Jewish History

[Sixties Fan]

I love History and there is a lot of Jewish history to be learned. This is the perfect place to dig through it and unearth lots of that history which is not known.

If anyone finds any of that history they have been fascinated with, or wish others to know, please post it here.

 

[Sixties Fan]

This is a story of resistance and spiritual audacity. It is a story that unfolds in the deserts of Mexico’s silver mining regions, on the streets of the emerging colonial metropolis of Mexico City, inside the libraries of Franciscan monasteries, and in the underground cells of the Inquisition. It connects the far reaches of the Mediterranean Jewish diaspora with the global trade routes linking East and West. It is about colonialism, religious persecution, love, family, and faith but ultimately, it is a story about a book.
We begin with a small, leather-bound notebook filled with a highly original anthology: poems, prayers, meditations on the Ten Commandments, an electrifying autobiography, and even a holiday calendar. The book was written in the gifted scribal hand of Joseph Lumbroso, a 16th-century Mexican religious thinker, poet, and crypto-Jewish martyr, otherwise known as Luis de Carvajal, el mozo. Carvajal wrote this religious anthology in the few years between his two arrests by the Holy Office of the Mexican Inquisition for Judaizing. Shortly after his arrest, the book was found in his family’s home and was preserved as evidence against Lumbroso and his family on charges of heresy.
Heresy was a common accusation in this time, as was the crime of Judaizing—holding onto Jewish practices and beliefs. The Inquisition was focused on heresy, and as such sought to police the religious lives of Christians. But Spain had a large group of Christians who were, as their suspicious neighbors called them, New Christians. These descendants of Jewish converts were viewed by their Christian neighbors as less-than. They were seen as still deeply rooted in their Judaism and attached to the “dead law of Moses.” So the conversos entered the church by and large under duress—whether it was during the murderous riots of 1391, during the intense preaching campaigns of Vicente Ferrer, or when faced with the awful choice of abandoning their millennial home in Sepharad in 1492.
Once they converted, many sincerely embraced Christianity while others lived a double life, publicly comporting themselves as faithful Christians while secretly holding on to aspects of Jewish belief and practice. Regardless of their inner religious conviction, however, most conversos remained socioeconomically and culturally other. They continued to live in the same neighborhoods as before, worked in the same businesses, and continued similar marriage practices, namely marrying children into the family of business partners. No longer Jewish, now the conversos married their children to other conversos instead of other Jews. The court historian Andrés Bernáldez captured this succinctly when he described the atavistic Jewishness of the conversos:

You also have to know that before the Inquisition arrived, the customs of the ordinary conversos were the same as the same stinking Jews which is why they continually talked to each other. Thus, they were gluttons and comrades and they never stopped the Jewish customs of eating little dishes and stews cooked overnight on coals, little dishes of onions and garlic fried with oil … in order to avoid the pork … the other things they stewed smelled very bad on the breath, and their houses and doors smelled very bad from that food. Thus, they themselves had the smell of the Jews on account of the food that they ate … (translation from Lu Ann Homza’s Spanish Inquisition: 1478-1614)

Eating garlicky tapas drizzled in olive oil or preparing adafina is not an act of heresy. But for Bernaáldez the attachment to Jewish cuisine was a sign of cultural heresy. He goes on to refer to outright acts of Judaizing, such as keeping the laws of Passover and avoiding the Sacraments and then he turns to another sociocultural critique of the conversos Jewishness:

(full article online)

The Auto-da-fé of Mexico City

On Dec. 8, 1596, Luis de Carvajal the Younger, along with members of his prominent extended family of crypto-Jews, was burned at the stake. Their story has fascinated historians ever since.

www.tabletmag.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

“So successful were the Jewish pioneers that by 1900, there wasn’t a single settlement west of the Mississippi of any significance which had not had a Jewish mayor,” says historian Kenneth Libo. “This includes Deadwood, Dodge City, and Tombstone.”

