Jewish History

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Today in Jewish History​

• Hebron Massacre (1929)

Sixty-seven Jewish men, women and children were slaughtered, and scores wounded, raped and maimed, by their Arab neighbors in the city of Hebron, who rioted for three days amid cries of "Slaughter the Jews." The killings began on Friday afternoon, 17 Av, and most of the victims lost their lives on Shabbat, 18 Av. The survivors were forced to evacuate to Jerusalem, and the ancient Jewish community of Hebron, which had lived in relative peace in the city for hundreds of years, was not revived until after Israel's capture of Hebron in the 1967 Six Day war.

 

[Sixties Fan]

Today in Jewish History​

• Western Lamp Extinguished (c. 578 BCE)

Every evening, the priest would kindle the seven lights of the menorah in the Holy Temple. Miraculously, although six of the seven candles would burn out, the western lamp would remain lit until the following evening. (See link below for the exact identity of the western lamp.)

During the reign of the idolatrous King Ahaz (father of the pious King Hezekiah), this miracle discontinued. The first time the western lamp was found to have extinguished was on 18 Menachem Av (or, according to other versions, 17 Menachem Av). (Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chaim 580:2)

 

[Sixties Fan]

The backdrop to the movement’s emergence was the Emancipation, the process begun in late 18th century to grant European Jews equal rights and eliminate the legal barriers that had impeded their social and economic progress for centuries. The emergence from the European ghetto had an enormous impact on the practice of Judaism, leading some Jews to abandon long-observed religious practices in an effort to assimilate more easily into the broader culture.

“Eager to participate and demonstrate to their neighbors what loyal and productive citizens they could be, many Jews decided to jettison kashrut [Jewish dietary laws] and other traditional laws and practices which prohibited them from eating at the homes of their gentile friends or attending social gatherings at cafés,” the Reform Rabbi Lawrence Englander has written in an essay on the movement’s origins. “They were embarrassed, too, should neighbors accustomed to the decorum of the Protestant or Catholic church visit the synagogue and witness a spectacle of men wrapped in strange prayer shawls noisily davening [praying] a repetitive liturgy while children tore up and down the aisles.”

The early Jewish reformers sought to fashion a Judaism more consonant with European life. Rabbis led services in black clerical robes similar to those worn by Christian clergy and employed professional choirs and organ players. Men and women sat together, rather than in separate sections of the synagogue, and male worshippers prayed bareheaded, without the traditional kippah (head covering). For a time, the main Shabbat service — conducted in the vernacular, rather than Hebrew — was held on Friday night (or Sunday) so as not to interfere with activities on Saturday, which was generally a work day. (The two-day weekend wasn’t introduced until the early 20th century.) And the vast body of ritual practice that had served to set Jews apart from the wider culture was de-emphasized in favor of universal ethics and the prophetic vision of justice and peace.

The first permanent Reform temple was founded in 1818 in Hamburg, Germany. Early Reform leaders preferred to call their houses of worship temples rather than synagogues, partly to distinguish them from traditional synagogues and partly to signify that they had abandoned the Jewish longing to rebuild the ancient temple in Jerusalem. A number of other Reform congregations were established in Germany and elsewhere in Europe in the early 1800s, but the movement really began to flourish in the United States, where it was embraced by the German Jews who were then the dominant force in American Jewish life.

(full article online)

History of the Reform Movement | My Jewish Learning

Reforming Judaism. Modern Jewish Denominationalism. Modern Jewish Religion and Culture. Modern Jewish History. Jewish History and Community.

www.myjewishlearning.com

 

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Is Mah-Jongg a Jewish Game? | My Jewish Learning

Jewish women have kept Mah-Jongg alive in North America.

www.myjewishlearning.com

 

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Debra Messing Talks Jewish Pride, Her Bat Mitzvah and Netflix's ‘13: The Musical’ – Kveller

