Jewish History

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20 Black Jews You Should Know | My Jewish Learning

Just about every person who is Black and Jewish has inevitably been met with surprise upon sharing their identities. Widespread ...

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An exhibition featuring the life stories of athletes who were pioneers in forging relations between Hungary and Israel recently opened at the new Puskas Arena in Budapest.


The Game Changers exhibition tells the story of the connection between Hungarian Jewry and Israel utilizing Hungarian sports. Sports have always been used as a tool for social mobility due to athletes being judged only according to their performance.


The exhibit outside the stadium shows photos of former athletes and tells their stories. Each athlete’s picture is accompanied by a short biography in English, Hungarian and Hebrew.

According to a website promoting it, the exhibition “highlights the possibility given by Hungarian sports to touch fame, shatter myths and allow dreams to come true.”

“No area throughout history has allowed this equality and the possibility of conquering the world through the football field, the swimming pool or the fencing halls. This is the first time this connection has been seen through the eyes of those who have been there and changed Hungarian and Israeli sports as well.”
Adi Rubinstein

(full article online)

New Budapest exhibition commemorates Jewish-Hungarian athletes

The Game Changers exhibition tells the story of the connection between Hungarian Jewry and Israel utilizing Hungarian sports.

www.jpost.com

 

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Ukrainian history is steeped in violence and tragedy. Long before the recent Russian invasion, Ukraine was part of what Yale historian Timothy Snyder has called “the Bloodlands” — the swath of Central and Eastern Europe where Hitler and Stalin’s clashing forces murdered millions of noncombatants. In Ukraine alone, more than a million Jews were slaughtered by Nazi killing squads, often assisted by the local population, in the so-called Holocaust by bullets.

But decades before it became a Holocaust killing field, Ukraine was the site of genocidal pogroms in which hundreds of thousands of Jews were murdered. The deadliest massacres occurred between 1917 and 1921, during the Russian Civil War. That violence impelled a mass flight from the country, with many emigrants ending up in the United States. Author Lisa Brahin’s ancestors were among them.

The impact of the pogroms has been muted to some extent by the even more powerful trauma of the Holocaust — and by the overwhelming desire of many survivors to move on and embrace their new American lives. Brahin, a Jewish genealogist and researcher, confronts that silence in her family history, “Tears Over Russia.”

In “Tears Over Russia,” genealogist Lisa Brahin details the horrors of the pogroms in Ukraine. Courtesy of Pegasus Books


Starting with her grandmother’s recollections, she has produced a remarkably vivid account of life in the Old Country that reads at times like a novel — or a series of Sholem Aleichem stories — with matchmakers racking up both triumphs and disasters and marauding thugs imperiling Jewish villagers.

The parallels are deliberate. A wedding in her family’s hometown of Stavishche, Brahin writes, “resembled a scene that one might find in a Sholem Aleichem story,” where joy, like sorrow, was often collective. “When someone laughed,” she writes, “the whole town laughed.” As it happens, the famous folklorist himself had a connection to Stavishche through his wife’s family.

Aspects of “Tears Over Russia” have a mythic quality, with larger-than-life characters surmounting impossible circumstances. The town rabbi, Rabbi Pitsie Avram, cousin to Israeli politician and military leader Moshe Dayan, was “a brave, charismatic, and effective negotiator” whose gutsiness — admired by bandit leaders — saved many Jewish lives. Brahin’s cousin-by-marriage Barney Stumacher was equally resourceful and courageous, enduring fantastical adventures to rescue friends and family in Ukraine.

(full article online)

Breaking the silence on the pogroms in Ukraine

In "Tears Over Russia: A Search for Family and the Legacy of Ukraine’s Pogroms," Lisa Brahin breaks the silence surrounding a family history.

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(full article online)

A new exhibit shows how Jewish marriage evolved - from 12th-century Egypt to modern-day America

The Jewish Theological Seminary's new exhibit “To Build a New Home: Celebrating the Jewish Wedding,” displays rare ketubot and related items.

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Italy has the highest quality of Jewish life on the European continent, with Poland and Belgium identified as the most troubling countries in that regard, according to a new index published by the European Jewish Association (EJA).

