1822 CE - 1919 CE
1823 CE: BAVARIAN GOVERNMENT
He owes more than 21 percent of its public debt to Jews.
1823 CE: CZAR ALEXANDER I
Alexander ban Jews from leasing farming lands and even living in small villages. Alexander, afraid the Jews would have undo influence on local peasants, decided to force them to move to larger cities where it would be easier to keep an eye on them
– after Eli Birnbaum
1824 CE: THE FIRST HEBREW CONGREGATION IN THE MID-WEST
January 4: Cincinnati, Ohio
Bene Israel (Sons of Israel) was established at the home of Morris Moses and under the leadership of Joseph Jonas (the first permanent Jewish settler in Ohio). Like other congregations of its kind in the newly settled territories, they waited until there was a quota of ten men and until a Sefer Torah had arrived.
– Eli Birnbaum
1826 CE: JAMES FENIMORE COOPER WRITES THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS
–regarded as his masterpiece
The “last of the Mohicans” is Uncas, son of the last chief of the Mohican tribe. The Mohicans are allied with the French against the British in the French and Indian War (a.k.a. the Seven Years War) in 1757.
James Fenimore Cooper himself was born and bred in the NJ–NY area. (b. 1789; d. 1851) He was a Navy midshipman before pursuing writing.
Cooper’s seafaring series Leartherstocking Tales features frontiersman Natty Bumppo.
1826 CE: LAST KNOWN AUTO Da FE
Valencia, Spain
A poor school master was executed for adhering to Judaism. The Auto da Fe execution, accompanied by vitriolic sermons, had served to announce the punishments of those who were deemed guilty by the Inquisition of “backsliding.” Often, but not always, those deemed guilty were burned at the stake (quemadero). It is estimated that tens of thousands of people lost their lives, with hundreds of thousand receiving lesser punishments during the almost 350 years that the Inquisition was in existence.
– Eli Birnbaum
1827 CE: MOSES MONTEFIORE
–makes his first visit to Jerusalem in 1827.
Moses Haim Montefiore (born 1784 in Livorno, Italy) was a successful London businessman when he married Judith Cohen, whose sister was married to Nathan Mayer Rothschild. Montefiore then enjoyed a very successful second career as a financier, stockbroker, philanthropist… and sheriff of London!
After his journey to Israel, Montefiore becomes Orthodox (observant). In 1938 he is knighted by Queen Victoria in Jerusalem, where he builds Jewish neighborhoods outside the Old City, starting with Yemin Moshe with its famous windmill, “Montefiore’s Windmill.”
In 1861, Montefiore founds Jerusalem neighborhood Mishkanot Sha’ananim and the two Knesset Yisrael neighborhoods, among others.
Montefiore died in 1885 at age 100, having voyaged to Israel seven times to personally oversee and advance various endeavors of the budding Jewish homeland. He stands as an iconoclastic figure and quasi folk hero in Jewish lore. He is commemorated affectionately in Israeli music and literature as ha–Sar Montefiore, i.e. Minister Montefiore.
(See also entry 1839 CE)
1827 CE: DAVID (DAVY) STERN CROCKETT
–elected to Congress
Crockett, a celebrated American folk hero, frontiersman, soldier and politician, gets elected to the US House of Representatives, representing Tennessee. He is often referred to as Davy Crockett, king of the wild frontier.
Born of French–Irish Huguenot stock, Crockett serves in the Texas Revolution and dies in the Battle of the Alamo.
1827 CE: CANTONIST EDICT OF NICHOLAS I
Sept 7: Russia
Czar Nicholas I proclaimed his Statute of Conscription and Military Service which allowed Jewish youths between 12 and 18 to be forcibly conscripted into the army and forced to serve for 25 years. Although drafting of 18 year olds for 25 years or service had been in effect since the seventeenth century, this statute made military service compulsory. A quota was placed on the Jewish community.Often children were simply kidnapped, which was usually done via an agent called a “Chapper” (grabber in Yiddish), who often disregarded the official minimum age of 12 and took children as young as 8 in order to fill their quota. One of Nicholas’ goals was apparently to estrange as many children as possible from the Jewish religion, and he encouraged them to change their names and accept baptism.
1829 CE: BRAILLE
Louis Braille, 18, publishes the first book employing his reading system for the blind
–a system of six raised dots in different combinations and patterns.
Louis Braille had been blind since age 3 (b. 1809; d. 1852)
1829 CE: NEANDERTHAL SKULLS DISCOVERED
The skulls were discovered in Engis, Belgium by Schmerling.
Subsequent proximate “Neanderthal Man” discoveries would take place in Gibralter (1846), and in the Neander Valley near Dusseldorf (August, 1856)
1830 CE: THE MORMONS
Joseph Smith, Jr. (b. 1805; d. 1844) founds the Mormon Church in Fayette, NY.
The Church a.k.a. The Church of Latter Day Saints (LDS) is now based in Utah.
Brigham Young (b. 1801; d. 1877) emerged as a central figure, and a highly controversial one. He was president of the movement from 1847 until his death…. Founder of Salt Lake City and first governor of Utah. The centerpiece Mormon university, Brigham Young University was established in 1875… 34,000+ students in 2008.
1831 CE: EMANCIPATION OF JEWS IN JAMAICA
Jews had been present in Jamaica since the time of the British conquest in 1655, yet they were not allowed to vote until this date. Within fifteen years of the “Emancipation,” eight of the 47 members of the House of Assembly (which didn’t meet on Day of Atonement) were Jewish.
– Eli Birnbaum
1832 CE: CANADA
Granted political rights to Jews.
1832 CE: SAMUEL F. B. MORSE
–conceptualizes and starts developing the single–wire telegraph
In his diary, he theorizes about the possibility of transmitting information across great distances using electricity. This theory eventually becomes “Morse Code,” used by the US during WWI.
An accomplished artist, Samuel Morse was a professor of painting and sculpture at City College of New York (CCNY).
1832 CE: JOACHIM LELEWEL
November 3: Poland
A non-Jewish Polish revolutionist and historian, he called on the Jewish people to join in a revolution. He was influenced by Bartlomiej Beniowski, a Jewish Polish revolutionary into calling on Poles to help Jews to establish a homeland in Eretz Israel.
– Eli Birnbaum
1832 CE: CHURCH OF CHRIST (DISCIPLES) ORGANIZED
–Mainline Protestant, breakaway from Presbyterianism
There are approximately 700,000 members in approximately 3,750 congregations in North America.
The parent Presbyterian Church evolved primarily in Scotland before (the Act of Union in) 1707.
1833 CE: ENGLAND
Jews were allowed to be admitted to the Bar. Two years later in 1835 Francis Goldsmid became the first Jewish barrister.
1833 CE: GERMANY: ABRAHAM GEIGER PUBLISHES JUDAISM AND ISLAM
(More on Geiger later)
1833 CE: BRAHMS
–Born in Hamburg, Germany
Johannes Brahms, composer of complex musical constructs of the Romantic Period, is born in Hamburg, Germany, but from age 33 composes and conducts mainly in Vienna, Austria.
His particularly enduring Brahm’s Lullaby was written to celebrate the birth of a friend’s son.
1835 CE: DE TOCQUEVILLE PUBLISHES DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA
Twenty–five–year–old Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville, after nine months of travel across America to study the new democracy on behalf of the French government, issues his report (with fellow researcher, traveler and writer Gustave de Beaumont). Initially the focus was intended to be the American prison system, but the researcher–authors expanded their mandate and examined a wide range of issues and institutions.
Democracy in America, which was published in numerous editions in the 19th century, and eventually in the 20th, emerges as a classic work in political science, social science and history. Among the book’s many astute observations and predictions is that slavery would eventually tear America apart. The book also predicted that the US and the Soviet Union would emerge as rival superpowers.
De Tocqueville observed that in American democracy, the “tyranny of the majority” was always a lurking possibility. However, aside from some marginal issues, that particular threat has rarely seen reality to date.
De Tocqueville felt that transient public opinion and the masses held too much political clout, and would ultimately lower the intellectual level of the country.
The work contains many nuances and prescient observations, which ended up explaining America to Americans themselves.
1835 CE: DAVID SALOMON
Was the first Jew to be elected Sheriff of London. He was a successful banker who led the fight for Jewish equality in England. In 1855 he became Lord Mayor of London.