Between 1840 and 1880, the European Jewish population in America increased from 15,000 to around 250,000. Most migrated for familiar reasons—to escape religious persecution, political upheaval, and poverty. “What is clear, even at this early stage, is the complex nature of the collective Jewish experience in America,” writes Libo in his 1985 book We Lived There Too, coauthored with the late Irving Howe. “For already there are those who stay east and those who go west, those who come with special privileges and those who suffer discrimination, those who care about the faith of their fathers and those who do not, those who remain uprooted and those who transplant themselves.” Jewish settlers encountered little prejudice in the West, according to Libo. “They were looked upon as fellow settlers.”

During this same time, the United States increased its size by a third with the annexation of Texas in 1845, the ratification of the Oregon Treaty, the seizure of tribal lands, and the acquisition of California, Nevada, Utah, and parts of Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico, as spoils from the Mexican-American War.

With expansion came opportunities. Boomtowns appeared as word spread of copper in Montana and Arizona, silver in New Mexico, and gold in California. Just like their Gentile counterparts, Jewish men and women were lured into hostile landscapes, traveling west by buckboard, stagecoach, horseback, and prairie schooner through Indian country to new settlements in the Black Hills of South Dakota, the deserts of the Southwest, and the gold fields of California with the hope of striking it rich, or at the very least, the possibility of a new life for themselves and their families.

Photo caption
Trader Julius Mayer with Chiefs Red Cloud, Sitting Bull, Swift Bear, and Spotted Tail. The Pawnee tribe also gave him the name Box-ka-re-sha-has-ta-ka or Curly-headed white chief with one tongue.
Nebraska State Historical Society


But it was the Jewish merchant, not the fly-by-night prospector, who played a major role in the development of the West, turning dusty little cow towns into urban centers. “Jews literally brought civilization to countless cities and towns in America west of the Mississippi by establishing ‘the department store’ in every town of any consequence,” says Libo. “Their numbers may have been small, but their influence was substantial.”



(full article online)

Jewish Pioneers

www.neh.gov

 

[Sixties Fan]

Hebrew National

www.neh.gov

 

[Sixties Fan]

Walking in historic Palermo, regional capital of Sicily – the vast island off of the boot of the Italian peninsula – visitors will see street signs written in Hebrew and Arabic, as well as Italian. The newly-placed signs pay homage to the island’s Jewish and Moorish roots. Though little survives, the Jewish presence in Sicily dates back to the Roman era and represents an important page of the island’s history, as explained in the temporary exhibit “Documenti di storia ebraica dalle collezioni del Museo Salinas,” (Documents of Jewish history from the collections of Salinas Museum) at Palermo’s Regional Archaeological Museum Antonio Salinas.
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As explained in the exhibition, only several centuries later the oblivion surrounding the Jews of Sicily began to lift, with scholars starting to take a new interest in the topic.

“In the second half of the nineteenth century, studies on the Jewish world flourished,” Ferruzza told the Post, noting that already in 1748, when King Charles III of Spain for the first time allowed Jews to reside in some cities in Sicily, a tractate on the Jewish history of the island was compiled, albeit with a decisive antisemitic perspective. The volume is on display.

The turning point was represented by the Risorgimento (the unification of Italy in 1870), a process that saw Italian Jews heavily involved and on the front line. In the newly-established kingdom, Jews also receive full equality in all its territories for the first time in history.

“After the unification of Italy, we had a number of articles on the topic of the Jewish presence in Sicily, often promoted by Italian patriots who seemed to think that in order to build the Italian national identity was important to bring to light the memory of this important element of Sicilian history that had been forgotten,” the curator highlighted. “It is a topic that we would like to further explore.”

Today only a few dozen people in Sicily identify as Jewish. Palermo has only recently officially become a branch of the Jewish Community of Naples after in 2017 the Catholic Church offered to local Jews the use of the Oratory of Santa Maria del Sabato, a monastery believed to stand where the magnificent synagogue described by Bartenura was once located.

