History events
-1560 BCE (1 Tammuz 2200) — Traditional date of the birth and death of Joseph, son of Jacob and Rachel. He died in -1450.
-1312 ВСЕ (22 Sivan 2449) — The Jews, travelling from Mount Sinai to the Land of Israel, made a stop at Hazeroth, which is also located in the Paran Desert.
-1273 BCE (3 Tammuz 2488) — Near the city of Gibeon, the Children of Israel fought against the united army of the five kings of Canaan, led by Adoni‑Zedek, King of Jerusalem. When the enemies fled in panic from Joshua through a mountain pass, a rockfall struck them, destroying most of their army. However, Joshua sought to complete the enemy’s defeat. Since that day was the eve of the Sabbath, he raised his hand to the heavens and, uttering the secret Name of the Creator, commanded the celestial bodies: “Sun, stand still over Gibeon, and Moon, over the Valley of Aijalon!” The Sun and the Moon halted their course for 36 hours until the Canaanite army was completely destroyed — “and there was no day like that before it or after it, …for the Lord fought for Israel.”
70 — (8th of Sivan, 3830) Titus and his Roman legions breach the middle wall of Jerusalem
1570 — (2th of Tammuz, 5330) Jews of Rome forbidden to practise usury
1741 (2 Tammuz 5501) — An article in the newspaper St. Petersburgskie Vedomosti (“St. Petersburg Gazette”) described how “the Jews celebrated with a solemn ceremony the birth of the Archduke.” The celebration, held in the Jewish Quarter of Prague (established back in the 16th century), was given a detailed and thorough description in the newspaper. In the article, the Jews were portrayed not as outcasts but, like other peoples, in all the diversity of their trades and ranks. Among them were trumpeters, messengers, shoemakers, butchers, trim makers, scribes, watchmen, students carrying silver books, melamdims (religious teachers), doctors, musicians, and furriers. The author of the article was clearly impressed by the Jews’ appearance: he called them “richly adorned Jews,” noting that some wore round black hats, others dressed in Hungarian attire, some were clad in “the most expensive furs of all kinds,” and others wore hussar uniforms.
1832 (7 Sivan 5592) — The Jews of French‑speaking Lower Canada (a territory roughly corresponding to present‑day Quebec, the largest province of modern Canada) were the first among their fellow Jews in the British Empire to be granted equal civil and political rights with the Christian population.
1856 (2 Sivan 5616) — Jews in Russia were permitted to settle throughout Moscow. Previously, they were only allowed to live in the Glebovskoye Podvorye.
1884 (12 Sivan 5644) — By a decision of the State Council of Russia, the rules regarding the inclusion of Jews as jurors were extended to the following provinces: Bessarabian, Yekaterinoslav, Poltava, Taurida, Kherson, and Chernigov.
1892 — (10th of Sivan, 5652) Founding of the Jewish community of Oslo, Norway
1934 — (22th of Sivan, 5694) Tensions began to rise today in Eastern Thrace that would lead to full blown violence during June and July known as the Thrace Pogroms which was the name given to a series of violent attacks on the Jews by Moslem Turks in the “cities of Tekirdağ, Edirne, Kırklareli, and Çanakkale.”
1938 (6 Sivan 5698) — Yishuv. For an attack on Arabs on April 21, three Jews from the Betar youth company — Ben‑Yosef, Shein, and Zhuravin — were sentenced to death by a British court. These three had attempted to fire on Arab vehicles on the road from Haifa to Safed, but were caught after their first unsuccessful attack.
1938 (6 Sivan 5698) — On this date is marked a memorandum by C. Wingate on “the possibility of establishing a night service with the help of the Royal Armed Forces to put an end to terror in northern Palestine,” which outlines a new Haganah combat tactic: pre‑emptive ambushes and night patrols.
1942 (20 Sivan 5702) — Shoah. A law was passed in Bulgaria granting citizenship to residents of the occupied territories of Macedonia and Thrace. Clause 4 of the document stated that Jews living there were excluded from this law. Thus, they automatically became stateless and were subject to immediate deportation.
