History events
1180 — (10th of Shevat, 4940) Philip Augustus (the new king of France) arrested large numbers of Jews while his father, Louis VII, who tried to protect the Jews (though not always successfully) was still alive. All the Jews found in synagogue on the Sabbath were arrested. Philip agreed to free them for 15,000 silver marks
1349 — (19th of Shevat, 5109) On an island in the Rhine River, seven hundred Jews of Basel Switzerland were burned alive in houses especially constructed for that purpose. Their children were spared from the burning but were forcibly baptized instead
1826 — (1th of Shevat, 5586) Heinrich Heine wrote today, «I am hated alike by Jew and Christian,» «I regret very deeply that I had myself baptized. I do not see that I have been the better for it since. On the contrary, I have known nothing but misfortunes and mischances.»
1893 — (21th of Tevet, 5653) It was reported today that 88.61% of the 3,159 patients who were admitted to Mt. Sinai Hospital last year were “treated gratuitously” meaning that only 11.39% were “pay patients.” The hospital has treated 43,674 patients since its founding.
1904 — (21th of Tevet, 5664) The New York Times featured a review of Zionism and Anti-Semitism by Max Nordau, Officer d’ Academie, France, and Gustav Gotthell, Ph.D.
1908 — (5th of Shevat, 5668) In Little Rock, Arkansas, for the sum of $8,000 the Orthodox congregation purchased their own building at the corner of 8th and Louisiana. This was the first official home of Agudath Achim Synagogue
1920 — (18th of Tevet, 5680) The Jewish Youth Organizations of Germany convened a conference “leading Christians and Jews to discuss the present” outburst of anti-Semitism
1934 — (22th of Tevet, 5694) Berlin lawyer and WW I veteran “Max Naumann, the “founder of Verband nationaldeutscher Juden (League of National German Jews),” today “argued for “drawing a sharp distinction between «good» Jews like him and «bad» Jews like those immigrating from Eastern Europe.”
1936 — (14th of Tevet, 5696) It was reported today that more than 61,000 Jews from Europe “were absorbed in Palestine in 1935.”
1938 — (7th of Shevat, 5698) The Palestine Post reported on various shooting incidents in Jerusalem, Kalkilya and Nablus. A delegation of Polish Jews met the British ambassador in Warsaw and expressed their anxiety over the reports that a permanent minority status for the Jews in Palestine was under consideration. Similar fears were expressed in a telegram sent by the French section of the Jewish Agency to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain
1938 — (7th of Shevat, 5698) In “Palestine Modernized” published today George Brandt describes Tel Aviv as being the “most spectacular of the modern achievements in Palestine.” With a population of well over 100,000 “the world’s newest city is also its most modern.” As Brandt “rode through Tel Aviv’s well-paved streets” he “felt as though” he “were in the world of Well’s ‘Things To Come.’” He concludes that “the greatest enemy of young reborn Palestine is the desert. Will be be pushed back by the new forces or will it in years to come be the eventual victor
1939 — (18th of Tevet, 5699) As of today, “many Jews who have lost their jobs as a result of the Nazi campaign have turned to snow sweeping in Vienna” have “asked for night-hour assignments because they did not wish their former non-Jewish colleagues to see them working on the streets.”
1941 — (10th of Tevet, 5701) The Jews of Warsaw were forbidden to greet a German in public; Six thousand Jews exterminated in a pogrom in Bucharest, Romania
1942 — (20th of Tevet, 5702) The Nazis deported 1,000 Jews from Theresienstadt and sent them to Riga. Only 102 would survive the war; The Nazis took 1,000 Jews from Klodaw to Chelmno and gassed them to death
1943 — (3th of Shevat, 5703) Jews in the Netherlands are no longer allowed to have bank accounts. Instead, all Jewish money is put into a central account; In Germany, clothing taken off of the dead Jews were given to the German People’s Winter Aid Campaign. The group complained that the clothes were soiled and stained with blood. Furthermore, the Jewish stars had not been removed
1951 — (2th of Shevat, 5711) In the Negev, founding of Kfar Yeruham which became the modern town of Yerhum in 1962. “Yeruham is the site of Tel Rahma, dating back to the 10th century BCE. On the outskirts of Yeruham is an ancient well, Be’er Rahma (באר רחמה). Some archeologists have identified it as the well where the biblical Hagar drew water for her son Ishmael.”
