History events
1668 — (25th of Shevat, 5428) Pope Clement IX canceled the humiliating forced races known as the Palio. During the Plaio near naked Jews were forced to run through the streets of Rome during carnival time. In return for the revocation the Jews of Rome had to pay a special cancellation tax of 200 ducats. This tax was paid for almost 200 years
1721 — (11th of Shevat, 5481) A fire broke out in the Judengasse at Frankfort which destroyed over a hundred homes. Christian looters took advantage of the situation and it took the intervention of Emperor Charles VI for the Jews to be compensated for their losses. The fire gave Jews a chance to legally live outside of the Ghetto for 8 years. By 1729, they had all been forced back into their narrow confines
1790 — (13th of Shevat, 5550) The French National Assembly granted full and equal citizenship to the Portuguese and Avignonese Jews. The Jews of Alsace would have to wait until 1791 to be granted these same rights. France was the first European country to pass such liberal legislation
1897 — (25th of Shevat, 5657) “Oldest Benefit Society” published today provides a brief history of the early Jewish community in New York and the Hebrew Mutual Benefit Society which was organized in 1826 when there approximately 300 Jewish families living in the city most of whom “lived below Canal Street and east of the Bowery.”
1902 — (20th of Shevat, 5662) Herzl authorized Leopold Kessler’s leadership of the expedition to El Arish where he and others including Dr. Selig Soskin an agricultural expert, Dr. Hillel Joffee and Colonel Albert Goldsmid would consider the possibility of this area of the Sinai Peninsula as a possible site for Jewish colonization
1918 — (15th of Shevat, 5678) In Jerusalem, the cornerstone is laid for Hebrew University
1937 — (16th of Shevat, 5697) Jewish students attempting to enter Warsaw University grounds today were turned back Fascist pickets and those “who insisted on entering were pushed out and beaten.”
1949 — (27th of Tevet, 5709) Israel was recognized (diplomatically) by Australia, Belgium, Chile, Great Britain, Holland, Luxembourg, and New Zealand
1979 — (29th of Tevet, 5739) Two were killed and thirty-four more were injured when terrorists set off a bomb in a Netanya market
1991 — (13th of Shevat, 5751) Iraq fired another missile with a conventional warhead at Tel Aviv tonight, the seventh attack in 12 days. But this time the army said the Scud was defective and disintegrated as it fell back to earth. No one was hurt, and there was no property damage. The missile had fallen apart even before any Patriot air-defense missiles could be fired at it
People
1167 — (6th of Adar, 4927) Poet and philosopher Abraham Ibn Ezra, hero of the golden age of Spain, passed away. There is some disagreement about when this sage actually passed away. Some say he passed away in 1164. Others say that he passed away on January 23. Although specificity as to the date of his death may not be possible, there is no doubt about his greatness
1573 — (24th of Shevat, 5333) Lippold, master of the Brandenburg mint, executed
1594 — (17th of Shevat, 5354) Seventy-nine year old Elia Levita who was “also known as Elijah Levita, Elias Levita, Eliahu Bakhur («Eliahu the Bachelor») and “was a Renaissance-period Hebrew grammarian, poet and one of the first writers in the Yiddish language” passed away today in Venice
1809 — (11th of Shevat, 5569) Theodor Benfey, German Sanskritist and philologist, born