1835 CE: ABRAHAM GEIGER
–founds the Scientific Journal of Jewish Theology
Britannica –
“German–Jewish theologian, author, and the outstanding leader in the early development of Reform Judaism.
In 1832 Geiger went to Wiesbaden as a rabbi and in 1835 helped to found the Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift für jüdische Theologie (“Scientific Journal of Jewish Theology”), which he then edited. In 1838 he became junior rabbi in Breslau (now Wrocław, Poland), where his known Reform leanings aroused Orthodox opposition. Remaining in Breslau until 1863 (he became senior rabbi in 1843), Geiger organized the Reform movement there and wrote some of his most important works, including a translation into German of the works of Judah ben Samuel ha–Levi (1851), considered the greatest Hebrew poet of 12th–century Spain, and Geiger’s own magnum opus, Urschrift und Übersetzungen der Bibel in ihrer Abhängigkeit von der innern Entwicklung des Judentums (1857; “The Original Text and the Translations of the Bible: Their Dependence on the Inner Development of Judaism”). In the latter work, Geiger analyzes the Sadducees and the Pharisees, Jewish sects in whose history he sees a paradigm of a basic idea of Reform Judaism: in some respects, the Jewish religious consciousness grows and changes, and this development is reflected in the succeeding editions and translations of the Bible.
In a series of rabbinical conferences at Brunswick (1844), Frankfurt (1845), and Breslau (1846), Geiger incisively presented other main tenets of Reform Judaism: the necessity of simplifying ritual and of using a liturgy spoken in one’s native tongue; an emphasis on the prophetic teachings as presenting the core of Judaism, a core that will not lose validity with changing time and place, unlike other components of religion; and a de–emphasis on a return to the land of Israel. Geiger’s last years were spent as a rabbi at Frankfurt and at Berlin, where he also lectured at the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums (“Institute of Jewish Science”), the liberal seminary.”
Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/227807/Abraham–Geiger# (accessed July 1, 2009)
1835 CE: THE FIRST HAKHAM BASHI
–was appointed by Sultan Mahmud II. The title was taken from the words Hakhan (chacham) meaning sage and Bashi meaning head. Ostensibly he served as the chief Rabbi of the Ottoman Empire or of parts of it. Often the Hakham Bashi himself was not sufficiently learned to also serve as a Halachic authority. In addition to religious responsibilities, he was also in charge of collecting government taxes.
– after Eli Birnbaum
1836 CE: SAM COLT
Colt patents the six–shooter gun.
He was 22. (b. 1814; d. 1862)
1836 CE: BATTLE OF THE ALAMO
–between the Republic of Mexico and rebel Texian forces (Feb 23 – Mar 6)
–during the Texian fight for independence from Mexico. “The Texas Revolution.” The battle takes place at the Alamo Mission in San Antonio, Texas.
The 13–day siege ends with the deaths of almost all the defending Texians, but nevertheless becomes legendary, as does the saying “Remember the Alamo!” The Texian revolution goes on to ultimate victory—and secession from Mexico.
…and the Texians become Texans.
1837 CE: QUEEN VICTORIA
Ascended the throne in England. During her reign there was a great increase in the number of Jews settling in England.
1838 CE: REBECCA GRATZ OF PHILADELPHIA
–organizes the first Hebrew Sunday school network.
The network spreads first to Richmond, Charleston, Savannah, Baltimore and New York, and eventually across the entire continent and beyond.
1838 CE: SAMSON RAPHAEL HIRSCH PUBLISHES HOREB
–one of his premier classics, in Oldenberg, Germany.
Judaica Press –
“Horeb is Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch’s masterful presentation of Jewish laws and observances, with particular emphasis on their underlying ideas. It has proven in many ways to be Hirsch’s most decisive work, representing a milestone in the return to halacha (Jewish law) as the pivot of Jewish life.”
Judaica Press Online, http://www.judaicapress.com/product_info.php?products_id=413&osCsid=175f5c3c6624aa66d208a640c2a6e83f (accessed June 25, 2009)
1839 CE: AMISTAD
–Black slave revolt
Britannica –
“(July 2, 1839), slave rebellion that took place on the slave ship Amistad near the coast of Cuba and had important political and legal repercussions in the American abolition movement. The mutineers were captured and tried in the United States, and a surprising victory for the country’s antislavery forces resulted in 1841 when the U.S. Supreme Court freed the rebels. A committee formed to defend the slaves later developed into the American Missionary Association (incorporated 1846). On July 2, 1839, the Spanish schooner Amistad was sailing from Havana to Puerto Príncipe, Cuba, when the ship’s unwilling passengers, 53 slaves recently abducted from Africa, revolted. Led by Joseph Cinqué, they killed the captain and the cook but spared the life of a Spanish navigator, so that he could sail them home to Sierra Leone. The navigator managed instead to sail the Amistad generally northward. Two months later the U.S. Navy seized the ship off Long Island, New York, and towed it into New London, Connecticut. The mutineers were held in a jail in New Haven, Connecticut, a state in which slavery was legal.”
Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/20842/Amistad–mutiny#ref=ref260463 (accessed July 1, 2009)
1839 CE: FORCED CONVERSION AT MESHED
March 27: Persia
Influenced by other anti-Jewish riots under the Kajar Dynasty in Persia, the local community attacked the Jewish quarter. The synagogue was destroyed, over 30 Jews were killed and the rest of the community was threatened with annihilation. Moslem leaders offered to prevent further riots on condition that the Jews convert, which they ostensibly did. The Jews became known as Jadid al-Islam or New Moslems, thus, in public ending the presence of a Jewish community in Meshed. In secret, however, they continued to practice Judaism, taking whatever opportunities presented themselves to flee the city with their families.
1839 CE: MOSES MONTEFIORE
–calls for a Jewish state in the holy land.
Wikipedia –
“Jewish philanthropy and the Holy Land were at the center of Montefiore’s interests. He traveled there by carriage and ship seven times, sometimes accompanied by his wife. He visited for the first time in 1827, followed by visits in 1838, 1849, 1855, 1857, 1866, and 1875. He made his last trip at the age of 91.
Montefiore donated large sums of money to promote industry, education and health. Montefiore left an indelible mark on the Jerusalem landscape with the windmill in Yemin Moshe, named after him, which was the first Jewish neighborhood built outside the Old City walls.
The funding came from the estate of an American Jew, Judah Touro, who appointed Montefiore executor of his will. The project, bearing the hallmarks of nineteenth century artisanal revival, aimed to promote productive enterprise in the Yishuv. The builders were brought over from England.
These activities were part of a broader program to enable the Jews of Palestine to become self supporting in anticipation of the establishment of a Jewish homeland. In addition to the windmill (to provide cheap flour to poor Jews), he built a printing press and textile factory, and helped to finance several agricultural colonies. He also attempted to acquire land for Jewish cultivation, but was hampered by Ottoman restrictions on land sale to non–Muslims.”
Wikipedia Online, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses_Montefiore (accessed July 31, 2009)
1840 CE: RENOIR, RODIN, AND THE “FRENCH BENCH”
Impressionism flourishes in France.
Some of the luminaries include: Duffy, Henri Matisse, Claude Monet, and George Braque.
1840 CE: DAMASCUS BLOOD LIBEL
Wikipedia –
“Damascus: On February 5, 1840, Franciscan Capuchin friar Father Thomas and his Greek servant were reported missing, never to be seen again. The French consul Ratti Menton presented the case as one of ritual murder of the blood libel type, as the alleged murder occurred before the Jewish Passover. The Turkish governor supported him in this.
The political situation of the time was complex. Syria was ruled by the Egyptian sultan Muhammad Ali. He was supported by France while Austria and Britain had the aim of restoring Ottoman rule and wished to halt the expansion of French influence in the region.
An investigation was staged, and Solomon Negrin, a Jewish barber, confessed under torture and accused other Jews. Two other Jews died under torture, and one [(Moses Abulafia) not the philosopher Abraham Abulafia] converted to Islam to escape torture. More arrests and atrocities followed, culminating in 63 Jewish children being held hostage and mob attacks on Jewish communities throughout the Middle East.