1953 — (22th of Tevet, 5713) The Jerusalem Post reported extensively on the bitter dispute raging between the Mapai and Mapam factions at Kibbutz Ein Harod. Members of the respective parties came to blows and only police arrival saved the kibbutz, already suffering from economic demise, from extensive damage
1976 — (7th of Shevat, 5736) Eight people were injured in a bombing at supermarket in Jerusalem
2009 — (13th of Tevet, 5769) After a relatively quiet night, Palestinians in Gaza resumed rocket fire on the western Negev this morning
2011 — (4th of Shevat, 5771) Today, Israeli bulldozers demolished the Shepherd Hotel which had originally been built in the 1930s as a villa for Haj Amin al-Husseini, then the grand mufti of Jerusalem, who notoriously aligned himself with Hitler
2014 — (8th of Shevat, 5774) Today Haaretz and The Times of Israel reported that Archaeologists from Ariel University and the Israel Antiquities Authority have begun excavating “Tel Rumeida, a site believed to be the location of biblical Hebron which lies in the heart of the modern-day divided city.” (As reported by Yifa Yaakov)
2015 — (18th of Tevet, 5775): “Amedy Coulibaly, the Islamist gunman who allegedly killed four people and held others hostage before he was killed by French security forces at a kosher store in Paris today, reportedly told a French journalist at the height of the siege that he had deliberately chosen to target Jews.” The four Jews killed today were Yohan Cohen 22, Yoav Hattab 21, Philipe Barham, in his 40’s and Francois-Michel Saada in his 60’s
2018 — (22th of Tevet, 5778) A firebomb was thrown at the historic El Ghriba synagogue on the Tunisian Island of Djerba today
People
*1810 — (4th of Shevat, 5570): Rabbi Abraham of Kalisk passed away. Born in 1741, he was a controversial figure in the 3rd generation of Chassidic leaders. In his youth, he was a study partner of Rabbi Elijah «the Gaon of Vilna», who led the initial opposition against Chassidism; but later Rabbi Abraham himself joined the forbidden kat («sect», as the Chassidic movement was derisively called by its opponents) and became a disciple of Rabbi DovBer, the Maggid of Mezeritch, the successor to Chassidism’s founder, Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov. After Rabbi DovBer’s passing in 1772, much of the opposition to Chassidism was directed against Rabbi Abraham’s disciples, who, more than any other group within the movement, mocked the intellectual elitism of the establishment’s scholars and communal leaders; even Rabbi Abraham’s own colleagues were dismayed by the «antics» of some of his disciples. In 1777, Rabbi Abraham joined the first Chassidic «aliyah», in which a group of more than 300 Chassidim led by Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk immigrated to the Holy Land. Rabbi Abraham passed away in Tiberias on the 4th of Shevat of the year 5570 from creation (1810 CE)
*1812 — (24th of Tevet, 5572) Liebmann Adler, American rabbi, born
*1908 — (5th of Shevat, 5668) Abraham Goldfaden died at the age of 67. Born in 1840 in what was then part of the Russian Empire, Golfaden was a driving force in the Yiddish theatre during its golden period of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was an author, composer (yes, there were musicals), director and producer. He worked in several countries in Europe before settling in the United States for the last time in 1903. He was the author of sixty theatrical works, some of which are enjoying renewed interest with the current renaissance of Yiddish Literature. One of his early comedies was called Shmendrik «whose title-hero was the proverbial gullible, good-natured schlemiel. The play was so popular, that the word Shmendrik became part of the Yiddish language and survives today in American slang. The music for the famous Yiddish lullaby «Rozhinkes mit Mandlen,» (Raisin and Almonds) is a product of one of Goldfaden’s musicals. Goldfaden was so famous at the time of his death that he rated an obituary in the New York Times that referred to him as «the Yiddish Shakespeare,» who was «both a poet and prophet.» Furthermore, wrote the Times, «…there is more evidence of genuine sympathy with and admiration for the man and his work than is likely to be manifested at the funeral of any poet now writing in the English language in this country.» We may not recognize his name today, but 75,000 people «attended his funeral procession that went from the People’s Theater in the Bowery to Washington Cemetery in Brooklyn.»