Jewish History

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The heavily Jewish town of Surfside, Florida, passed a resolution last week establishing a twin city relationship with the Samaria Regional Council.

Passed by a 5-0 margin, the partnership encompasses some three dozen Jewish communities and will honor Samaria Regional Council Chairman Yossi Dagan with a ceremonial key to the town.

Surfside’s first Orthodox Jewish mayor, Shlomo Danzinger, told JNS the move was motivated in part by a desire to thank Israel for its help in the search and rescue operation at the site of the collapse last year.

(full article online)

Surfside, Site of Florida Condo Collapse, Establishes Twin City Relationship with Samaria | United with Israel

Florida town’s first Orthodox Jewish mayor, Shlomo Danzinger, told JNS that he wanted to thank Israel for its assistance in the search and rescue mission last year.

unitedwithisrael.org

 

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Once on This Island

For Australia’s small but growing Jewish community in Tasmania, celebrating Sukkot poses some unique obstacles

www.tabletmag.com

 

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Today in Jewish History​

• Passing of R. Yosef Shlomo Delmedigo (1655)

R. Yosef Shlomo was a rabbi, philosopher, and physician. A prolific author, he was proficient in many sciences in addition to Talmudic studies. He is known as “the Yashar from Candia,” Yashar being an acronym for Yosef Shlomo Rofei (Hebrew for doctor), and Candia (Crete) being his place of birth. Among his more famous works are Sefer Eilim—on mathematics, astronomy, and other sciences—and Matzref Lechachmah, a defense of Kabbalah.

 

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Israel Is Beautiful: Ein HaKshatot - Israel Unwired

Share on FacebookTweet Whatsapp Did you know that the Golan Heights was home to more than 20 Jewish communities during the Byzantine era? Just like today, the volcanic soil and…

www.israelunwired.com

 

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Marking The Anniversary Of Saladin's Conquest Of Jerusalem, Muslim Intellectuals, Islamists Express Hope, Conviction That Muslims Will Reconquer Jerusalem

Hundreds of Muslim intellectuals and Islamists online marked on October 2, 2022, the anniversary of the 1187 conquest of Jerusalem by Saladin, the Muslim sultan of Egypt and Syria who took the city from the Crusaders.

www.memri.org

 

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“We discovered evidence of actions taken to suppress the number of Jewish students admitted to Stanford during the early 1950s,” the university report said. “Second, we found that members of the Stanford administration regularly misled parents and friends of applicants, alumni, outside investigators, and trustees who raised concerns about those actions throughout the 1950s and 1960s.”

The report revealed that in 1953 former director of admissions Rixford Snyder lobbied for discarding Stanford University’s policy of “paying no attention to the race or religion of applicants” after expressing in a memo “concerns about the number of Jewish students” at the university to President Wallace Sterling’s assistant, Frederic Glover.

(full article online)

Stanford University Used Jewish Quotas in College Admissions, New Report Finds

The main quadrangle at Stanford University. Photo: King of Hearts / Wikimedia Commons. Stanford University on Wednesday issued a report …

www.algemeiner.com

 

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On Monday morning, Russian forces fired dozens of missiles into Ukraine, targeting cities and infrastructure in response to an explosion on a key bridge to Russian-controlled Crimea over the weekend.

Some of the projectiles struck the heart of Kyiv, killing several civilians and driving residents into shelters.

As the first wave of missiles slammed into the capital, Kyiv’s Jewish residents were preparing for morning prayers on the first day of the Sukkot holiday.

(full article online)

Jews in Kyiv celebrate Sukkot by candlelight as missiles fall nearby

No members of the community injured, says rabbi; Israeli diplomats remain in Warsaw as attacks pick up again in Ukrainian capital

www.timesofisrael.com

 

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Tuesday, Tishrei 23, 5783 · October 18, 2022
Simchat Torah​

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Today in Jewish History​

• Passing of R. Chanoch of Cordova (1014)
As a youngster (in c. 960), R. Chanoch was captured by pirates, along with his father R. Moshe and three other great Torah scholars. R. Moshe and his son were ransomed by the Jewish community of Cordova, Spain, where R. Moshe opened a yeshivah for Talmudic studies. When R. Moshe passed away, he was succeeded by his son.