I can’t help but tell Debra Messing how much I love her chai necklace. I may not have a lot of time to interview one of my favorite Jewish actresses (I’m totally cool about it!) about her role in Netflix’s new bar mitzvah movie, “13: The Musical,” in which she plays the mother of the […]

www.kveller.com

 

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ELVIS' YAHRTZEIT

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Elvis often wore both a chai and cross necklace, joking that it was his guaranteed ticket into heaven. (Getty)

Elvis Presley died 45 years ago today on Aug. 16, 1977. He was the king of rock ‘n’ roll and the biggest celebrity of his time. Decades later, he is still ever-present in the zeitgeist: whether in Las Vegas wedding chapels, at Graceland or on the big screen in Tom Hanks’ latest movie. He was also, to many people’s surprise, Jewish. The headstone on the grave for Elvis’ mother, Gladys, features a Jewish star; his maternal great-great grandmother, Nancy Burdine, was a Jewish immigrant from Lithuania who settled in Memphis in the 19th century. When Gladys told Elvis about his Jewish roots, she told him to keep it a secret as many people disliked Jews — including her own husband, Vernon. Seth Rogovoy, our music critic, writes that in 1958 after Gladys died, Vernon put a cross on the upper corner of her gravestone. “A few years later, Elvis had a Star of David added to the opposite corner of her grave marker to balance out the cross and to acknowledge his mother’s Jewish heritage,” Rogovoy wrote. As for Elvis? He regularly wore necklaces of a chai along with his cross at the same time, memorably justifying this interfaith bling by saying, “I don’t want to miss out on heaven due to a technicality.” Read the story ➤

Was Elvis Presley actually the Jewish Elvis?

“The Jewish World of Elvis Presley” by Roselle Kline Chartock tells of the king of rock 'n' roll's many Jewish affinities and ancestors.

forward.com

 

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Today in Jewish History​

• Passing of Rabbi Yaakov Culi (1732)

Born in Jerusalem in 1689 (5449?), Yaakov Culi moved to Constantinople, Turkey, where he found adequate facilities and financial backing to publish the scholarly output of his learned grandfather, Rabbi Moses ibn Habib, including classics such as Get Pashut and Ezrat Nashim.

The brilliant young scholar quickly came to the attention of the chief rabbi of Constantinople, Yehuda Rosanes, the undisputed leader of Sephardic Jewry at the time, and he was appointed to the beth din (rabbinical court).

Upon the passing of Rosanes, Rabbi Yaakov edited and published his late teacher’s writings with his own additional glosses: Mishneh Lamelech on Maimonides’s Mishneh Torah and Perishat Derachim.


Toward the end of his own short life, Rabbi Culi began work on the Mea’am Loez, a compendium of rabbinic lore and commentary on all books of Scriptures. He wrote in Ladino, then the common language of the Sephardic diaspora.

Unfortunately, he never completed his project and passed away on 19th Av, 5492 (1732), having only completed the book Genesis and most of Exodus. However, subsequent scholars used his extensive notes to finish the work. Popular to this day, the Mea’am Loez has been translated into many languages, including Hebrew, English, and even Arabic.

 

[Mushroom]

He was also, to many people’s surprise, Jewish.

The headstone on the grave for Elvis’ mother, Gladys, features a Jewish star; his maternal great-great grandmother, Nancy Burdine, was a Jewish immigrant from Lithuania who settled in Memphis in the 19th century.

That does not make one Jewish, and he was not Jewish.

Even under the radical Nuremberg Laws, he was not "Jewish". Under even those radical laws, one had to be ½ or more Jewish to be considered a "Jew". Even one who was a "Mischling Second Degree" (one Jewish Grandparent) could maintain their German citizenship. And you talk about a great-great-grandmother? Neither the Nazis or most radical Klukkers follow that kind of "purity" requirement.

 

[Sixties Fan]

That does not make one Jewish, and he was not Jewish.