Unveiled at the EJA’s leadership conference in the Hungarian capital Budapest on Tuesday, the index covers 12 EU member states, combining facts about government policy and polling data to create a single metric with which to measure the quality of Jewish life in those countries.

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The scores of several countries were compromised by the feelings of insecurity reported in their Jewish communities, creating some striking discrepancies. While the German government was given a performance score of 89 due to its federal budget for securing Jewish institutions, its creation of a federal commissioner to combat antisemitism and similar measures, the sense of security among German Jews was measured at just 46, compared with 73 for Denmark and 72 for Hungary. France performed in similar fashion; despite having adopted many of the same measures as Germany, the sense of insecurity among French Jews is the most intense in Europe, with a score of just 31.

By comparison, Belgium’s government performance was weak when it came to security for the Jewish community. “The Belgian government, which holds the last place in the study, significantly reduced security around the Jewish communities without even consulting them, banned kosher slaughter and threatened the issue of circumcision, did not appoint a coordinator for the fight against antisemitism and more,” an accompanying statement from the EJA declared.

(full article online)

Italy Ranked Top, Poland and Belgium Bottom, in New Index Measuring Quality of Jewish Life in Europe

A Torah service at a summer camp for young Jews in Szarvas, Hungary. Photo: JDC. Italy has the highest quality …

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The Israeli government on Sunday approved the allocation of more than $1.8 million to document and preserve the history and heritage of Jewish communities from Arab countries and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

“For me, this is my legacy. We were all in Morocco. We were all in Europe. We have all been to Iraq and Ethiopia. We are all Jews,” said Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. “This program is of very great importance – the preservation of the memory and heritage of a large part of our people.”

“Unfortunately, in a country where about 50 percent of its citizens are from Arab countries and Iran or descendants of immigrants, the history and heritage of their Jewish communities has not been sufficiently passed on and their legacy is not properly instilled in the public discourse,” Cohen said. “This is a different generation of pioneers, whose life experience and contribution to the Zionist enterprise is not heard enough.”

(full article online)

Israel to Allocate $1.8 Million to Preserve Heritage of Jewish Communities From Iran and Arab Countries

Yemenite Jews walking through a desert, near Aden, before being airlifted to Israel, November 1949. Photo: Wikimedia Commons. The Israeli …

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The village of Moises Ville, where the murders occurred, is located around 400 miles north of the Argentine capital Buenos Aires. For Argentine Jews, it is a mythical place, to which they attach feelings of nostalgia like those American Jews feel for Manhattan’s Lower East Side. However, as Sinay underlines, “its history is unique since Argentina has the only Jewish community that started as an agricultural community.”

Fleeing poverty and pogroms, hundreds of thousands of Jews left Czarist Russia at the end of the 19th century. Munich-born philanthropist Baron Moritz von Hirsch founded the Jewish Colonization Association, which facilitated their resettlement in Latin America under the theory that Jews who lived in small shtetls would find it easier to become farmers in the New World than resettle in urban areas. However, as the book’s publisher puts it, “like their town’s prophetic namesake, these immigrants fled one form of persecution only to encounter a different set of hardships: exploitative land prices, starvation, illness [and] language barriers.”

The first residents of Moises Ville were a group of families from Bessarabia and the Podolia region in today’s Ukraine. The village would soon become the cultural center of Jewish life in Argentina. Among the founders were Sinay’s great-grandfather, Mijel Hacohen Sinay, who arrived in 1894, and Alberto Gerchunoff, who in 1910 would publish “Los Gauchos Judios” (“The Jewish Cowboys”), a collection of short stories set in a village inspired by Moises Ville. Gerchunoff’s book is considered the first Latin American literary piece focusing on Jewish immigration to the New World.

(full article online)

A series of 19th-century murders connects an Argentine writer to his family’s past

When Javier Sinay learned that his great-grandfather was a fellow journalist who covered the killing of shtetl immigrants, he connected with his Jewish roots - and wrote a hit book

www.timesofisrael.com

 

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Sandy Koufax, left, with sculptor Branly Cadet. (Jacob Gurvis via JTA)

Jewish baseball legend Sandy Koufax immortalized with a statue

Koufax’s Jewish identity — and his famous Yom Kippur sit-out — are highlighted alongside his many career accolades during an unveiling ceremony at Dodger Stadium

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The British golfer who won the US Open over the weekend has said in the past he was inspired to change his attitude to the game this year by a startling phone call with his Israeli ex-girlfriend tennis star who told him about the suffering of her family in Ukraine.

