isaakovich Blatner
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