History events
746 — (22th of Shevat, 4506) Beginning of a three-year period of major earthquakes in Palestine, the focus of which were “in the Judean desert, the rift valley, Jordan Valley and Jerusalem.”
1724 — (4th of Shevat, 5484) Pope Innocent XIII published Ex Injuncto Nobis a bull that “forbade Jews from selling new objects” which “was similar to the bull published by Clement VIII in 1592, and which was meant to put Jewish merchants at a disadvantage.”
1824 — (18th of Shevat, 5584) In Cincinnati, Ohio, Congregation B’nai Israel was formally organized; those in attendance were Solomon Buckingham, David I. Johnson, Joseph Jonas, Samuel Jonas, Jonas Levy, Morris Moses, Phineas Moses, Simeon Moses, Solomon Moses, and Morris Symonds
1891 — (9th of Shevat, 5651) The B’nai Zion Educational Society whose members included David A. Lourie, Charles, Askwith and Louis Arkin was founded in Boston, MA
1898 — (24th of Tevet, 5658) It was reported today that a crowd of 3,000 people demonstrated in front of the Army Club in Marseilles expressing their support for the army and denouncing Zola and Dreyfus
1913 — (10th of Shevat, 5673) Nathan Straus set sail for Palestine accompanied by two Hadassah nurses — Rachel Kaplan and Rose Landy. Hadassah had raised $2,500 to cover the salaries of the nurses for two years. Strauss paid their travel expenses and agreed to fund a new clinic in Jerusalem
1916 — (13th of Shevat, 5676) “The Jewish Theological Seminary reopened today with Dr. Cyrus Adler as temporary President.”
1930 — (18th of Shevat, 5690) A delegation of Americans living in Tel Aviv, headed by Nathan Kaplan, an attorney who had moved to Palestine from Chicago, met with Paul Knabenshue, the American Counsel General, in an attempt to get him to help break the impasse that has turned Tel Aviv into a “meatless city.” The British government has resisted all efforts to establish a facility for the slaughter of animals in Tel Aviv. The British have told butchers in Tel Aviv to return to Jaffa where they can practice their trade. In Jaffa, the Jewish butchers work in an area that is surrounded by Arabs and the Jews were not able to get meat during the Arab riots that began in August of 1929
1933 — (20th of Shevat, 5693) It was reported today that “six months option for leasing 17,500 acres of land in Transjordania for thirty-three years and renewable for two more similar periods at an annual rental of u2,000 ($6,700 at present quotations) has just been obtained from the Emir Abdullah, ruler of Transjordania, by the Jewish Agency executive of Palestine.”
1936 — (23th of Shevat, 5696) “A movement for settling German Jews in South America has been launched with the completion of plans for training the first 125 Jewish youths for colonization.”
1938 — (16th of Shevat, 5698) “The expulsion of all alien Jews from Ecuador except those engaged in farming was decreed today by the Provisional Military Government of Colonel Alberto Enriquez” because as “the decree declared, hundreds of Jews” who were “permitted to colonize in Ecuador to escape persecution in Central Europe had entered business instead of agriculture as the Ecuadorian Government had expected them to do.”
1940 — (8th of Shevat, 5700) As a result of a new ordered issued by the Captain of the Port of Constanta in Rumania forbidding Rumanian sales from serving “on ships carrying Jewish emigrants bound for Palestine” all Jewish refugees from Rumanians “will be obliged to find crews in Bulgaria and Turkey” but not in Greece where a similar ban is already in force
1941 — (19th of Tevet, 5701) Herman Kruk, who had been active in Yiddish cultural activities in Warsaw and Vilna, recoiled from efforts to stage cultural activities in the ghetto stating, “You don’t make theatre in a graveyard.”