1942 (20 Sivan 5702) — Shoah. The last prisoners of the Dolginovo ghetto were exterminated — a place of forced relocation for Jews from the village of Dolginovo in the Vileika District of the Minsk Region and nearby settlements.
1942 (19 Iyar 5702) — Shoah. 800 Jews from Gorodok (Lviv Region) were transported to the Janowska camp in Lviv.
1942 (20 Sivan 5702) — Shoah. About 3 thousand Jews were deported from Kovel and executed; in total, 8 600 Jews were murdered over the course of three days.
1943 — (2 Sivan 5703) The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. On this day, the last skirmish with the Germans took place. A group of Jews from the criminal underworld fought the Germans in Muranów Square.
1948 — (27 Iyar 5708) The bread ration for residents of West Jerusalem was reduced to 150 grams per person
1958 — (17th of Sivan, 5718) “Exhibition of the Decade” an art exhibition created to celebrate Israel’s tenth anniversary opened today in Binyanei Hauma in Jerusalem featuring “Might” a work by Yosef Zaritsk
1967 — (26th of Iyar, 5727) Moshe Dayan replaced Prime Minister Levi Eshkol as Minister of defense
1967 — (26th of Iyar, 5727) Six-Day War. ….. Operation Focus (Mivtza Moked) began at 07:45. Mordechai Hod took a calculated risk by committing all but 12 of his combat aircraft to the pre-emptive strike. At 7.10 am, he dispatched a first wave of 183 aircraft and, soon after, a second wave of 164. Flying out to sea, they descended to avoid detection by radar, and made for the Egyptian coast. It took 45 minutes for the first wave to reach its targets. «These were,» Hod later recalled, «the longest 45 minutes of my life.» At exactly 7.55 am, Hod’s pilots struck. The Defense Minister, Moshe Dayan, recalled: «Mottie [Hod] and his senior staff officers sat in the front row facing a glass partition, and I sat just behind them . . . I was watching Mottie drink jugful after jugful of water, as he followed his pilots with deep anxiety.»After two hours and 50 minutes the Egyptian Air Force was in ruins, and Hod needed only another hour to finish off the Jordanian and Syrian Air Forces. By midday of June 5, he had total control of the skies
1967 — (26th of Iyar, 5727) War broke out between Israel and the Arab nations. ….. This day marks the first of six of the most momentous days in Jewish history. In May of 1967, Egypt ordered the U.N. peacekeeping force out of the Sinai and sent Egyptian forces into the Sinai Peninsula. Both of these acts were violations of the agreements that had ended the Suez Crisis of 1956-57. Egypt also closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping effectively blockading the port of Elath. Such a blockade is an act of war under international law. The Egyptians also formed a joint military command with the Syrians and the Jordanians. For a month, Israel heeded the voices of caution from the international community. However, nothing was done to relieve the desperate situation. So on the morning of June 5, 1967, the Israeli Air Force struck the Egyptian Air Force, destroying much of it on the ground. This was an act of real daring since the Israelis had left only 12 fighters to cover the rest of the country in case of air attack. Following the successful air action, Israeli troops entered the Sinai and engaged the larger Egyptian forces. The world waited and held its breath. At the same time, the Israelis used three different channels to try and convince the Jordanians not to enter the fight. The Jordanian response was to begin shelling the western section of Jerusalem and to begin to move troops forward. Reluctantly, Israeli forces moved into the eastern section of Jerusalem. Two days later, the city would be united as the capital of the Jewish state and the Western Wall would once again be open to the Jews from throughout the world. (For more details on the war you might want to read Six Days of War by Oren, Israel’s Fight for Survival by Donovan, or Israel by Martin Gilbert. As these accounts, all written in different eras after the war confirm, Israel had no grand strategy to conquer the Sinai, the West Bank and the Golan. The attacks aimed at the Egyptians were part of a grand design, but the fight against the other states was in response to unfolding events on the ground. For example, the destruction of the Egyptian Air Force was a strategic move. The destruction of the Jordanian, Syrian and Iraqi air forces was a tactical move that took place when the planes from these three Arab nations crossed into Israeli air space in mid-morning of June 5.)