The Christian funeral procession for Father Thomas (without his body) through the streets of Damascus was widely attended. A tombstone was inscribed “Assassinated by the Jews the 5th of February of the year 1840.” The Arabic translation of the tombstone still stands at the Franciscan church in Damascus.”
Wikipedia Online, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damascus_blood_libel (accessed July 1, 2009)
1840 CE: LORD HENRY PALMERSTON
August 11: England
The Foreign Secretary, in a letter to the ambassador in Constantinople wrote: “There exists...among the Jews...a strong notion that the time is approaching when their nation is to return to Palestine.... I instruct...to strongly recommend to the Turkish Government...to encourage the Jews of Europe to return to Palestine.”
– Eli Birnbaum
1841 CE: WEBSTER BECOMES SECRETARY OF STATE
January: Daniel Webster of New Hampshire appointed by President Harrison (elected November 1840) to be US Secretary of State, a position he was reappointed to by President John Tyler, who succeeded Harrison (February 1841) after Harrison died of pneumonia.
Prominent statesman Webster was originally an attorney who served as legal counsel in several cases that established important constitutional precedents which bolstered the authority of the Federal government.
1842 CE: TEMPLE HAR SINAI
America’s first Reform synagogue was established in Baltimore, Maryland.
1843 CE: B’NAI B’RITH (“SONS OF THE COVENANT”)
–founded in NY
The oldest continuously–operating Jewish Service Organization is founded in NYC by Henry Jones and 11 others on October 13, 1843. Worldwide projects via B’nai Brith International include youth organizations AZA (Aleph Zadik Aleph) and BBG (B’nei Brith Girls) – and through 1990, the formidable Hillel campus operation for Jewish college students.
1843 CE: EITHER/OR
Written in Berlin; published in Copenhagen: Danish philosopher Saren Kierkegaard’s masterpiece published.
Kierkegaard is considered the founder of Christian Existentialism.
(b. May, 1813, Copenhagen; d. November, 1855, Copenhagen)
1844 CE: THE MURDER OF MORMON CHURCH FOUNDER JOSEPH SMITH
–by a mob in Carthage, Illinois
(See 1830 CE: The Mormons entry)
1844 CE: ALEXANDRE DUMAS
–publishes two long–enduring French works, The Three Muskateers and The Count of Monte Cristo.
Dumas was born in 1802 Villers–Cotterets, Aisne, France and died 1870 Puys (near Dieppe, Seine–Maritime, France
1844 CE: FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE BORN
Main article: List of works by Friedrich Nietzsche
The Birth of Tragedy (1872)
On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense (1873)
Untimely Meditations (1876)
Human, All Too Human (1878; additions in 1879, 1880)
Daybreak (1881)
The Gay Science (1882)
Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883–1885)
Beyond Good and Evil (1886)
On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)
The Case of Wagner (1888)
Twilight of the Idols (1888)
The Antichrist (1888)
Ecce Homo (1888)
Nietzsche contra Wagner (1888)
The Will to Power
(unpublished manuscripts edited together by his sister)
b. 1844, Röcken, Lützen, Prussia; d. 1900, Weimer, German Empire
1845 CE: SPIKE
Significant Jewish population spike in Palestine.
The Jewish population in Palestine spurts from about 12,000 in 1845 to 85,000 in 1914.
1845 CE: TEMPLE EMANU–EL OPENS
First reform congregation in New York founded. For a period, it is the largest synagogue in the world. Today it remains a bastion of many New York Jewish social and political luminaries.
1845 CE: SBC
May 8–12: Augusta, Georgia: Southern Baptist Congregation of America founded.
Now the largest Baptist denomination and the largest Protestant body in the USA.
Originally founded in the south, following a split with the north over slavery, the SBC is now national, with 42 regional conventions, although its center of gravity is still in the South.
1845 CE: THE GREAT (POTATO) FAMINE (IRELAND) COMMENCES
The Great Famine (Irish: An Gorta Mór lit: The Great Hunger) was a period of starvation and disease. The seven–year span 1845–1852 was, as a consequence, a period of mass emigration, much of it to America. Over the span of the famine, the population of Ireland was reduced by 20 to 25 percent. Approximately one million of the population died and a million more emigrated from Ireland’s shores. The proximate cause of famine was a potato disease commonly known as late blight.
1845 CE: DAVID LEVY YULEE
–elected to the US Senate
Born David Levy on the island of St. Thomas in the Caribbean, Yulee studied and practiced law in St. Augustine, Florida, where he subsequently represented the Florida territory. He was elected to the US Senate in 1845, the same year that Florida was admitted to the Union.
In 1846, now a US senator, he officially changed his name to David Levy Yulee, adding on his father’s ancestral Sephardic (Jewish) surname.
Yulee was re–elected to the Senate in 1855 and served until January, 1861, when he withdrew from the office to join the Congress of the Confederacy, as Florida had seceded from the Union.
1847 CE: CAHUENGA
Treaty of Cahuenga, followed by Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, secures American control of California from Mexico. At the same time, Utah, Arizona, Nevada and Colorado are carved out of the area and officially become part of the United States.
– after Wikipedia
1847 CE: CHARLOTTE BRONTË, 31, PUBLISHES JANE EYRE
1847 CE: MEYER GUGGENHEIM EMIGRATES
Born in the Jewish ghetto of Lengnau, Switzerland in 1828, 19–year–old Orthodox Jew Meyer Guggenheim arrives in Philadelphia with his small family. Originally a poor peddler of household goods, Meyer and his eventual seven sons segue first into importing lace from Switzerland, then into manufacturing stove polish, then into dealing in lye and, in the meanwhile, still wholesaling the original household goods.
In 1881, Meyer Guggenheim accepts a small interest in two Colorado silver mines in lieu of cash payment for a debt. Step by step he makes inroads in the mining industry in the US and Mexico.
In 1901 Guggenheim and sons gain control of giant American Smelting & Refining (originally founded by William Rockefeller, among others, and currently run by ASARCO).
Half a century later, after WWII, the Guggenheims sell off their mining interests and have subsequently been busy funding sundry architecturally avant garde museums around the world.
1848 CE: THACKERAY WRITES VANITY FAIR
(The book, not the magazine)
William Makepeace Thackeray, an English satirist, writes Vanity Fair, a satirical portrait of English society.
1848 CE: LINA MORGENSTERN
Breslau and Berlin, Germany
Educator and philanthropist. Morgenstern began her work by opening a school for the disadvantaged when she was only 18. She was active in many branches of philanthropy but most of her efforts went into education. She established the first free kitchens in Germany in 1866 as well as a society to help educate and defend the rights of women. She also authored a book on education Das Paradies der Kinderheit.
– Eli Birnbaum
1848 CE: SALANTER
“Salanter” and disciples move from Vilna, Lithuania to Kovno, Lithuania where he founds a yeshiva, over which he presided until 1856.
Rav Yisroel Lipkin (of) Salanter was founder of the Mussar movement (i.e. Ethics to be given the very highest priority) in Orthodox Judaism.
(b. 1809, Zhagory, Lithuania; d. 1883 Konigsberg, German Empire)
1848 CE: ADVANCES IN GERMANY
In every part of Germany, excluding Bavaria, Jews were granted civil rights. As a result, Gabriel Riesser (a Jew and an advocate for Jewish emancipation) was elected vice-president of the Frankfurt Vor Parliament, and became a member of the National Assembly. It must be noted that for the most part, these freedoms existed only on paper and were not fully enforced.
1848 CE: KARL MARX
Born May 5, 1818: Trier, Prussia. German philosopher, political economist, historian, political theorist, sociologist, communist and revolutionary (d. 1883)
His ideas are credited for the foundation of (modern) communism.
–Co–founder of Marxism with Engels.
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles”
– The Communist Manifesto 1848
Both his parents were originally Jewish, but he kept his distance from all religion which he called the “opium of the people.” He died in London in 1883.
Marx converted to Protestantism as a child. He embraced Lutheran anti–Judaism. Marx’s theories were published under the title Das Kapital in 1867.
1849 CE: DICKENS COMMENCES DAVID COPPERFIELD SERIALIZATION
May: Charles Dickens begins the monthly serialization of his new novel. In the work, the young protagonist David Copperfield (who is the first–person narrator) describes his despair as a young double orphan. His financially–strapped (and generally quite toxic) surviving stepfather forces him to go into severely arduous work in his London shoe–blacking factory. Copperfield eventually runs away – traveling by foot the eighty miles from London to Dover.