As it happened in Spain, in 1492, many Jews who were forced to either leave or convert pretended to do so and kept their Judaism secret. Centuries later, their descendants are often re-discovering their Jewish roots and seeking a connection. For now, it is still isolated cases. But the history of the Jewish presence in the island might be far from over, after all.

(full article online)

Little-known Jewish history of Sicily on display centuries after expulsion

. “After 1492, Jews had to leave the island and their possessions were sold, destroyed or reused for other purposes, as it happened to many of the Jewish sites."

www.jpost.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

Elena Kingsbury grew up in Maitland, Ont., a small town of about 1,200 people—including just two Jewish families. She would hop across the St. Lawrence River into Ogdensburg, NY, where her family were members of the international Anshe Zophen synagogue, which supported congregants from nearby towns on both sides of the border.

In 2000, Kingsbury would be the last bat mitzvah in the now-closed synagogue. The 9/11 attacks made border crossings too difficult, and a declining population led to the regional exodus of many young locals—including herself. Now an education specialist at the Friends Of Simon Wiesenthal Center For Holocaust Studies in Ottawa, Kingsbury joins to recall her years growing up in the tiny riverside town, and how it shaped her conception of what it means to be Jewish.

(podcast online)

Remembering the last Jews of Maitland, Ont.

The few local Jews used to hop across the river to their New York synagogue—until 9/11.

thecjn.ca

 

[whitehall]

You could fill a building the size of the Smithsonian with Jewish history.

 

[Sixties Fan]

“Stone Paths – Stories Set in Stone: Jewish Inscriptions in Greece” opened this week and will remain open to the public through February 2023.

The exhibit is being co-organized and co-hosted by the Epigraphic Museum in Athens.

A total of 10 inscriptions are on display at the Jewish Museum and about 30 more on display at the Epigraphic Musuem.

The Jewish Museum’s president, Makis Matsas, said, “The exhibition has a very significant value because, on the one hand, it documents the existence and presence of Jews in Greece since the end of the fourth century BCE, thus highlighting the Jewish element in Greece as one of the oldest Jewish communities in Europe, but at the same time highlighting the multicultural past of our homeland, Greece.”

One of the Greek inscriptions referring to Jews dates to between 300 and 250 BCE and references a freed slave from Judea, according to AFP. It was discovered at the Amphiareion of Oropos sanctuary near Athens.


(full article online)

https://www.jewishpress.com/news/middle-east/cyprus-greece/museum-exhibit-dates-jewish-presence-in-greece-to-fourth-century-bce/2022/05/21/

 

[mikegriffith1]

If you want the real history of Israel, I invite you to visit my website The Case for Israel:

The Case for Israel

The Case for Israel Why Israel Deserves Our Support Michael T. Griffith If any nation on Earth deserves our support, it is the nation of Israel. After the Holocaust, the United States led the way to help establish the state of Israel in 1948. Israel was founded mostly by Jews who left Europe

sites.google.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

A 15th-century manuscript from Italy – the smallest known one of its kind in Hebrew – is going to be auctioned off in Jerusalem this Tuesday.


The manuscript was constructed from a single piece of parchment which was cut into roundels at 5.5 centimeters in diameter alone.


"We know of only two other similar Hebrew manuscripts, and we can say neither comes close to the size and magnificence of this manuscript," said Kedem Auction House founder and co-CEO Meron Eren. "It is the most unique we've ever seen."

It contains a complete Passover Hagaddah from Italian tradition, as well as piyuttim (liturgical poems). It has 98 pages altogether.

The collection of pieces of the smallest known Hebrew manuscript which all together make up the Passover Haggadah. (credit: KEDEM AUCTION HOUSE)

(full article online)

Smallest known medieval Hebrew manuscript auctioned off in Jerusalem

The manuscript was constructed from a single piece of parchment which was cut into roundels at 5.5 centimeters in diameter alone.

www.jpost.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

 

[Sixties Fan]

Kennan Institute scholar Izabella Tabarovsky wrote in a 2019 essay for Fathom that the Soviet Union’s campaign against Zionism and Jews “succeeded at emptying Zionism of its meaning as a national liberation movement of the Jewish people and associating it instead with racism, fascism, Nazism, genocide, imperialism, colonialism, militarism and apartheid.” Not surprisingly, students on college and university campuses across the United States often hear similar if not identical rhetoric from anti-Zionist groups like Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), Solidary for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP).

