History events
-1312 — (20 Iyar 2449) BCE The cloud of the Shekhinah, which covered the Tent of Meeting, arose, and Moses commanded the Levites to dismantle the Tent. Then the entire camp of the Israelites set out on its journey, following the cloud — after eleven months and twenty days spent at Mount Sinai
1435 — (6th of Iyar, 5195) Jewish residents of Speyer, Germany, were expelled
1494 — (29 Iyar 5254) On his second voyage to the New World, Columbus discovered the island of Jamaica, which “became a secret refuge for Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal” (Theodor Rehls «Jewish Pirates»)
1588 — (18th of Iyar, 5348) The Council of Hanover ordered the severance of all business connections between Jews and Christians
1764 — (3th of Iyar, 5524) The «Jews’ decree» issued today permitted any Jew to live in Vienna “who could prove that he possessed a certain sum of ready money and «acceptable» papers, or that he had established a factory. According to this decree no Jew could buy a house; a married Jew had to let his beard grow, that he might be readily distinguished; and no synagogue or other place for common worship was permitted
1809 — (19 Iyar 5569) Jews of Aargau — a canton in northern Switzerland, once the only place where Jews were allowed to live — were granted citizenship rights and permitted to engage in trade and agriculture. However, their area of settlement was still restricted to the towns of Endingen and Lengnau
1837 — (30th of Nisan, 5597) A dedication of new synagogue in Surinam took place
1851 — (3 Iyar 5611) A law was passed in Romania abolishing the commissions tasked with identifying Jewish vagrants and repealing the 1839 Vagrancy Law. (In July 1839, a law was passed stating that Jews who did not possess capital of five thousand piastres or who did not have a defined trade were considered vagrants and subject to expulsion from Romania.) Only foreign Jews residing in Romania without passports and fixed income were henceforth considered as such
1915 — (21 Iyar 5665) All Jews were expelled from the Kovno Governorate as a front‑line region by the Russian military command. The expulsion was carried out with particular cruelty in Kovno (Kaunas). Even sick and wounded soldiers and families of front‑line soldiers were deported from Kovno.
1918 — (23 Iyar 5678) Civil War. Pogrom in the town of Lysyanka; 40 people were killed. The atrocities stopped with the arrival of a German detachment
1936 — (13th of Iyar, 5696) “A big fire” which was presumably started by arsonists “broke out today in Balfour Forest in northern Palestine destroying more than a thousand trees planted by the Jews
1939 — (16th of Iyar, 5699) The Nuremberg anti-Jewish laws went into effect in Hungary: two thirds of Hungary’s Jews were denaturalized because they became citizens after 1914. Jews had to leave all government-related positions before the end of the year
1942 — (18th of Iyar, 5702) Jewish teachers and educators in the Warsaw Ghetto created a special day for children, during which they were treated to games, plays, and special rations of sweets
1942 — (18 Iyar 5702) Shoah. In Lviv, 2 000 Jews were executed, and in Yarun (Zhytomyr Oblast), 580 Jews. Over 300 Jews from Yavoriv (Lviv Oblast) were transported to the Janowska camp in Lviv. In Zvenyhorodka (Cherkasy Oblast), Jewish youth were sent to a labour camp, while the rest of the Jews were placed in a ghetto. 1 862 Jews from Solotvyno District were relocated to Ivano‑Frankivsk. In Mostove (Odesa Oblast), eight Jewish children were executed
1948 — (26 Nisan 5708) The postal service of Israel was established
1948 — (26th of Nisan, 5708) A group of Jewish immigrant from Egypt founded Bror Hayil (selection of soldiers) a kibbuz in southern Israel near Sderot
1965 — (3 Iyar 5725) The Israel Museum opened in Jerusalem.
2008 — (30 Nisan 5768) In Tel Aviv, the building of the first casino — which had stood on the city’s promenade for 70 years — was demolished.
2008 — (30 Nisan 5768) A 51‑year‑old worker at a kibbutz enterprise was killed and four other people were injured in a mortar attack from Gaza on Kibbutz Nir Oz. The victim, Amnon Rosenberg, a resident of Kibbutz Nirim, left behind a wife and three children.
2009 — (11 Iyar 5769) Construction of the third tunnel under Mount Carmel was completed. The 3 200‑metre‑long tunnel connected the Grand Canyon with the Carmel Promenade.
2013 — (25 Iyar 5773) Ceremony marking the opening of Jerusalem Highway 20, linking the capital’s Pisgat Ze’ev and Beit Hanina neighbourhoods with Begin Highway.