The tale is a saga directly out of Dickens’ own desperation–filled childhood, the severity of which he had kept to himself. Even his own children believe that work is essentially fiction. Dickens had written seven novels before David Copperfield and would write seven more after.
1850 CE: ROMAN CATHOLIC IMMIGRATION STRONG
USA: By 1850, Roman Catholics as a percentage of the US population had significantly increased from its tiny minority position at the time of the Revolution and the original Thirteen Colonies to an increasingly significant portion of the population. (The original colonists were overwhelmingly Protestant, as more often than not; they had come to America to flee Catholic persecution in Europe).
As regards the Jews, in particular, the Roman Catholic priests regrettably often brought with them fundamentalist “theological baggage” from Europe, hazardous to the health of the Jewish life in America. For the Jews, by the mid–1800s, with Catholic immigration ascendant, the “ecumenical honeymoon” from the time of the Revolutionary War, would be long gone. Toxicity would seep out of Catholic churches and Catholic schoolyards, and into society at large.
1850 CE: MELEE AT SYNAGOGUE
While Isaac Mayer Wise was serving as Rabbi of the Beth El Synagogue in Albany New York, he asserted in an address to a reform congregation that he did not believe in the coming of the Messiah nor the resurrection of the dead. Members of the Albany synagogue demanded that he be fired, he refused, and congregants forcefully ascended the pulpit. A fistfight broke out which included Wise and the synagogue president. The police had to intervene and close the synagogue. Wise decided to moved to Cincinnati where he founded Congregation Bnai Jeshurun and the first Reform seminary.
– Eli Birnbaum
1850 CE: RICHARD WAGNER
–publishes his first anti–Semitic article Das Judentum in der Musik. The noted composer attacked the Jews, denying the existence of Jewish cultural creativity. He was a strong supporter of political anti–Semitism.
1851 CE: NY TIMES FOUNDED
The current publisher, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., a member of the family (descendants of Adolph Ochs) that has de facto controlled the paper since 1896…
Although controlled by this metropolitan area Jewish family, many in the Jewish community view the Times as habitually leaning over backwards towards the Palestinian perspective in its coverage of the Middle East scene.
1851 CE: AZRIEL HILDESHEIMER
Germany: Rabbi, educator, and leader of Orthodox Jewry. Hildesheimer was one of the few Orthodox rabbis to have both a secular and religious education. After studying Semitics, philosophy, and history he received his doctorate in 1846 from the University of Halle. He served as a Rabbi in Eisenstadt where he was criticized for establishing a school, which also taught secular subjects. Though a strong opponent of the Reform movement, Hildesheimer tried to find common ground between the Reform and Orthodox movements in Hungary but eventually gave up in frustration. Moving to Berlin he became Rabbi of congregation Adass Jisroel and founded the first rabbinical seminary in Germany where he implemented the philosophies of his friend, Samson Rafael Hirsch. Hildesheimer was an active supporter of Jewish life in Eretz Israel and helped improve educational standards there as well as establishing an orphanage in 1879. He was the author of numerous responsa, and edited a new edition of Halachot Gedolot, a halachic code belonging to the Geonic period.
– Eli Birnbaum
1851 CE: HERMAN MELVILLE, 32, WRITES MOBY DICK
1852 CE: MOUNT SINAI HOSPITAL
January 16: New York, USA
The first Jewish Hospital in the United States (originally known as “Jews Hospital of New York”) was founded by a group of mostly German Jewish immigrants. One of its founders was Samson Simson, one of the first Jewish lawyers in New York City who had studied under Aaron Burr. That same year, he also helped found the Beth Hamedrash Hagodal Synagogue (Norfolk Street, Lower East Side, NYC). Other contributors included Samuel Myer Isaacs, who helped found Maimonides College in Philadelphia, and Adolphus Simeon Solomons, who in 1881 helped Clara Barton found the Red Cross.
1854 CE: “THE BLACK SHIPS”
U.S. Commodore Perry’s “Black Ships” force the opening (sort of) of Japan to the West.
Perry sailed into Uraga, Japan harbor in 1853. His superior force enabled him to force Japan to open trade with the USA (as opposed to primarily with just Portuguese, Dutch and Chinese groups).
Perry’s older ships – the Mississippi, Plymouth, Saratoga and Susquehana – had black sails, presumably to mask the black smoke stains from billowing black smoke from their on–board coal fired power plants.
1854 CE: ALFRED LORD TENNYSON WRITES “THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE”
Paragraph 1 of 6:
Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
“Forward, the Light Brigade!
“Charge for the guns!” he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
Paragraph 6 of 6:
When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honor the charge they made,
Honor the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred.
copied from Poems of Alfred Tennyson,
J. E. Tilton and Company, Boston, 1870
1854 CE: HENRY DAVID THOREAU, 37, WRITES WALDEN
–a memoir about the purity of the hermit’s life
Thoreau was born (1817) and died (1862) in Concord, Massachusetts.
1854CE: ANTON RUBINSTEIN
Russia: Renowned Russian pianist and composer. He was a rival of Liszt and a pupil of Chopin. Rubinstein founded the Russian Music Society and became the first head of the St. Petersberg Conservatory. His works included ten symphonies, among them the Ocean Symphony and over 100 vocal pieces containing such operas such as The Demon (1871), The Maccabees (1875), Nero (1879), Sulamith (1883) and Moses (1887).
– after Eli Birnbaum
1854 CE: IMMACULATE CONCEPTION DEFINED AS DOGMA
December 8, 1954: Rome
–by Pope Pius IX in his constitution Ineffiblis Deus.
It was apparently not dogma prior, notwithstanding the Feast of The Immaculate Conception having been established in 1476 by Pope Sixtus IV.
Not until post–Holocaust (1945), post–Establishment of Israel (1948), post–Sinai Campaign (1956), post–Nostre Aetate (1965), post–Six Day War (June 1967), would the trend reverse. The lighting—and Western World –hailed—Israeli victories seemingly against–all–odds resonated globally. Possibly pivoting on this June, 1967 point, with the Holocaust and the resurgent State of Israel as counter–point backdrops, the toxicity would start subsiding.
The Jews had, in the meanwhile, gained prominence in sundry American fields—against significant cultural resistance. Post 1967, soft anti–Semitism’s hold on various segments of the populace would erode. Old canards, generally historically Church–inspired and subtly encouraged, would tend to gradually, but steadily, be upended and trumped by incontrovertible reality. The Jews of America were now rolling.
1855 CE: SØREN KIERKEGAARD
–Founder of Christian existentialism
1855 CE: JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER, 16, LEARNS BOOKKEEPING
–single and double–entry
–at Folsom Commercial College in Cleveland.
He would later found Standard Oil.
A founder of both The University of Chicago and Rockefeller University (Manhattan), as well as the prime benefactor of Spelman College (Atlanta, Georgia) and Denison University (Granville, Ohio), Rockefeller was a devoted Baptist.
(b. July, 1839; d. May, 1937)
1855 CE: GEORGES BIZET, 16, COMPOSES HIS SYMPHONY IN C
France: b. 1838; d. 1875. According to some, he left explicit instructions that Symphony C was never to be performed. His wishes were respected—until 1935.
A “Romantic Era” composer as well as a pianist, Bizet will also produce the opera “Carmen,” among other works.
1856 CE: GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, 35, COMPLETES MADAME BOVARY
France: His first – and greatest – novel (which would make it the greatest novel of a great novelist). A five-year endeavor to write, it was serialized in the Revue de Paris that year.
(b. December, 1821 Rouen, France; d. May, 1880 Rouen, France)
1856 CE: URIAH LEVY
–attains rank of commodore in the US Navy.
Born in Philadelphia, and the grandson of Jonas Philips who had fought in the Revolutionary War, Uriah Phillips Levy led a storied life, which impacted America on multiple levels.
Among other achievements, Levy fought off anti–Semitism repeatedly as he advanced in the US Navy (primarily combat service: War of 1812). Levy went on to attain the rank of commodore.
He was instrumental in abolishing the practice of flogging in the US Navy, which was formally abolished by Congress in 1850.