The Soviets’ decades-long anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist campaign was multi-faceted and not limited to statements from the Soviet government itself. Anywhere that Communist cells were active, on any radio broadcast controlled by Moscow, in any printing house receiving instructions from the Kremlin, the demonization of Zionism featured prominently and was always related to specific current events in order to keep the embers of the world’s oldest hatred aglow.

This campaign also went beyond mere rhetoric. At times, it involved outright judicial murder. In 1951, for example, leading Czech communist Rudolf Slansky was imprisoned and, under extreme torture, falsely confessed to involvement in a Zionist conspiracy, for which he received the death penalty. In 1952, on the “Night of the Murdered Poets,” Stalin executed 13 pro-Soviet Jewish intellectuals for supposed loyalty to Israel and the “imperialist camp.” These are only two of many examples.

(full article online)

The Soviet origins of left-wing anti-Zionism

Today’s haters of Israel are heirs to one of the longest and most effective anti-Semitic propaganda campaigns in modern history.

www.jns.org

 

[Sixties Fan]

 

[Sixties Fan]

• 
  Dario Calimani, the president of the Jewish Community of Venice, poses inside the Spanish Schola Synagogue in Venice, northern Italy, June 1, 2022. The Spanish Schola, founded about 1580, but rebuilt in the first half of the 17th century, is the biggest of the Venetian synagogues. Venice’s Jewish ghetto is considered the first in Europe and one of the first in the world, and a new effort is underway to preserve its 16th century synagogues for the Jews who have remained and tourists who pass through. (AP Photo/Chris Warde-Jones)
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  External view of the Spanish Schola Synagogue in the Jewish ghetto of Venice, northern Italy, June 1, 2022. Venice’s Jewish ghetto is considered the first in Europe and one of the first in the world, and a new effort is underway to preserve its 16th century synagogues for the Jews who have remained and tourists who pass through. (AP Photo/Chris Warde-Jones)

VENICE, Italy (AP) — Venice’s Jewish ghetto is considered the first in Europe and one of the first in the world, and a new effort is underway to preserve its 16th-century synagogues for the Jews who have remained and tourists who pass through.
For nearly two years, restorers have been peeling away paint and discovering the original foundations of three of the ghetto’s synagogues, which are considered the only Renaissance synagogues still in use, art historian David Landau said.
Landau is spearheading the fundraising effort to restore the synagogues and nearby buildings both for Venice’s small Jewish community, which numbers around 450 people, and for tourists who can visit them on a guided tour through the Jewish Museum of Venice.

(full article online)

PHOTO ESSAY: Venice ghetto’s synagogues undergo a restoration renaissance

Effort underway to preserve historic neighborhood's 16th-century houses of prayer, both for the small remaining Jewish community and for tourists

www.timesofisrael.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

I always see the Forward find Jewish angles in the most goyishe seeming parts of pop culture, so I'll do one too - from decades ago.

"Bewitched" was a hugely popular TV series about a witch Samantha, who marries mortal man Darrin Stevens. Most plots involve her magical relatives meddling in her marriage, especially her disapproving mother, Endora.

The show was created by Sol Saks under executive director Harry Ackerman and director William Asher. Saks and Ackerman were Jewish, Asher's father was Jewish and he married Bewitched's star, Elizabeth Montgomery.



Many people see the show as an allegory for the Jewish American experience. Samantha comes from the old country but wants to assimilate in American society, while her relatives disapprove of her mixed marriage to a mortal. Endora looks very "foreign."

Darrin loves her but wants her to be a "normal" woman and not perform her strange rituals. He's tolerant - but not that tolerant.