Even under the radical Nuremberg Laws, he was not "Jewish". Under even those radical laws, one had to be ½ or more Jewish to be considered a "Jew". Even one who was a "Mischling Second Degree" (one Jewish Grandparent) could maintain their German citizenship. And you talk about a great-great-grandmother? Neither the Nazis or most radical Klukkers follow that kind of "purity" requirement.

He did not follow Judaism but seemed to have an affinity for it.

 

[Mushroom]

He did not follow Judaism but seemed to have an affinity for it.

Does not make him Jewish.

Most Mormons do also, once again does not make them Jewish.

 

[Sixties Fan]

Does not make him Jewish.

Most Mormons do also, once again does not make them Jewish.

No one has said that it made Elvis Jewish. He had family before him who were Jewish and had been made aware that he had come from a Jewish family. Nothing else.

 

[Sixties Fan]

Today in Jewish History​

• Passing of R. Chaim Brisker (1918)
Passing of Rabbi Chaim Soloveichik of Brisk (1853-1918), outstanding Talmudic scholar and Jewish leader.

 

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In 1913, Leo Frank was convicted of murdering Mary Phagan, a 13-year-old employee of the Atlanta pencil factory that Frank managed. After Georgia’s governor commuted his death sentence, a mob stormed the prison where Frank was being held and lynched him. Leo Frank thus became the only known Jew lynched in American history.

The case still spurs debate and controversy — it even inspired a Broadway play. What are the facts of the Frank case?

The Case Against Frank​

“Little Mary Phagan,” as she became known, left home on the morning of April 26 to pick up her wages at the pencil factory and view Atlanta’s Confederate Day parade. She never returned home.

The next day, the factory night watchman found her bloody, sawdust-covered body in the factory basement. When the police asked Leo Frank, who had just completed a term as president of the Atlanta chapter of B’nai B’rith (a Jewish fraternal organization), to view her body, Frank became agitated. He confirmed personally paying Mary her wages but could not say where she went next. Frank, the last to admit seeing Mary alive, became the prime suspect.


Georgia’s solicitor general, Hugh Dorsey, sought a grand jury indictment against Frank. Rumor circulated that Mary had been sexually assaulted. Factory employees offered apparently false testimony that Frank had made sexual advances toward them. The madam of a house of ill repute claimed that Frank had phoned her several times, seeking a room for himself and a young girl.

In this era, the cult of Southern chivalry made it a “hanging crime” for African-American males to have sexual contact with the “flower of white womanhood.” The accusations against Frank, a Northern-born, college-educated Jew, proved equally inflammatory.

The Exonerating Evidence​

For the grand jury, Hugh Dorsey painted Leo Frank as a sexual pervert who was both homosexual and who preyed on young girls. What he did not tell the grand jury was that a janitor at the factory, Jim Conley, had been arrested two days after Frank when he was seen washing blood off his shirt. Conley then admitted writing two notes that had been found by Mary Phagan’s body. The police assumed that, as author of these notes, Conley was the murderer, but Conley claimed, after apparent coaching from Dorsey, that Leo Frank had confessed to murdering Mary in the lathe room and then paid Conley to pen the notes and help him move Mary’s body to the basement.

Even after Frank’s housekeeper placed him at home, having lunch at the time of the murder and despite gross inconsistencies in Conley’s story, both the grand and trial jury chose to believe Conley. This was perhaps the first instance of a Southern black man’s testimony being used to convict a white man. In August of 1913, the jury found Frank guilty in less than four hours. Crowds outside the courthouse shouted, “Hang the Jew.”

Historian Leonard Dinnerstein reports that one juror had been overheard to say before his selection for the jury, “I am glad they indicted the God damn Jew. They ought to take him out and lynch him. And if I get on that jury, I’ll hang that Jew for sure.”

Facing intimidation and mob rule, the trial judge sentenced Frank to death. He barred Frank from the courtroom on the grounds that, had he been acquitted, Frank might have been lynched by the crowd outside.