These events marked a turning point in Jewish history. Until then, the primary centers of Torah scholarship were located in the great and ancient Jewish communities of Babylonia, and Jews throughout the Diaspora depended on their leaders for guidance. With the opening of the yeshivah of R. Moshe and R. Chanoch in Spain, Jewish leadership shifted westwards, and European Jewry slowly became independent of the Babylonian community. Thus began the golden age of Torah scholarship in Western Europe, where it flourished for the next five hundred years.

 

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Simhat Torah: Russian-Jewish stories about the holiday - excerpt

Rabbi Jonathan Porath didn’t make countless trips to Russia. He counted them – 175 trips from 1965 through 2019. The following is an excerpt from his book centered primarily on Simhat Torah.

www.jpost.com

 

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Should there be a national park honoring the Jewish businessman who built Black schools in the South? Julius Rosenwald is most famous for helping to transform Sears into a retail giant — and becoming fantastically rich in the process. But Rosenwald, the son of German-Jewish immigrants, may have made a more lasting impact on the American landscape through the network of 5,000 schools he created in rural Black communities during Jim Crow. Now, a coalition is lobbying for the creation of a national park to recognize the schools, which produced alumni like Maya Angelou and the late U.S. Rep. John Lewis

(Full article online)

This would be the only national park telling the story of a Jewish American

A proposed national park would honor Sears Roebuck owner Julius Rosenwald, who created a network of schools serving Black communities.

forward.com

 

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How Fleischmann's Yeast Built the Jewish Catskills | The Nosher

Many home cooks this past year, in an Insta-inspired spirit, upped their challah-baking game with new braiding patterns, interesting flavors ...

www.myjewishlearning.com

 

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Setting the scene: The backyard of the Penguin restaurant in Nahariya once hosted fashion shows, weddings and concerts by Israel’s leading singers. On its patio, British Mandate-era soldiers drank cold beer, unaware that the young women making conversation were sent to distract them from nearby ships that were discharging arriving Jews. Out front, horse-drawn carriages ferried summer tourists to their hotels.



Changing times: But come Jan. 1, the Penguin will exist only in sweet memories; its property in the coastal town is slated to become a nine-story residential building. Not because of changing tastes or declining business – the restaurant never seems to be empty – but because its second-generation owner, 75-year-old Ilan Oppenheimer, is ready to retire.



Ups and downs: Occasional missile strikes, terrorist attacks and flash floods killed several Nahariya residents over the years. People fled the area in 2006 during the Second Lebanon War. Except for certain holidays, though, the Penguin never closed. Even during the pandemic, it offered a full menu for pick-up or delivery.



Quotable: “People are angry I’m closing,” Oppenheimer said. “Someone told me, ‘You’re lucky. They’re eulogizing you while you’re still alive.’”

(full article online)

The last schnitzel: End of an era for Israel's famed Penguin restaurant

The Israeli city of Nahariya bids goodbye to The Penguin restaurant, a symbol of its German roots, founded by Jews fleeing Hitler.

forward.com

 

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Today in Jewish History​

• Returning Exiles Commit to Follow the Torah (335 BCE)
The Jews who had returned to the Land of Israel with Ezra and Nehemiahgathered on this day and repented their misdeeds, signing a document in which they committed to trust in G‑d and follow His ways. Among the mitzvot they specified were to refrain from intermarriage and from purchasing produce on Shabbat (Nehemiah 9:1–3; 10:1–32).

Link: The Return to Israel

• Passing of R. Yaakov Yosef of Polonye (1781)
R. Yaakov Yosef was one of the foremost disciples of the Baal Shem Tov. He was the first one to disseminate the teachings of Chassidut in print, publishing the work Toldot Yaakov Yosef in 1780.

Link: The Rabbi’s Secret Sins

• Passing of the Ribnitzer Rebbe (1995)
On this day in 5756 (1995), the Ribnitzer Rebbe, Rabbi Chaim Zanvil Abramowitz, passed away. For decades, with great self-sacrifice, he lived a full Chassidic lifestyle under Soviet rule before emigrating to Israel and then the U.S.