Subsequent to his naval career, Levy, an admirer of Jefferson, purchased and restored Monticello, Jefferson’s estate, and ultimately bequeathed it to the American people.
Moving to the Jewish communal front, among other endeavors Levy was a founder in 1852 of the Washington Hebrew Congregation in the nation’s capital. The cornerstone of its larger building was laid in 1897 by President William McKinley.
(b. April, 1792; d. March, 1862)
1856 CE: HURVA SYNAGOGUE
The Hurva synagogue, located in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, was Jerusalem’s main Ashkenazi synagogue from the 18th until the 20th century.
The synagogue’s first construction began c. 1700 under the auspices of Rabbi Judah the Hassid, head of a group of 300 Ashkenazi Jews from Poland. After their failure to pay the debts on the half–constructed synagogue, Arab riots ensued, which resulted in the expulsion of the Jews from portions of the city, and the synagogue consequently fell into ruins.
The synagogue was restarted under Ibrahim Passha in 1836 and was finally completed in 1856–1864 period. Moses Montefiore played a role in its development.
Designed in a grand neo–Byzantine style; it is one of the largest buildings in the Old City. The historically important Ramban Synagogue is nearby in Hurva Square.
The Hurva was destroyed by a Jordanian shell in the course of the 1948 War. After the recapture of Jerusalem in 1967, discussions commenced regarding its rebuilding. Thirty–eight years later, commencing in 2005, a four–year rebuilding program was begun.
Hurva; means destroyed, as the synagogue had “gained a reputation” over the centuries. Its original name is unknown.
Thus the “destroyed synagogue” ends up with “life after death”—repeatedly.
1856 CE: JEWS COLLEGE
November 10: London
Jews College was opened by Rabbi Nathan M. Adler. Its main goals were to offer courses and training in both Jewish and secular subjects – as well as to establish a Jewish secondary school.
– after Eli Birnbaum
1858 CE: 6–YEAR–OLD EDGARDO MORTARA SEIZED
June 23: Bologna (now, northern Italy) then part of the Papal States: Police arrive at the home of a Jewish couple, Salomone and Marianna Padovani Mortara, to seize one of their eight children, six–year–old Edgardo. The police then transport him to Rome to be raised as a Catholic, ultimately in a house for Catholic converts.
The police had orders from the (Vatican) Holy Office authorities in Rome, authorized by Pope Pius IX. Apparently, during an illness of Edgardo, the Catholic servant girl of the Mortaras had (illegally) unilaterally ‘baptized’ him. Since he was now, in Church eyes, a Catholic, the Vatican advised the Mortaras that they could not keep their own son, unless they converted to Catholicism. The Mortaras declined the invitation; Edgardo’s six–year–old mind was the Vatican’s to mold, which they did.
[For the entire convoluted and quite–sordid saga, which continues “to have wings” to this day, almost 70 years after Edgardo’s death in 1940, see David Kertzer’s 1997 book, The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara.]
1858 CE: OATH OF PARLIAMENT
July 26: London: Lionel (Nathan) de Rothschild takes the oath of office / British Parliament
–with covered head, substituting–in a Hebrew word for God for the ordinary form of the oath, thereby becoming the first Jewish member of the British Parliament (House of Commons branch.)
Lionel Nathan’s son Nathan Meyer de Rothschild became the first Jewish member of the House of Lords seven years later in 1865 (courtesy of Queen Victoria).
1858 CE: THE FIRST OF THE “LINCOLN–DOUGLAS DEBATES”
Aug 20: Illinois: The first of a series of seven debates (in seven different Illinois towns) for the senate seat from Illinois.
Lincoln, anti–slavery, lost to Douglas, pro–slavery.
But the debates propelled Lincoln onto the national stage.
1858 CE: EMILE DURKHEIM BORN
[b. 1858, Épinal, France; d. 1917, Paris, France]
A descendant of a French rabbinical family, he became a noted sociologist. He explored suicide, religion, the conscience, and “anonymity” by using scientific research methods.
– Eli Birnbaum
1858 CE: MAX PLANCK BORN
April, 1858: Kiel, Holstein (German Federation)
Major German physicist, and a preeminent founder of the quantum theory.
Nobel Prize in Physics, 1918.
(d. October, 1947: Gottingen, West Germany)
1858 CE: HANNAH SOLOMON
[b. 1858, Chicago; d. 1942, Chicago]
Civic leader and founder of the National Council of Jewish Women (1893) Solomon was elected as the Council’s first president and served until 1905. Together with and Susan B. Anthony she represented the Council of Women of the United States at a convention of the International Council of Women in Berlin in 1904. In an effort to help new immigrants she organized the Bureau of Personal Service in Chicago.
1859 CE: DARWINISM!
England: On the Origin of Species published by Darwin and Wallace
The theory proposes the inter–related theories of
DARWINISM: “evolution” and “natural selection”
Darwinism is a self–contained proposition, and does not entertain/incorporate the possibility of a transcendent dynamic(s) guiding/impacting/tweaking its twin dynamics.
Thus, while Darwinism is currently absolutely quite “politically correct” in scientific circles, “the plot may indeed be thicker” than the current conventional scientific wisdom.
Note: Summa Metaphysica (by Birnbaum) proposes that the proposed dynamics “Quest for Potential” and “Extraordinariation” transcend “Darwinism” (although Darwinism is a subcomponent).
Darwin: Born February, 1809, Shropshire, England; died April 1882, Kent, England.
1859 CE: HENRI BERGSON BORN
[b. 1859, Paris, France; d. 1941, Paris, France]
Mystic philosopher. He disavowed platonic doctrine and championed intuition rather than strict rationalization, as well as the optimistic place of man in nature. His greatest works are “Creative Evolution,” “Time and Free Will,” and “Two Sources of Morality and Religion.” He won the Nobel Prize in 1927.
– after Eli Birnbaum
1859 CE: GALATZ
April 14: Romania
Jews were accused of taking blood from a Christian child (allegedly for the baking of matzos), though not of killing him. Fifteen “culprits” were arrested. The next day a mob broke into the synagogue. They killed some of the worshippers, destroyed some fifty scrolls, and demolished the synagogue. The fifteen were soon released with no convictions, yet the government refused to allow the synagogue to be rebuilt for nearly twenty years.
– Eli Birnbaum
1860 CE: FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE PUBLISHES
…a 136–page book entitled NOTES on NURSING...
It will sell millions of copies worldwide (more later on her)
(b. May, 1820, Florence, Grand Duchy of Tuscany;
d. August, 1910., London, United Kingdom)
1860 CE: GUSTAV MAHLER
[b. 1860; d. 1911]
Austria–Bohemia:
Major modern (born-Jewish)composer of nine symphonies. His eighth, “Symphony of a Thousand,” requires one thousand performers. Mahler was ‘compelled’ to convert to Christianity as a prerequisite to accepting the post of director of the Vienna Court Opera. His most important song cycles are Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (1884) and Kindertotenlieder (1900-02). During the last 4 years of his life he conducted the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic.
– Eli Birnbaum
1860 CE: SPANISH-MOROCCAN WAR
Following an attack by the Spaniards, 400 Jews were killed in the city of Tetouan, (in northern Morocco) in anti–Jewish riots. During the war many Jews took refuge on the Mediterranean island of in Gibraltar.
– Eli Birnbaum
1860 CE: SIMON DUBNOW BORN
[b. 1860, Belarus; murdered 1933, Rumbula, Riga, Latvia Nazi massacre]
Prominent Jewish historian of recent times. He wrote two separate histories: “History of the Jews” and “History of the Jews of Russia and Poland.” He believed that the Jews had a cultural autonomy within other nations, and therefore should all speak Yiddish as a common language. Dubnow also encouraged Sholem Aleichem in his writing. Dubnov was killed by the Nazis in Riga, Latvia in December 1941.
– Eli Birnbaum
1860 CE: ALLIANCE ISRAÉLITE UNIVERSELLE
(AIU) founded in Paris.
Jewish defense, cultural, and educational organization
The organization is closely associated with the standardization of the Ladino language.
(Ladino, a.k.a. Judaeo–Spanish is a Romance Language derived from Old Spanish, and heavily influenced by Hebrew, Aramaic, Turkish and Greek—all countries where the Sephardic expellees (from Spain) settled.