Frank Is Saved, Briefly​

Despite these breaches of due process, Georgia’s higher courts rejected Frank’s appeals and the U. S. Supreme Court voted, 7-2, against reopening the case, with Justices Oliver Wendell Holmes and Charles Evans Hughes dissenting. Frank’s survival depended on Georgia Governor Frank Slaton. After a 12-day review of the evidence and letters recommending commutation from the trial judge (who must have had second thoughts) and from a private investigator who had worked for Hugh Dorsey, Slaton commuted Frank’s sentence to life imprisonment.

That night, state police kept a protesting crowd of 5,000 from the governor’s mansion. Wary Jewish families fled Atlanta. Slaton held firm. “Two thousand years ago,” he wrote a few days later, “another Governor washed his hands and turned over a Jew to a mob. For two thousand years that governor’s name has been accursed. If today another Jew [Leo Frank] were lying in his grave because I had failed to do my duty, I would all through life find his blood on my hands and would consider myself an assassin through cowardice.”

On August 17, 1915, a group of 25 men — described by peers as “sober, intelligent, of established good name and character”— stormed the prison hospital where Leo Frank was recovering from having his throat slashed by a fellow inmate. They kidnapped Frank, drove him more than 100 miles to Mary Phagan’s hometown of Marietta, Georgia, and hanged him from a tree.

Frank conducted himself with dignity, calmly proclaiming his innocence.

Townsfolk were proudly photographed beneath Frank’s swinging corpse, pictures still valued today by their descendants. When his term expired a year later, Slaton did not run for reelection and Dorsey easily won election to the governor’s office.

In 1986, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles finally granted Leo Frank a posthumous pardon, not because they thought him innocent, but because his lynching deprived him of his right to further appeal. Mary Phagan’s descendants and their supporters still insist on his guilt.

The Lynching of Leo Frank | My Jewish Learning

Leo Frank Lynching. Modern Anti Semitism. Modern Jewish Intergroup Relations. Modern Jewish History. Jewish History and Community.

www.myjewishlearning.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

Dr. Brown, who lived in the Lower East Side or Williamsburg depending on whom you ask, began in the late 1860s making his own homemade celery “tonic,” which was sold in local delicatessens. In 1886, Dr. Brown’s tonic assumed bottled form, thus achieving a higher level of quality control regarding its carbonation and improving its mass appeal. However, the nascent Food and Drug Administration was not a fan of the “tonic” label, which misleadingly implied the drink’s medicinal utility, and insisted on a name change. The concoction was reborn, “Dr. Brown’s Cel-Ray Soda.”

Believe it or not, bubbly botanical beverages were actually a thing around the turn of the century. If pumpkin spice was the official flavor of the 2000s, the 1930s analogue was celery. As agricultural production of this vegetable expanded rapidly across the United States due to the recent availability of seeding plants, celery, like today’s spiced squash, trended heavily as a theme ingredient. Several companies, including Coca-Cola and Lake’s of Mississippi also made celery sodas, but their popularity was ephemeral and by the 1930s they had been discontinued.

Only Dr. Brown’s Cel-Ray had staying power, and developed a loyal following among Jews along the East Coast, earning a permanent spot on delicatessen menus and its nickname, “Jewish Champagne.”

(full article )

A Brief Jewish History of Cel-Ray Soda | The Nosher

Celery juice may be the all the rage right now as the detox drink of choice, (according to the Kardashians, ...

www.myjewishlearning.com

 

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Five years ago, the signing of a cultural property agreement with Libya blocking entry to art and artifacts from 12,000 BCE to 1911 CE alerted Americans of Middle Eastern Jewish heritage that their rights to community, personal, and religious treasures were threatened – even in the United States. Today, all that remains of the Libyan Jewish community is in the diaspora – and only in the diaspora is this heritage kept alive. There is not a single Jew left in Libya after the community was forced out in the mid-20th century, leaving behind all their possessions and property.