1967 — (26th of Iyar, 5727) Six-Day War. The Israeli army captured the city of Gaza. Gaza had been occupied by the Egyptians since 1948 and was a base for terrorists.
1967 — (26th of Iyar, 5727) Six-Day War. The town of Latrun, overlooking the old road to Jerusalem was captured. Latrun dominated the road to Jerusalem and had been the cite of great deal of hard fighting during the War For Independence in 1948. The city of Qalqilya was also captured on the same day.
1967 — (26th of Iyar, 5727) Six-Day War. The U.N. Security Council unanimously ordered a cease-fire in the Middle East War. This was the same U.N. that had betrayed the Israelis by removing its forces from the Sinai and had sat silently while the Arab states tightened the noose around Israel’s neck.
1982 — (14th of Sivan, 5742) Israel launched Operation Peace for Galilee against the PLO and other hostile forces after the assassination attempt on the life of Shlomo Argov, Israel’s ambassador to the United Kingdom
1989 — (2 Sivan 5749) Israeli President Chaim Herzog commuted the sentences of the leaders of the Jewish underground. Life imprisonment was reduced to ten years.
2002 — (25th of Sivan, 5762) Of the 17 Israelis who were killed this morning when a stolen car packed with explosives pulled alongside a public bus and exploded near the northern town of Megiddo, 13 were soldiers, most of them conscripts.
2007 — (19 Sivan 5767) The fuel company “Delek” purchased one of Israel’s largest fuel storage facilities, “Pi Glilot,” paying 800 million shekels for the acquisition. Until then, the state had owned 50 percent of the value of the three “Pi Glilot” terminals — in Ashdod, Jerusalem, and Beersheba
2011 — (3 Sivan 5771) The inauguration of Israel’s largest solar energy project took place in the kibbutz “Ktura,” with a total installed capacity of 4.95 megawatts. The power plant covers an area of 80 dunams, using 18,500 solar panels
2011 — (3th of Sivan, 5771) Two Palestinian teenagers were indicted in the murder of five members of the Fogel family from the West Bank settlement of Itamar. Amjad Awad, 19, who worked as a laborer in Israel, and Hakim Awad 18, a high school student, were indicted today in a West Bank military court for the murders of Udi Fogel, 36, Ruth Fogel, 35, and their children Yoav, 11, Elad, 4, and Hadas, 3 months
People
1717 — (7 Tammuz 5477) Emanuel Mendes da Costa, a naturalist, philosopher, ethnographer, paleontologist, bibliophile, and manuscript collector, was born in London. He was admitted to the Royal Society of London in 1747. He died on May 31, 1791.
1885 — (22th of Sivan, 5645) Sir Julius Benedict, composer and conductor, died
1891 (28 Iyar 5651) — Abraham Hertzfeld, an Israeli statesman and public figure, was born. He was one of the founders of the Ahdut HaAvoda party and the Histadrut. He died on August 30, 1973
1900 — Gábor Dénes, a physicist, founder of holography, and Nobel Prize laureate (1971), was born. He died on February 9, 1979.
1902 — Moishe Brandstaetter, an Israeli painter, was born in Poland. He died in September 1975.
1967 — (27 Iyar 5727) N. Cohen, an officer and one of only three people in Israel to have received four decorations awarded by the General Staff for merit, was killed
1980 — (21th of Sivan, 5740) Dr. Jerzy Borysowicz, “director of the mental hospital in Radom located at Warszawska Street who provided “daily help” to the Jews during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and who treated Mordechai Anielewicz passed away today four years before he was awarded the title of Righteous among the Nations posthumously
2024 — (28 Iyar 5784) Senior Sergeant Refael Kauders, 39 years old, was killed in the Upper Galilee as a result of a Hezbollah drone strike. Nine people were injured