 

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Today in Jewish History​

• Passing of R. Yitzchak of Dampierre (C. 1190)
R. Yitzchak was a great-grandson of R. Shlomo Yitzchaki, the seminal Biblical and Talmudic commentator commonly known as Rashi. R. Yitzchak and his three uncles—R. Shmuel (Rashbam), R. Yaakov (Rabbeinu Tam), and R. Yitzchak (Rivam)—are among the earliest and most well-known Tosafists. Their comments and explanations, which appear on the outer margin of all classical prints of the Talmud, are vital to any serious student who wishes to properly understand the Talmud.

Link: The Tosafists

 

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Jews have lived in the city of Antakya, known in ancient times as Antioch, for over 23 centuries. And the city wants visitors to know that.


A symbol composed of a Star of David entwined with a Christian cross and Islamic crescent has practically become the city’s logo, as it’s plastered all over town, especially on restaurants peddling the southern Hatay province’s patently spicy cuisine.


“I was born in Antakya and I will die in Antakya,” said Selim Cemel, a Jewish clothing merchant with a shop in the city’s famed Long Bazaar — a snaking maze of Ottoman Era caravanserais and even older shops, rivaling Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar or Jerusalem’s Arab Shuk. In it, one can find everything from textiles to spices to some of the best hummus in Turkey.

The Star of David imagery is so prevalent that one would be forgiven for thinking Jews were a significant portion of the city’s 200,000-strong population. In reality, barely more than a dozen Jews remain.

The last Jews remaining​

Jewish community members attend the re-opening ceremony of Great Synagogue in Edirne, western Turkey March 26, 2015. A five-year, $2.5 million government project has restored the Great Synagogue in the border city of Edirne, the first temple to open in Turkey in two generations. REUTERS/Murad Sezer (credit: MURAD SEZER/REUTERS)
The youngest member of the local Jewish community is over 60, and many are talking about joining their children elsewhere in the world.


Like many cities in Turkey, Antakya has been losing its youth of all faiths and ethnicities over the past century to the metropolises of Istanbul and Ankara. Today one in four Turks live in Istanbul.


For Antakya’s Jews, the exodus began in the 1970s, when Turkey experienced a period of particular political instability. The first half of the decade saw Turkey embroiled in a civil war in Cyprus, and in the second, a breakout of sectarian violence across the country between Turkish nationalists and Kurdish separatists culminated in a 1980 military coup.


“Some have died, some moved to Istanbul, and the youth left one by one. This is the way they dispersed,” explained Daoud Cemel, a relative of Selim and another Jewish merchant in the Long Bazaar who sells towels and other textiles.

(full article online)

On Turkish-Syrian border, a city’s last Jews watch ending of an epoch

A symbol composed of a Star of David entwined with a Christian cross and Islamic crescent has practically become the city’s logo.

www.jpost.com

 

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Today in Jewish History​

• Arrest of R. DovBer of Lubavitch (1826)
R. DovBer of Lubavitch was arrested due to trumped-up charges fabricated by a jealous relative. Among his alleged “crimes” was that he was sending money to the Turkish sultan, who was at war with Russia at the time. R. DovBer was released six weeks later (see calendar entry for 10 Kislev).

Link: The Arrest and Liberation of Rabbi DovBer of Lubavitch

 

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L.A. Star Ryan Turell First Orthodox Jew Drafted by an NBA G League Team

Turell, who attended Valley Torah High School and Yeshiva University (YU), set scoring records throughout his tenure playing for the schools.

jewishjournal.com

 

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L.A. Star Ryan Turell First Orthodox Jew Drafted by an NBA G League Team

Turell, who attended Valley Torah High School and Yeshiva University (YU), set scoring records throughout his tenure playing for the schools.

jewishjournal.com

 

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The Land Of Israel - Electoral Dysfunction, part II

Broadcasting the Truth & Beauty of Israel to the World

thelandofisrael.com