By signing a cultural property agreement with Libya, the US government asserted, wrongly, that Libya was doing its best to protect the heritage of all its peoples. The US agreement also recognized Libya’s national authority over every ancient and antique object made in Libya, including those of its 2,000-year-old Jewish community. If cultural objects crossed U.S. borders without a Libyan export permit – and Libya issues no export permits – they could be seized and returned to the Libyan government, not to the communities forced to abandon them when they were driven into exile.

Dar El Bishi Synagogue, Tripoli, Libya, today. Courtesy JIMENA.

The 2017 ‘emergency’ agreement and 2018 Memorandum of Understanding with the Libyan government caused outrage in the Jewish community, but their protests did little to stem the tide of a misguided U.S. policy that rewarded excessive claims by nationalist regimes. This July, a hearing was held at the Department of State to renew the Libyan agreement, despite Libya’s fractured, multiple regional governments, an ongoing civil war, and the complete failure of the various parties to act to protect its cultural heritage.

Cultural property agreements may be renewed or terminated after five years, under the 1983 Cultural Property Implementation Act (CPIA). An agreement must actually be shown to be effective in protecting heritage or stemming looting for it to be enacted or renewed. The Act establishes requirements for self-help, for each nation to protect its existing heritage, and to ensure access to it by a global public. There were clearly many reasons not to renew the 2017-2018 cultural property agreements. Libya had failed to protect five ancient World Heritage sites from graffiti, damage, and encroaching illegal property development; its educational and cultural infrastructure was in ruins and its workers unpaid, and it was engaged in a civil war that was bombing antique built heritage in its cities into dust.


(full article online)

Libyan Jewish Community Fights for Rights to Heritage

“The story of Jewish refugees and the advocacy work that we do is not only a Jewish story. It is a story of most of the religious minorities in the region. It is continuing today

culturalpropertynews.org

 

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Theodor Herzl and the Jews’ Leap of Hope

Today, Theodor Herzl is best known for his beard, not his books, for an Aha-moment he never had, for being an anti-anti-Semite rather than an idealist, and for launching the Zionist movement in 1897 – eighteen months after he released his history-changing Zionist manifesto.

jewishjournal.com

 

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In unassuming Rishon Lezion, a treasure trove of Israeli history comes alive

With museums boasting lifelike reproductions of life in the olden days and a seemingly endless number of historically significant sites, one of Israel's oldest towns is a must-see

www.timesofisrael.com

 

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How a Catholic-born Peruvian villager led hundreds to Jewish conversion – and Israel

In 'The Prophet of the Andes,' author Graciela Mochkofsky documents unlikely tale of Segundo Villanueva, whose revelations and efforts brought the 'Inca Jews' to the Promised Land

www.timesofisrael.com

 

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The Jewish cemetery in Aden has existed for more than 160 years and is believed to house hundreds of graves belonging to members of a community that no longer exists.

A local researcher told local media that, according to Jewish tradition, the cemetery is the burial site of the biblical figure Abel.

And while work is underway and significant parts of the cemetery’s wall have been restored, the graves are still in dire need of attention, the report said, requiring a budget that war-torn Yemen might be hesitant to allocate.



(full article online)

Yemen restores Jewish cemetery, remainder of a once booming, now long-gone community

Restoration of the 160-year-old burial ground that had been neglected for years began with civil organizations, before being picked up by government

www.timesofisrael.com

 

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Today is Wednesday, Av 27, 5782 · August 24, 2022​ Today in Jewish History​ • Passing of R. Yehoshua of Cracow (1648) R. Yehoshua was one of the leading Polish scholars of his day, and was held in great reverence by his contemporaries. He led a Talmudic academy in Cracow which attracted many noteworthy disciples (such as R. Shabtai HaKohen, the Shach). R. Yehoshua authored Maginei Shlomo, devoted to answering the difficulties raised by the Tosafist scholars against Rashi in his Talmud commentary. He also authored a collection of halachic responsa titled Pnei Yehoshua (not to be confused with the Talmudic commentary of the same name authored by his great-grandson, R. Yaakov Yehoshua [see entry for 14 Shevat]).​