1861 CE: QUEEN VICTORIA’S HUSBAND, PRINCE ALBERT
–dies suddenly of typhoid fever (at age 42)
Victoria will wear only black for the next forty years, until her death.
Prince Albert: b. August, 1819, Schlos Rosenau, Coburg, Saxe Colberg Saalfeld; d. December 1861, Windsor Castle, Berkshire, England
Queen Victoria: b. May, 1819, Kensington Palace, London; d. January, 1901, Osborne House, Isle of Wright
1861 CE: EMPRESS DOWAGER CIXI, THE “DRAGON LADY” GAINS CONTROL OF THE QING DYNASTY
De facto, she would rule China for 46+ years, during two separate spans, 1862–1874, and 1875–1908. Many historians consider her as being both one of the most formidable women—and one of the most adroit politicians—in modern history.
The Qing Dynasty, the last ruling dynasty of China, is not to be confused with the Qin Dynasty (c. 221–206 BCE), the very first dynasty of imperial China. The Qing Dynasty, spanning 1644 to 1912, followed the extraordinary Ming Dynasty. The Qing Dynasty was founded by the minority Manchus, and was also known as the Manchu Dynasty.
1861 CE: AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
(1861 CE – 1864 CE)
Like all civil wars, very painfully pits “brother against brother” often literally from the same nuclear family…catastrophic casualty toll…625,000 soldier deaths alone…the penultimate American national trauma. An unmitigated disaster.
However, it does end slavery.
150,000 Jews in America at this time.
5:1 ratio: Jewish service in the Union: Jewish service in the Confederacy.
Nine Jewish generals and 21 Jewish colonels total for the two warring sides.
1862 CE: JUDAH P. BENJAMIN
–becomes Security of State of the CSA
(Confederate States of America)
He was an American politician and lawyer. Benjamin held the following positions:
– Member of the Louisiana House of Representatives;
– US Senator from Louisiana;
– Three successive Cabinet posts in the government of the Confederate States of America
Judah Benjamin was born in Saint Thomas as a British subject during the British occupation of the Danish West Indies (now US Virgin Islands). (b. August 6, 1811; d. May 6, 1884), to an English Jew, Phillip Benjamin, and, a Portuguese Jewess, his wife, Rebecca Mendes. All three emigrated to the US in North and South Carolina. His father was one of the founders of the first Reform congregation in the United States in 1824 – the “Reformed Society of Israelites for Promoting True Principles of Judaism According to Its Purity and Spirit” in Charleston.
He attended Fayetteville Academy in North Carolina, and he entered Yale Law School at 14. Benjamin also gathered a reputation as a great debater. Benjamin declined an offer by Franklin Pierce to sit on the Supreme Court in 1854.
Midway through a debate on slavery, Judah was accused for being an “Israelite in Egyptian clothing” by Radical Republican Benjamin Wade of Ohio. Benjamin reply was, “It is true that I am a Jew, and when my ancestors were receiving their Ten Commandments from the immediate Deity, amidst the thundering and lightning of Mt. Sinai, the ancestors of my opponent were herding swine in the forests of Great Britain.”
(Author – With fairness to Wade, his “Israelite” remark was not pejorative, but political.)
1862 CE: EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION (FIRST)
Britannica –
“Issued by U.S. Pres. Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, that freed the slaves of the Confederate states in rebellion against the Union (see original text). Before the start of the American Civil War many people and leaders of the North had been primarily concerned merely with stopping the extension of slavery into western territories that would eventually achieve statehood within the Union.
With the secession of the Southern states and the consequent start of the Civil War, however, the continued tolerance of Southern slavery by Northerners seemed no longer to serve any constructive political purpose. Emancipation thus quickly changed from a distant possibility to an imminent and feasible eventuality. Lincoln had declared that he meant to save the Union as best he could—by preserving slavery, by destroying it, or by destroying part and preserving part. Just after the Battle of Antietam (Sept. 17, 1862) he issued his proclamation calling on the revolted states to return to their allegiance before the next year, otherwise their slaves would be declared free men. No state returned, and the threatened declaration was issued on January 1, 1863.
Two months before the war ended—in February 1865—Lincoln told portrait painter Francis B. Carpenter that the Emancipation Proclamation was ‘the central act of my administration, and the greatest event of the nineteenth century.’ ”
Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/185468/Emancipation–Proclamation (accessed November 13, 2008)
1862 CE: MOSES HESS
[b. 1812, Bonn (now Germany, then France); d, 1875
Jewish philosopher, socialist, and one of the founders of Zionism
Wrote “Rome and Jerusalem.” After his belief in the panacea of socialism waned, he came to the conclusion that anti-Semitism would not be cured by assimilation. Instead, he held that Jews should build their own nation and society in an independent Eretz Israel.
1862 CE: IVAN TURGENEV WRITES FATHERS AND SONS
[b. 1818, Oryol, Russian Empire; d. 1883, Bougival, Seine-et-Oise]
1862 CE: GENERAL ULYSSES S. GRANT
December 17: In issuing his infamous order 11, he ordered all “Jews as a class” expelled from his lines. In New York City 7,000 Jews marched in protest against his decision. Lincoln rescinded Grant’s order.
1863 CE: SEVENTH DAY ADVENTIST CHURCH FOUNDED
May 23, 1863: Battle Creek, Michigan
Distinguished by its observance of Saturday, the original seventh day of the Judeo–Christian week, as the Sabbath, and by its emphasis on the imminent Second Coming.
The movement has worldwide membership of over 17 million people, and has a missionary presence in over 200 countries.
1863 CE: HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
–writes a poem of the American Revolution
“Listen, my children, and you shall hear,
of the midnight ride of Paul Revere...”
– “Paul Revere”
1865 CE: LEE’S FAREWELL ADDRESS
Born Jan. 19, 1807; died Oct. 12, 1870
April 10: Appomattox Court House, VA: Robert Lee, General–in–Chief, Confederate States of America.
“So far from engaging in a war to perpetuate slavery, I am rejoiced that slavery is abolished. I believe it will be greatly for the interests of the South.”
Britannica –
“Confederate general, commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, the most successful of the Southern armies during the American Civil War (1861–65). In February 1865 he was given command of all the Southern armies. His surrender at Appomattox Courthouse April 9, 1865, is commonly viewed as signifying the end of the Civil War.
Robert Edward Lee was the fourth child of Colonel Henry Lee and Ann Hill Carter. On both sides, his family had produced many of the dominant figures in the ruling class of Virginia…With all his aristocratic connections, Robert still lacked the advantages of wealth…
Unable to afford a university education, Lee obtained an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point, where his high aspirations and native gifts produced what a fellow cadet, the Confederate general Joseph Johnston, called his natural superiority. Always near the top of his class, he won the appointment to corps adjutant, the highest rank a cadet could attain, and was graduated second in his class in 1829. With handsome features, a massive head, and superb build, he combined dignity with kindness and sympathy with good humor, to win, as Johnston said, ‘warm friendship and command high respect.’
The time came on Sunday, April 2, when his defensive lines were stretched so thin that the far right broke under massive assaults, and Lee was forced to evacuate Petersburg and at last uncover Richmond. When the survivors of his army pulled out of the trenches, an agonizing week of a forlorn retreat began for him; his men fell out from hunger, animals dropped in the traces, and units dissolved under demoralized officers. At Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865, his way west was blocked and there was nothing left except to bear with dignity the ordeal of surrender, which was made less painful for him by Grant’s considerate behavior.”
Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/334566/Robert–E–Lee (accessed November 13, 2008)
1865 CE: SWEDEN
Removes all anti–Jewish edicts.
1865 CE: METHODIST PREACHER WILLIAM BOOTH FOUNDS THE SALVATION ARMY
–vowing to bring the gospel into the streets to the most desperate and needy.
1865 CE: LINCOLN ASSASSINATED
Good Friday, Apr 14: 10:15pm: At Ford’s Theatre in Washington, DC.
…by John Wilkes Booth, a stage actor at the theatre, and family friend of the owner (John T. Ford). Booth was pro–South and intensely pro–slavery.
1865 CE: TOLSTOY PUBLISHES WAR AND PEACE
Epic novel relating the story of Russian society during the Napoleonic era, via the lives of five aristocratic families.
