History events
1657 — (1th of Adar 5417) «Resettlement Day» in England. Oliver Cromwell grants Carvajal and other Jews right of residence
1782 — (20th of Shevat, 5542) Jewish physicians in Galicia were granted permission to treat Christian patients
1807 — (26th of Shevat, 5567) In France, The Great Sanhedrin, a creation of Napoleon Bonaparte, met at the Hotel de Ville in the City Hall of Paris
1838 — (9th of Shevat, 5598) Together with a dedicated group of Philadelphia Jewish women, Rebecca Gratz established the first Jewish Sunday School
1911 — (6th of Shevat, 5671) The Sentinel, a weekly Yiddish paper co-founded by Abraham L. Weber and Louis S. Berlin who was the “editor and longtime publisher” was published for the first time today
1936 — (11th of Shevat, 5696) David Frankfurter, a Jewish Yugoslav medical student, killed the Swiss Nazi Gauleiter Wilhelm Gustoff. Though the German government demanded the death penalty, he was sentenced to eighteen years. Some historians believe that his action served as a model for Hershel Grynzpan whose assassination was used by the Nazi party for an all-out attack on Jewish property and synagogues known as Kristallnacht
1938 — (3 Adar-1 5698) Tonight, in Vienna, Nazis youths smashed windows in shops owned by Jews and “threw a burning gasoline container” into a synagogue while people were attending services.
1953 — (19th of Shevat, 5713) The Jerusalem Post reported that a train was derailed north of Kalkilya, as the result of a carefully planned operation by Jordanian saboteurs who blew up a section of track opposite Tulama village. The line was later repaired and reopened, but only after military attaches of foreign embassies visited the site. Israel submitted another complaint on Jordanian infiltration to the Mixed Israeli-Jordanian Armistice Commission; that a Farm Settlement Bill passed its first reading in the Knesset; that The High Court upheld the Interior Ministry’s order closing the Communist daily Kol Ha’am for 10 days for endangering the public peace by publication of articles justifying the current Soviet anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli propaganda, lies and fabrications
1959 — (26th of Shevat, 5719) For the first times since ancient times, Israel began exporting copper ore from the King Solomon mines
1966 — (14th of Shevat, 5726) In Tel Aviv, the offices of Zim Shipping Company on Rothschild Boulevard “burned down in of the biggest fires in Israeli history.”
1968 — (5th of Shevat, 5728) At sundown, Israeli forces ended their search for the INS Dakar
1969 — (16th of Shevat, 5729) Yasser Arafat takes over as chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Arafat was committed to a Palestinian state from the “River to the Sea.” Despite all of the grins and handshakes associated with the Oslo Agreements, Arafat’s behavior at and after the Camp David Peace Talks sponsored by President Clinton proved that he really never deviated from this goal
1990 — (9th of Shevat, 5750) Ten Israeli tourists were murdered near Cairo
1997 — (27th of Shevat, 5757) En route to Lebanon, two Israeli Sikorsky CH-53 troop-transport helicopters collide in mid-air over northern Galilee, Israel killing 73
2008 — (28 Shevat 5768) A Palestinian suicide bomber killed one woman and wounded 11 other people when he blew himself up in a crowded mall in the southern Israeli city of Dimona at 10:30 A.M. (8:30 A.M. GMT)
People
1616 — (16th of Shevat 5376) Samuel Pallache, a Moroccan Jewish merchant passed away in The Hague while serving as the diplomatic representative of the sultan Zidan Abu Maali in negotiations with the Dutch Republic designed to establish an alliance to fight their common enemy – Spain. Born in Fez in 1550, he was the son of a rabbi from Cordoba whose family had fled Spain following the Reconquista
1683 — (18th of Shevat, 5443) Birthdate Judah Monis, the son of Portuguese conversos born in Algeria who would become the first college Hebrew instructor in North America and the author of the first Hebrew textbook published in North America. The price of his position at Harvard would be conversion to Christianity
1689 — (24th of Shevat, 5449) Jerusalem chief rabbi Moses ben Jonathan Galante, the grandson of Moses Galante and the grandfather of Moses Hagis passed away today
1738 — (14th of Shevat, 5498) Joseph Süß Oppenheimer, a noted banker and court Jew was led to the gallows. He had been falsely accused of a variety of crimes and only “confessed” after being tortured. Even as he faced death by hanging, he refused to convert to Christianity, a move that might have saved his life. “Hanging inside a human-size cage, surrounded by a huge crowd of spectators, his last words — while a rope was tied around his neck — were those of the central prayer of Judaism, ‘Shema Yisrael.’»