1942 — (29th of Tevet, 5702) After two weeks of constant burial duty of thousands of gassed Jews at Chelmno, Yakov Grojanowski escapes. His diary tells of cruelty, murders, tragedy and suicides. His two weeks were only 14 days of the last 44 days of continual murder via gas-trucks
1943 — (12th Швата, 5703) A train from Belgium arrives at Auschwitz; 387 men and 81 women are sent to the barracks while 1,558 people were sent to the gas chamber; In Warsaw, after 4 months of no transports, the Germans enter the ghetto and begin deportation again to Treblinka. In rounding up people, the Germans went through the homes killing people, throwing them out of windows, and looting whatever they could. 5,000 Jews were rounded up, including 150 doctors. One, Dr. Izrael Milejkowski, commits suicide during the train ride
1944 — (22th of Tevet, 5704) German armored forces surrounded the forest near Buczac, Poland. They killed three hundred Jews who had been hiding in the forest for the past nine months. Some of the Jews of Buczaz had taken part in armed resistance against the Nazis. This remnant had taken to the woods after the final roundup of Jews in the town. During their time in hiding, they attacked Nazis as well as members of the local populations who had betrayed the Jews to the Germans
1945 — (4th of Shevat, 5705) Acting on orders from Berlin, the SS begins a massive, on-foot evacuation of all prisoners and slave laborers at the Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Monowitz camps and from the Auschwitz region (Upper Silesia, Poland). Of the thousands of marchers, most die from exposure, exhaustion, and abuse on their way to their destinations. Boys evacuated from Birkenau march toward Mauthausen, Austria. Many of the boys are on «cart commando» duty, i.e., harnessed to enormous carts in groups of 20
1948 — (7th of Shevat, 5708) After embarking from Marseille, France today, a ship named the Alexandria reached Israel carrying a group of Youth Aliyah children
1949 — (17th of Tevet, 5709) In an attempt to improve relations with new Jewish state, the British ordered the immediate release of the remaining Jews who were detained in Cyprus during those years when His Majesty’s government was determined to keep Jews from settling in Palestine. Within a month all them, many of whom were Holocaust survivors, had reached Haifa
1970 — (11th of Shevat, 5730) Arab attacks on Israeli positions continued today when “two Israeli patrols in the Beisan Valley were attacked from Jordan” and Israeli positions in the Golan were shelled with bazooka fire rockets
1974 — (24th of Tevet, 5734) Israel and Egypt signed an agreement for the disengagement of forces in the aftermath of the Yom Kippur war. Israel agreed to withdraw from the Suez Canal
1979 — (19th of Tevet, 5739) Twenty-one people were injured when terrorists set off a bomb in a Jerusalem market
1991 — (3th of Shevat, 5751) Within 24 hours of the outbreak of the Gulf War, the first Scud missiles landed near Tel Aviv. At least seven Iraqi missiles carrying conventional warheads fell on Israel early this morning in an area running from Tel Aviv to Haifa. The army said that seven people had been slightly injured «from a number of different hits in different parts of the country.» «It was mostly from broken glass and hysteria,» a senior Government official said of the injuries. The army said the most serious injuries had been a result of shock
2008 — (11th of Shevat, 5768) As another ten rockets slammed into southern Israel from Gaza, one damaging a day care center in the town of Sderot and another hitting Ashkelon, a town of 120,000 people
2009 — (22th of Tevet, 5769) The Jerusalem Post reported that a historic natural gas reservoir found offshore from Haifa is poised to meet Israel’s natural gas demand for about 15 years and reduce the country’s dependence on gas imports from Egypt and offshore from Gaza
2014 — (17th of Shevat, 5774) If Israeli-Palestinian peace talks fail, Israel will be subjected to international isolation similar to that which brought about the collapse of the Apartheid regime in South Africa, Israel’s Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, who is leading Israel’s negotiations with the Palestinians, warned today
People
1777 — (10th of Shevat, 5537) Rabbi Shalom Sharabi, known by his name’s acronym, the RaShaSH, passed away. He was born in Yemen, and as a young man immigrated to Israel. He was quickly recognized for his piety and scholarship, especially in the area of Jewish mysticism, and was appointed to be dean of the famed Kabalistic learning center in the Old City of Jerusalem, the Yeshivat ha-Mekubbalim. He authored many works, mostly based on the teachings of the great kabbalist, Rabbi Isaac Luria, the Ari. Rabbi Sharabi’s most famous work is a commentary on the prayer book, replete with kabalistic meditations. His mystical works are studied by Kabbalists to this very day. He is also considered to be a foremost authority on Yemenite Jewish traditions and customs
1890 — (26th of Tevet, 5650) Solomon Sulzer, reformer of synagogal music, died