The “first version” (1865) issued under the title “1805” had an attractively happy ending. The “second version” (completed 1869) under the title “War and Peace,” did not.
There are other significant diversions between the two versions. Both versions have been widely translated and disseminated, to add some confusion to the iconic work.
Both works were originally written in Tolstoy’s native Russian, with some narratives in French.
Tolstoy’s other iconic opus, the more classic European–style novel “Anna Karenina,” would follow in 1877.
1865 CE: SALVATION ARMY FOUNDED
–in London (originally as the East London Christian Mission)
–by William and Catherine Booth
Known for its evangelical, social and charitable work, the Salvation Army operates in 118 countries. Still headquartered in London, it is sometimes colloquially referred to as “Sally Army” in parts of the British Commonwealth.
1866 CE: BASEBALL – LIPMAN PIKE
Was hired to play for the Philadelphia Athletics for $20 a month, becoming the first Jewish professional baseball player. That same year he hit 6 home runs in a single game, five of them in a row. In 1870 he joined the Brooklyn Atlantics.
(b. 1845; d. 1893)
1866 CE: SWITZERLAND RATIFIES
January 14: Jewish rights were ratified. Switzerland was the scene of some of the worst massacres during the Black Plague and a hotbed of anti-Jewish edicts. This legislation was only passed after the United States, Britain, and France refused to sign treaties until the anti-Jewish edicts were repealed.
January 15: Jews were finally granted equal rights. It took another seven years for the Swiss Constitution to be changed.
1867 CE: “SEWARD’S FOLLY”
...Mar 10, 1867… Alaska purchased from Russia (Tsar Alexander II) by US Secretary of State William Seward (Andrew Johnson, president)…for $7,200,000 or approximately 1.9 cents per acre…
1867 CE: ALFRED NOBEL, 34, PATENTS DYNAMITE
1868 CE: THE “MEIJI RESTORATION”
–in Japan a.k.a. The Meiji Revolution or Renewal:
–a series of political, social and industrial transformations—directly or indirectly as a consequence of Commodore Perry’s Black Ship July, 1853 opening of Japan—that led to the restoration of Japan as a “world stage” power under the stewardship Emperor Meiji (reigned 1867–1912).
The Meiji Constitution was promulgated in 1889; Meiji himself dies in 1912 after the Sino–Japanese (1894–5) and Russo–Japanese (1904–5) wars, which led, as well, to the (temporary) incorporation of Korea into Japan 1910.
1868 CE: DISRAELI 1.0
First (British) Prime Ministership of Disraeli (Feb – Dec 1868).
Also a literary figure, his first published work was Vivian Grey (1826) first anonymously... approximately 18 known works.
(Benjamin Disraeli was born to Jewish parents; religiously, it gets complicated later).
1869 CE: CANAL
Suez Canal opened November 17, 1869 in the Middle East…
Financed primarily by French investors… the Canal (which runs through Egypt) linked the Mediterranean and the Red Sea… The 103 mile–long Suez Canal shortened the distance from the Orient to Europe by 5,000 miles… the Canal was 10 years in construction… Egypt’s strategic importance ascends.
1869 CE: GOLDMAN, SACHS
Marcus Goldman & Co. (later Goldman, Sachs, Investment Bankers). Founded by German–Jewish immigrant Marcus Goldman.
...specializing in Commercial Paper (...When his son–in–law Samuel Sachs joined him in the 1890s, the expanded firm name was adopted).
Note: at the time of its founding, Goldman, Sachs was dwarfed in size by other German–Jewish investment bankers of the day, like Seligman...
1869 CE: MICHAEL BAKUNIN
Russian anarchist Bakunin publishes anti–Semitic piece in Le Reveil du Peuple.
[b. 1876, Pryamukhino, Torzhok, Russian Empire; d. 1876, Bern, Switzerland]
1870 CE: PAPAL INFALLIBILITY DOGMA
–codified by the First Vatican Council (1870), Pope Pius IX presiding.
1870 CE: CHRISTIAN SCIENCE CHURCH FOUNDED
–in Boston, MA.
–by Mary Baker Eddy, author of the book Science and Health with Key to Scriptures, offers a unique interpretation to the Christian faith.
The church, headquartered in Boston, currently has membership estimated at between 100,000–400,000. Spiritual healing a key component.
The well–regarded Christian Science Monitor is its flagship newspaper.
Mary Baker Eddy: b. July, 1821; d. December, 1910.
1870 CE: ITALY INVADES THE PAPAL STATES
September 10: The Italian army under the command of General Raffaele Cadorna and under the ultimate direction of King Victor Emanuel II crossed the papal frontier, and by September 20 Rome and Latium were annexed to the Kingdom of Italy.
Quirinal Palace, formerly the pope’s residence, became the royal palace of the King of Italy. Pius IX was pope at the time.
59 years later, the Lateran Treaty of 1929 created the State of the Vatican City, forming the current sovereign territory of the pope.
1871 CE: KING VICTOR EMANUEL
Disregarded the Pope’s objection to Emanuel’s razing of the Rome ghetto.
1871 CE: BISMARCK
Germany: Otto von Bismarck (1815–1898), “the Iron Chancellor,” presides over German unification and the second German Empire.
The “Second Reich” will span 1871–1918. The German Empire is the name commonly used in English to describe Germany from the period of the unification of Germany (by Chancellor Bismarck in 1871) and the proclamation of Wilhelm I as Emperor (Jan 18, 1871) until 1918-19 when it transitioned to the German Republic after its defeat in WWI and the abdication of Wilhelm II (November 28, 1918).
1871 CE: AUGUST ROHLING
German Catholic theologian.
[b. 1839, Westphalia, Prussia; d. 1931, Salzburg, Austria]
An arch anti–Semite, he published his Talmud Jude in which he claimed Jews were encouraged to cheat and attack Christians. It was often quoted in the ritual murder trial in Tiza–Eszlar (1882). He was the author of other anti–Semitic literature and was largely responsible for the outbreak of blood libels at the end of the century. In 1883 Rohling lost a libel suit against a Viennese rabbi who accused him of not having the ability to even read the Talmud. Though Rohling was dismissed from his position at the University, his book continued to gain widespread “popularity.”
1871 CE: “DR. LIVINGSTONE, I PRESUME?”
David Livingstone (b. Mar 19, 1813; d. May 4, 1873)
A Scottish Congregationalist pioneer medical missionary with the London Missionary Society and explorer in central Africa. He was the first European to see Mosi–oa–Tunya (Victoria Falls), to which he gave the English name in honor of his monarch, (Queen Victoria). He is the subject of the meeting with H.M. Stanley, Welsh–American journalist and explorer, which gave rise to the popular quotation (noted in the paragraph header), “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”
1872 CE: CLAUDE MONET PAINTS IMPRESSION, SUNRISE
–giving name to the impressionist movement
The critics hate it. The subject of the iconic painting, crafted with loose brushstrokes, which suggest, rather than delineate, is a harbor in France, Le Havre.
Monet explained:
“Landscape is nothing but an impression, and an instantaneous one, hence this label that was given us, by the way because of me. I had sent a thing done in le Havre, from my window, sun in the mist and a few masts of boats sticking up in the foreground… They asked me for a title for the catalogue, it couldn’t really be taken for a view of Le Havre, and I said: ‘Put Impression.’”
1872 CE: NEW YORK
Discrimination against Jews begins in what is now City College of New York.
1873 CE: LEVI STRAUSS AWARDED US PATENT #139121
Britannica –
“The company traces its origin to Levi Strauss (1829–1902), a Bavarian immigrant who arrived in San Francisco in 1850 during the Gold Rush, bringing dry goods for sale to miners. Hearing of the miners’ need for durable pants, Strauss hired a tailor to make garments out of tent canvas. (Later, denim was substituted, and copper riveting was added to pocket seams.) A merchandising partnership of Strauss and his two brothers, Jonas and Louis, was formed in 1853… By the 1960s Levi’s and other jeans—once worn chiefly by Western cowboys—became popular worldwide…”
Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/568522/Levi–Strauss accessed November 18, 2008)
1873 CE: EUROPEAN MARKET CRASH
Jews became the scapegoat for the over-speculation, which occurred after the Franco–Prussian War.