In the pilot episode, when Darrin marries Samantha, the theme of prejudice is made explicit. Endora says, "You’re still very young and inexperienced. You don’t know what prejudice you’ll run into!" And later, when Samantha first tells Darrin her secret, he exclaims, "Okay, if you're a witch, where's your black hat and broom and how come you're out when it isn't even Halloween? Samantha answers, "Mother was right, you're prejudiced!"

There is one other telling incident in the pilot. Darren's ex-girlfriend Sheila invites the newlyweds to a party, where she attempts to demean Samantha as not being sophisticated while making snide comments. At one point, Sheila engages Samantha in a conversation - about nose jobs:

“Do you know Dr. Hafter, dear? Samantha?”
“Beg your pardon?”
“Dr. Hafter, do you know him?”
“No.”
“The plastic surgeon. Does beautiful nose work.”
"No, I don’t know him.”
”Funny, I could have sworn…”

In the 1960s, nose jobs were considered de rigueur for young, upwardly mobile Jewish women.

In the end, as much as Samantha tries to assimilate and stop doing her magic, she can never deny her witchhood.

The Secret Jewish History of "Bewitched"

Blogging about Israel and the Arab world since, oh, forever.

elderofziyon.blogspot.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

Oppenheimer and Ball at the 1952 end-of-the-season party. Ball had just told Oppenheimer that she was pregnant with her second child with husband Desi Arnaz. Photo credit: Laughs, Luck...and Lucy by Jess Oppenheimer


“I am firmly convinced that having some kind of serious maladjustment in childhood that gives you an offbeat slant on life is one of the most important prerequisites for a comedy writer,” Jess Oppenheimer, the creator, head writer and producer of “I Love Lucy” observed at the outset of his memoir (co-written by his son, Gregg), “Laughs, Luck…and Lucy…How I Came to Create the Most Popular Sitcom of All Time” (Syracuse University Press, 1996). Yes, the man behind one of the most beloved television shows of all time, whom Lucille Ball called “the brains” of “I Love Lucy,” was a nice Jewish guy with a difficult childhood, an overbearing mother and an eye for the utter ridiculousness of the human condition that still remains unmatched by most comedy writers.

For me, the sun and the moon revolve around “I Love Lucy,” which premiered over 70 years ago. Anyone who loves to laugh ought to appreciate Lucille Ball. But anyone who loves to write ought to appreciate Jess Oppenheimer. I had always wanted to interview his son Gregg about his iconic father, whom I believe doesn’t receive enough credit as one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century — television, literary or otherwise. So, when Gregg granted me an interview last month, I immediately pitched a cover story about Oppenheimer and his son for our Father’s Day issue. At the Journal, we often focus on present-day visionaries, and for good reason. But sometimes, isn’t it great to look back on the lives of past luminaries? They ground us and always serve as a reminder that there often is so much to admire from the past.


(full article online)

Father Knows Best – How Jess Oppenheimer Overcame His Struggles to Create the Most Popular Sitcom of All Time

'I am firmly convinced that having some kind of serious maladjustment in childhood that gives you an offbeat slant on life is one of the most important prerequisites for a comedy writer...”

jewishjournal.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

Many Jamaican Jews trace their origins to Portugal, where their ancestors were forcibly converted to Catholicism by King Manuel I in 1497. Although legally prohibited from emigrating, many still found ways to leave, moving to Spanish-Portuguese Jewish communities in Hamburg, London, Livorno (Italy), Amsterdam — and especially Bayonne, an the area of southwest France near the Iberian peninsula. Over the next 100 years, some of these former conversos (forced converts) came from Amsterdam to the Caribbean — including Jamaica, settling in Port Royal, Spanish Town, Montego Bay, and Kingston, as well numerous smaller towns throughout the island. Although Jamaica was then a Spanish colony, it was controlled by Christopher Columbus’ family, who refused to allow the Inquisition to establish a base on the island. Practicing Judaism was technically illegal, but there was no governmental mechanism for prosecuting suspected heretics.