2022 — (4 Iyar 5782) Terrorist attack in the city park of Elad and on its central street, Ibn Gvirol. Two Arabs armed with axes killed three pedestrians and injured several others before fleeing. The victims of the terrorists were:
Yonatan Habakuk (aged 44);
Boaz Gol (aged 49);
Oren Ben Yiftach (aged 35).
Notably, Oren Ben Yiftach had given the terrorists a ride to the centre of Elad. Once they arrived, the Arabs attacked and killed him. On May 8, both terrorists were arrested
People
1575 — (15 Nisan 5335) Rabbi Yosef bar Efraim Karo, the greatest halakhic authority of all generations and author of the code Shulchan Aruch (“The Set Table”), died at the age of 87
1624 — (16th of Iyar, 5384) Elias Lipiner was sentenced to death at an auto-de-fe by the Portuguese Inquisition. He was accused of committing the crime of using Jewish names and writing in Hebrew. On this same day Dr. Antonio Honem was sentenced to death for observing Jewish ceremonies
1809 — (19th of Iyar, 5669) Berek Yoselovich, founder and commander of a Jewish light cavalry regiment, was killed in action in the war between the Duchy of Warsaw and Austria
1818 — (29th of Nisan, 5578) Birthdate of Karl Marx, author of the Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital. Only the ignorant and the anti-Semitic insist that Marx was a Jew
1854 — (7 Iyar 5614) Jean Lafitte, an American pirate, died.
1869 — B. Rosing, a scientist and pioneer of electronic television, was born. He died on April 20, 1933
1900 — (6th of Iyar, 5660) Birthdate of Nacha Rivkin, the founder of Shulamith School for Girls, the first girl’s yeshiva in the U.S.
1905 — Rakhil Lazarevna Solomyanskaya, second wife of writer Arkady Gaidar, mother of journalist Timur Gaidar and grandmother of Yegor Gaidar, was born. She died in 1986
1911 — (7th of Iyar, 5671) Birthdate of “Andor Lilienthal, the last of the original 27 chess grandmasters, who played 10 world champions and beat 6 of them…”
1915 — Ye. Dolmatovsky, a poet, was born. He died on August 10, 1994.
1919 — (5 Iyar 5679) Aaron Aaronson, organiser of the NILI group — which spied on the Turks in Palestine for Britain during the World War — died in an airplane crash.
1922 — (7 Iyar 5682) Irena Gut Opdyke, a Polish woman who saved Jews during the Holocaust and a Righteous Among the Nations, was born. She died on May 17, 2003.
1933 — S. Weinberg, an American physicist and Nobel laureate (1979), was born. He died on July 23, 2021.
1937 — Oded Kotler, an Israeli theatre and film actor, director, playwright and artistic director and founder of various theatres in Israel, was born.
1938 — (4th of Iyar, 5698) The Palestine Post reported that a Jewish farmer, Haim Sober, 40, was attacked by Arabs while on his way home to Karkur and beaten with sticks to death
1940 — L. Izmailov (Poliak), a satirical writer, was born
1952 — (10th of Iyar, 5712) The Pulitzer Prize was awarded to Herman Wouk for the «Caine Mutiny»
1958 — (15th of Iyar, 5718) Birthdate of Lieutenant Colonel Ron Arad…an IAF fighter pilot and an Israeli Air Force weapon systems officer (WSO) who is officially classified as missing in action since October 1986, but widely presumed dead. Hezbollah claimed that Arad died during an escape attempt in May 1988. An Israeli secret military commission report claimed that Arad died of illness in 1995, and was buried in the Beqaa Valley
1996 — (17 Iyar 5756) Yad Vashem recognised the Albanians Mefail Bikaku and his son Niyazi Bikaku as “Righteous Among the Nations”. During the Second World War, father and son Bikaku saved 26 Albanian Jews from Nazi roundups by hiding them in the mountains.
2024 — (27 Nisan 5784) War with Gaza. Day 212. As a result of shelling from the Gaza Strip on Kibbutz Kerem Shalom and the eponymous checkpoint, the following were killed:
Staff Sergeant Ruben Mark Mordechai Asulin, aged 19;
Staff Sergeant Ido Testa, aged 19;
Staff Sergeant Tal Shavit, aged 21;
Sergeant Michael Rozal, aged 18.
Two soldiers from the 931st Battalion of the Nahal Brigade were seriously injured