Matt Fitzpatrick, 27, said that he called Deniz Khazaniuk in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the UK Daily Mail newspaper reported in March.

Khazaniuk’s family is from Lviv and her parents immigrated to Israel. A former professional tennis player, Khazaniuk was born in Ashkelon and grew up in Netanya.

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I was sitting there in Florida ready to practise and it hit me, the contrast between the fact he might never come back and what I do,” he continued.

“I’d already decided to be a little easier on myself this year and appreciate all that I have but that phone call just emphasized I don’t want to be miserable for the rest of my life worrying about winning golf tournaments.

“I think 100 percent I’ve got too worked up about them in the past,” he explained. “The people around me say that I’m different in a major week and while I can’t see it myself it’s something that I need to work on. I feel that I’m a different player now to 2015-18, so hopefully I can relax in the majors and it will start to show.”

That change in mindset appeared to bear fruit when on Sunday Fitzpatrick defeated Will Zalatoris in a close contest to take the coveted open title.

Though she in no longer playing tennis professionally, Khazaniuk was once ranked 200 in the world and won the Israeli Singles Championship in 2016, as well as other international contests. She is currently studying at Barry University in Florida, where she plays on the school team that won the 2021 NCAA Division II Women’s Tennis Tournament, the Daily Mail reported on Sunday.

(full article online)

US Open golf champ inspired by Israeli tennis star ex-girlfriend

Matt Fitzpatrick said in March he called Deniz Khazaniuk to ask about her family in Ukraine after Russia's invasion; what she had to say changed his sporting mindset

www.timesofisrael.com

 

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Mongol period​

The Caliphate hastened to its end before the rising power of the Mongol Empire. As Bar Hebræus remarks, these Mongol tribes knew no distinction between heathens, Jews, and Christians; and their Great Khan Kublai Khan showed himself just toward the Jews who served in his army, as reported by Marco Polo.

Hulagu (a Buddhist), the destroyer of the Caliphate (1258) and the conqueror of Palestine (1260), was tolerant toward Muslims, Jews and Christians; but there can be no doubt that in those days of terrible warfare the Jews must have suffered much with others. Under the Mongolian rulers, the priests of all religions were exempt from the poll-tax. Hulagu's second son, Aḥmed, embraced Islam, but his successor, Arghun (1284–91), hated the Muslims and was friendly to Jews and Christians; his chief counselor was a Jew, Sa'ad al-Dawla, a physician of Baghdad.

It proved a false dawn. The power of Sa’ad al-Dawla was so vexatious to the Muslim population the churchman Bar Hebraeus wrote so “were the Muslims reduced to having a Jew in the place of honor.”[24] This was exacerbated by Sa’d al-Dawla, who ordered no Muslim be employed by the official bureaucracy. He was also known as a fearsome tax collection and rumours swirled he was planning to create a new religion of which Arghun was supposed to be the prophet. Sa’d al-Dawla was murdered two days before the death of his Arghun, then stricken by illness, by his enemies in court.
After the death of the great khan and the murder of his Jewish favorite, the Muslims fell upon the Jews, and Baghdad witnessed a regular battle between them. Gaykhatu also had a Jewish minister of finance, Reshid al-Dawla. The khan Ghazan also became a Muslim, and made the Jews second class citizens. The Egyptian sultan Naṣr, who also ruled over Iraq, reestablished the same law in 1330, and saddled it with new limitations. During this period attacks on Jews greatly increased. The situation grew dire for the Jewish community as Muslim chronicler Abbas al-’Azzawi recorded:
“These events which befell the Jews after they had attained a high standing in the state caused them to lower their voices. [Since then] we have not heard from them anything worthy of recording because they were prevented from participation in its government and politics. They were neglected and their voice was only heard [again] after a long time.”[24]