After the British colonized Jamaica in 1655, another wave of Jewish immigrants arrived. Under the British, it became legal to practice Judaism, which in turn led to the establishment of the island’s first synagogue in Port Royal, a bustling commercial center known as a home base for pirates. Little is known about this synagogue, which was destroyed along with much of the city in an earthquake and tsunami in 1692.

A skull and crossbones on the grave of David de Leon at the Hunt’s Bay Cemetery in Jamaica. (Laura Leibman, courtesy Jewish Atlantic World Database.)

Just across the bay from Port Royal is the Hunt’s Bay Cemetery, the oldest Jewish burial ground in Jamaica. Seven graves in the cemetery bear the skull and crossbones, leading some to suggest that there were Jewish pirates looting Spanish ships. According to this theory, the Jewish pirates of Jamaica were Spanish and Portuguese Jews who fled the Inquisition and attacked Spanish shipping out of a desire for revenge. The Jewish pirate mentioned most frequently was Moses Cohen Henriques, who was able to steal shipments of gold and silver from Spanish boats off of the coast of what is today Cuba in 1628. Henriques also set up his own pirate Island off the coast of Brazil and worked with Captain Henry Morgan in Jamaica after 1654. But much of this history is undocumented and popular writers have exaggerated or invented much of the story.

(full article online)

The Jewish Community of Jamaica | My Jewish Learning

The Jews of Jamaica make up a small but vibrant religious community centered today in the capital of Kingston. While ...

www.myjewishlearning.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

• 
  Rear Adm. Hyman Rickover, a pioneer in the development of atomic submarines, boards Navy's nuclear-powered sub Nautilus from a tugboat in New York Harbor, August 25, 1958. (AP Photo)

In the midst of the Cold War in 1958, the underwater journey of the world’s first nuclear-powered submarine transfixed America as it achieved the incredible feat of navigating the polar ice cap.

It came at the right time for the United States, which was looking for a technological breakthrough in response to the launch of Sputnik by the USSR. Yet the man who developed the USS Nautilus — Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, an American Jew who was born in a Polish shtetl — was initially left out of the celebration because his abrasive personality had alienated colleagues in the Navy.
Rickover’s complex life is explored in a new book, “Admiral Hyman Rickover: Engineer of Power,” by Marc Wortman.

“I didn’t know what an extraordinarily complicated, pugnacious and brilliant guy he was, and how much his career was marked by one controversy, one battle, after another,” Wortman told The Times of Israel. “That really was the compelling story to tell.”

Part of the Jewish Lives series from Yale University Press, the book centers on a son of the shtetl who returned to Poland decades later, during a Cold War visit to the Soviet Union with then-vice president Richard Nixon. Later, Rickover became a White House confidant of president Jimmy Carter, who had served in the admiral’s nuclear navy. Carter said that no other man except for his father had such an influence in his life.

(full article online)

How a Jewish immigrant from the shtetl became the father of America’s nuclear Navy

Abrasive, controversial and tenacious, Admiral Hyman Rickover was called 'the greatest engineer to ever live' by Jimmy Carter. A new biography tells his incredible life story

www.timesofisrael.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

An appeal to advance cooperation across Africa in preserving Jewish-African heritage was signed by African and international Jewish leaders this week in Morocco.

The “Call of Rabat” appeal pushes for recognition by individuals, civil society groups, and governments of the long history of Jewish life in Africa, while emphasizing preservation and accessibility for Jewish historical sites.

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“We recognize the importance of the Jewish heritage that exists in our country, Cape Verde, at every level… I truly hope this Conference will shed light and … promote unity, solidarity, and cooperation in the world,” said Santos.

(full article online)

Appeal to Preserve Jewish-African Heritage Signed by International Leaders in Morocco

(L to R): Elmehdi Boudra (Founder & President, Mimouna Association), Serge Berdugo (secretary general of the Council of Moroccan Jewish …

www.algemeiner.com

 

[Sixties Fan]