Baghdad, reduced in importance, ravaged by wars and invasions, was eclipsed as the commercial and political centre of the Arab world. The Jewish community, shuttered out of political life, were reduced too and the status of the Exilarch and the Rabbis of the city diminished. Great numbers of Jews began to depart, seeking tranquility elsewhere in the Middle East beyond a now troubled frontier.[24]

Mongolian fury once again devastated the localities inhabited by Jews, when, in 1393, Timur captured Baghdad, Wasit, Hilla, Basra, and Tikrit, after obstinate resistance. Many Jews who had fled to Baghdad were slaughtered. Others escaped the city to Kurdistan and Syria. Many were not so fortunate, with one report mentioning 10,000 Jews killed in Mosul, Basra, and Husun Kifa.

The ruins of Baghdad after Timur's conquests was described in 1437 by the Muslim chronicler Al-Maqrizi: “Baghdad is in ruins. It has no mosque, no congregation of believers, no call to prayer and no markets. Most of the date palms have withered. Most of the irrigation canals are blocked. It cannot be called a city.”[24]

After the death of Timur, the region fell into the hands of marauding Turkmen tribesmen who were unable to establish a government of any kind. Ravaged by conquest, Iraq fell into lawlessness and became close to uninhabitable. Roads became dangerous and irrigation systems collapsed, seeing precious farmland in the delta region sink below water. Rapacious Bedouin filled the vacuum, rendering the caravan trade all but impossible. Denied authority of any kind and severed from its historic trading ties with the Middle East and the Far East, the ancient city of Baghdad had become a minor town.[24]

The cumulative effect of the Mongol rampage and the social collapse that followed was that of the pre-existing Jewish community of Baghdad either died or fled. Jewish life entered a Dark Age. According to historian Zvi Yehuda, the fifteenth century sees no reports on Jews in Baghdad or in its surroundings, in Basra, Hilla, Kifil, ‘Ana, Kurdistan, even in Persia and the Persian Gulf.[24] The organized Jewish community of Iraq appears to have disappeared in this period for more than four generations.

This is behind the discontinuity between the present traditions of Iraqi Jewry and the Babylonian traditions of Talmudic or Geonic times.[25] It remains the case that most Jewish Iraqis are of indigenous Middle Eastern ancestry rather than migrants from Spain, as in the case of parts of North Africa and the Levant.

History of the Jews in Iraq - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

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Today we are joined by Noam Urbach, a China expert active in academia, business and media. Noam specializes in the study of the history of foreign religions in China, in particular the history of Chinese Jews, as well as Chinese religious policy. We’re super excited to have him on the show today to talk China.

(listen to audio online)

The Chinese Jews you never heard about

Noam Urbach talks about the history of Chinese Jews, as well as Chinese religious policy.

www.israelnationalnews.com

 

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The Land Of Israel - Soviet Jewry - The End Game

Broadcasting the Truth & Beauty of Israel to the World

thelandofisrael.com

 

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September 1894:






In a roundup of the year's stories in 1903 from the Louisville Courier-Journal, we see this from July 26:



(I could not verify this incident.)

In November 1903, the New York Times reported:



September 1906:



April 1912:

Jews murdered in Morocco on multiple occasions from 1894-1912: They must have been Zionists

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

elderofziyon.blogspot.com

 

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Today, America’s Jewish community is largely Ashkenazi c, meaning it is made up of Jews who trace their ancestry to Germany and Eastern Europe. However, the first Jews to arrive in what would become the United States were Sephardic — tracing their ancestry to Spain and Portugal. The following article looks at the three major waves of Sephardic and Ashkenazic immigration to America.

Historians have traditionally divided American Jewish immigration into three periods: Sephardic, German, and Eastern European. While the case can be made that during each period, immigrants were not solely of any one origin (Some Germans came during the “Sephardic” period and some Eastern Europeans arrived during the “German” era, for example), the fact remains that the dominant immigrant group at the time influenced the character of the American Jewish community.

(full article online)

Jewish Immigration to America: Three Waves | My Jewish Learning

Jewish Emigration to America. 19th Century Jewish Emigration. Jewish History from 1650 - 1914. Modern Jewish History. Jewish History and Community.

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A Scene from ‘Sons of Liberty’: Not since “The Jazz Singer” had a Hollywood studio staged so elaborate a scene in a fully decked-out Jewish synagogue. Photo by Getty Images


In the pantheon of name-brand Founding Fathers, Haym Salomon stands well back of the pack. His picture is not on our currency, his statue is not in the Capitol Rotunda, and his character is not on stage in “Hamilton.” Unless you’re a Revolutionary War buff or an alumna of Hebrew School during the Cold War, the name will probably not ring a bell.

In spring 1939, however, as Americans tried to ignore the sound of goosesteps in Europe, Salomon was given an honor bestowed on only a select few from the pageant of history — a Hollywood biopic. Admittedly, it was not a feature-length biopic on the order of the “Great Man” epics that thrived in the 1930s, a decade in dire need of larger-than-life heroes, when audiences flocked to well-mounted hagiographies like “The Story of Louis Pasteur” (1936), “The Life of Emile Zola” (1937), and “Young Mr. Lincoln” (1939).

Salomon’s time on the screen lasted a mere 20 minutes and his name was not even in the title: “Sons of Liberty.” What made the film noteworthy was the fact that the son of liberty in question was Jewish.

(full article online)

Once upon a time, Hollywood told the story of a forgotten Jewish patriot

For 'Sons of Liberty,' which starred Claude Rains and was directed by Michael Curtiz, Warner Bros spent more than they had on any short film.

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. The very first Jews in Brazil were Sephardim fleeing the Inquisition, They relocated from Recife to Dutch colonies in north America in the 17th century.

In modern times, 1,500 families emigrated to Brazil from Egypt. They are one of three Sephardi communities in Brazil. Jews arrived in the 19th century from northern Morocco to profit from the Amazonian rubber boom. Small communiies still exist in Belen and Manaus in the north of the country.

Almost the first thing visitors see at Sao Paulo airport is a branch of Safra bank, established by a lebanese-Jewish family from Beirut. In the 1950s and 60s, Jews resettled in Sao Paulo from Syria and the Lebanese town of Saida (Sidon).

Numbering 8,000 people in a mainly Ashkenazi community of 100,000, the Jews from Egypt barely warranted a paragraph of explanation at Sao Paulo’s Jewish Museum. And so they decided to tell their own story.

The exhibition marks 70 years since the Free Officers’ coup deposed King Farouk. The writing was on the wall for the Jewish community: 25,000 were expelled after the Suez crisis.

In the 1950s Brazil was seeking to attract immigrants. Jewish employees of US multinational companies were able transfer their jobs to Sao Paulo, the commercial capital. Others were assisted by the refugee agency HIAS which never demanded repayment of financial support. Some children were offered free places at Jewish schools.

About half the Egyptian Jews arrived stateless in Brazil. Some acquired Iranian nationality. One moved from France in the 1950s but threw his French passport in the Seine when he was called up to the army to fight in the Algerian war. He bought an Iranian passport and left for Brazil.

The refugees were not allowed to take more than 20 dinars out of Egypt. They filled wooden crates with clothing and hid jewellery in the base. They also brought odd items like a coffee grinder, a device for chopping herbs to make the traditional molokheya or a police First Aid manual.

The crates were used for sleeping until the refugees could afford to buy a sofa bed in part exchange.

Egyptian Jews in Brazil mark seventy years since their exodus • Point of No Return

Jews expelled from Egypt who resettled in Brazil are finally telling their story in an exhibition in Sao Paulo. . The very first Jews in Brazil were Sephardim fleeing the Inquisition, They relocated from Recife to Dutch colonies in north America in the 17th century. In modern times, 1,500...

www.jewishrefugees.org.uk

 

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Today is Thursday, Tammuz 8, 5782 · July 7, 2022​

Today in Jewish History​

• Spanish Inquisition Abolished (1834)

On July 15, 1834, the Office of the Spanish Inquisition was abolished by the Queen Mother Maria Christina, after nearly three and a half centuries. However, the right of public worship (including permission to mark places of worship and advertise religious services) was not granted to the Jews until 1967.

The Inquisition

• Jews expelled from Genoa (1567)
Having become a virtual vassal of Spain, the Republic of Genoa expelled the Jews at the behest of their Spanish overlords.

 

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