1873 CE: ISAAC WISE AND THE UNION OF AMERICAN HEBREW CONGREGATIONS (REFORM MOVEMENT)
Born March 29, 1819, Bohemia, Austrian Empire; died March 26, 1900, Cincinnati, Ohio.
Britannica –
“A rabbi whose goal of uniting American Jewry made him the greatest organizer of Reform Jewish institutions in the United States.
After serving as a rabbi for two years in Radnice, Bohemia, Wise immigrated in 1846 to Albany, N.Y., where he was a rabbi for eight years. His congregation there was the first in the United States to employ family pews; these became a standard institution in Reform Judaism. In 1854 Wise accepted the pulpit of Bene Yeshurun in Cincinnati, a post he retained for the rest of his life.
Although Wise failed in his efforts to unite American Jews of all persuasions, he did bring about great unanimity among Reform Jews. In addition, he succeeded in adapting Reform Judaism to American life. An astute politician, he propagandized tirelessly for centralized Reform institutions in his English–language weekly, the American Israelite; in his German–language paper, Die Deborah; and in many rabbinical conferences.
The fruits of his efforts were the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (see American Hebrew Congregations, Union of), a confederation of synagogues in the Midwest and South that grew into an association of American and Canadian Reform congregations; its educational arm, Hebrew Union College (now Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion), the first permanent American rabbinical college, of which Wise was president until his death; and the Central Conference of American Rabbis, which became the legislative body of Reform Judaism. Wise served as president of the Central Conference until his death.
Because of the diversity of Reform prayer books, Wise tried to compile a standard work and in 1857 published the Minhag America (“American Usage”).”
Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/645934/Isaac–Mayer–Wise (accessed November 18, 2008)
1874 CE: DISRAELI 2.0
Second (British) Prime Ministership of Disraeli
(Feb 1874 – Apr 1880).
Over the objections of his Cabinet, and without Parliament’s approval, Disraeli obtains a short–term loan from Lionel de Rothschild to purchase a 44% stake in the Suez Canal (1875), even though the French (rival super–power) would remain with a majority share.
1875 CE: HUC
Hebrew Union College founded in Cincinnati.
Reform: oldest Jewish seminary in the New World...
Campuses: Cincinnati, NY, L.A., Jerusalem... Founded by Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise in Cincinnati; notable faculty have included Magnes, Glueck, Butenweiser and Lauterbach, among others.
75 years later merged with Jewish Institute of Religion (1950).
(A year after HUC founded in Cincinnati, Temple Mikve Israel, a preeminent southern synagogue, founded in Savannah, Georgia in 1876.)
1875 CE: ELCHONON WASSERMAN BORN
[b. Briz, Lithuania, 1941; murdered 1941 by Nazi collaborators in Kovno, Lithuania]
Jewish leader and talmudic scholar. An outstanding teacher, Wasserman joined the Kollel of the Chafetz Hayim (see 1838) and was considered his spiritual heir. His Yeshiva at Baranovitch was considered one of the most famous in Eastern Europe. Wasserman was one of the main leaders of Agudat Israel in Europe. A brilliant organizer and instructor, he established a grade system for rabbinical studies. He supported and contributed works to the Mussar movement. He was caught with a number of other rabbis while visiting Kovno by the Nazis and executed. His last words were: “The fire which consumes our bodies...will be that which the people of Israel will arise to a new life. His works include Ikvita D’mashicha, Ohel Torah, and Shiurei Rav Elchanan. He was a frequent contributor to the journal Sharei Tzion. He died in 1942.
– after Eli Birnbaum
1875 CE: THOMAS MANN BORN
June, 1875: Lubeck, Germany: German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and 1929 Nobel Prize winner in Literature.
When Hitler came to power in 1933 the anti–fascist Mann fled to Switzerland. He lived in the US from 1939 (when WWII broke out) until 1952. Then, he returned to Switzerland (d. Switzerland, 1955).
Among his many important works:
1897 | Little Her Friedemann |
1897 | “The Clown” |
1901 | Buddenbrooks |
1903 | Tristan |
1903 | Tonio Kröger |
1911 | Felix Kroll |
1912 | Death in Venice |
1924 | The Magic Mountain |
1929 | “Mario and the Magician” |
1933–43 | Joseph and His Brothers |
1938 | The Coming Victory of Democracy |
1939 | Lotte in Weimer: The Beloved Returns |
1943 | Listen, Germany! |
1947 | Doctor Faustus |
1951 | The Holy Sinner |
1954 | The Black Swan |
1954 | Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man: The Early Years |
1875 CE: GEORG CANTOR
[b. 1845, St. Petersburg, Russian empire; d. 1918, Halle, Saxony, German Empire]
German Mathematician, inventor of Set Theory, published his New Theory of the Meaning of Infinity. In it he postulates his concept of different kinds of infinity, which forms the basis for the theory of relativity.
1876 CE: GRAHAM BELL
[b. 1847, Edinburgh, Scotland; d. 1922, Beinn Bhreagh, Nova Scotia, Canada]
Mar 10: Alexander Graham Bell to Watson:
“Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you”
–the first successful telephone transmission of clear speech.
[note: Antonio Meucci had filed a “patent caveat” (# 3335) in the US Patent Office six years earlier, Dec 28, 1871, describing communication of voice between two people by wire.]
1876 CE: PANAMA
Although there had been minor Jewish immigrations since 1821, it was only in 1876 that the first Jewish congregation, Kol Shearith Israel, was founded.
1876 CE: CUSTER’S “LAST STAND”
June 26: South–Eastern Montana Territory: The Battle of the Little Bighorn... but, in Indian parlance, the Battle of the Greasy Grass...
The opposing forces: Custer’s US Cavalry on the attack vs. a Lacota/Cheyenne Indian warrior defending force.
Context: An ever–increasing US military presence in the Western territories is pressing the various (quite–proud) Indian tribes into (not–so–proud) Indian reservations. But, thousands of Indians have recently slipped away from these US government–imposed reservations. US Military officials planned a summer military campaign to intimidate them aggressively, if not terrorize them, and then corral them back.
Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer led the 7th Cavalry, a lightly armed component of the greater and more heavily–armed US Expeditionary Force, force out of Fort Fetterman in Wyoming. His advance scouts having spotted an Indian encampment near the Little Bighorn River, Custer elected to attack after just rudimentary analysis. He unilaterally attacks with about 210 US cavalry soldiers, mostly armed with single–shot Springfield rifles. Custer’s nightmare unfolds when he is countered by a “surprisingly large” defending force of approximately 1500–1800 Indian warriors, many now armed with repeating action Winchesters rifles.
Custer’s 7th Cavalry is annihilated.
1876 CE: ETHICAL CULTURE MOVEMENT
–founded by Felix Adler, a former rabbinical student. He expounded his theories through his writings, which included Creed and Deed (1880) and An Ethical Philosophy of Life (1918)
[Adler: b. 1851, Alzay, Germany; d. 1933, New York, NY]
Adler evolved into a Jewish professor of political and social ethics. The Society of Ethical Culture influenced humanism currents across the Jewish religious spectrum.
1876 CE: GEORGE ELIOT
(Mary Ann Evans b. 1819, South Farm, Arbury Hall, Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England;
d. 1880, Chelsea, London)
Published Daniel Deronda. As a Christian, she envisioned her protagonist finding his Jewishness, which led him to establish a Jewish Eretz Israel. The novel had a profound influence both in England and the United States, portraying a real possibility of Jews returning to a viable homeland.
1876 CE: MARK TWAIN WRITES ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN
–about boating and other simple boyhood pleasures
google his essay: Concerning The Jews Mark Twain Harper’s Magazine 1898
“…If statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of stardust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly, the Jew ought hardly to be heard of, but he is heard of, has always been heard of… [The Jews’] contributions to the world’s list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning are also away out of proportion to his numbers. He has made a marvelous fight in this world, in all the ages…
The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream–stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed;… and they are gone; other people have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished…
All things are mortal by the Jew; all other forces pass, by he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?”
– Mark Twain
1876 CE: SULTAN ABDUL HAMID II BORN
Considered to be a benefactor to Turkish Jews, including Jewish refugees from Romanian persecutions. On the other hand, he disregarded his own constitution and was considered a tyrant when it came to anything, which he felt would weaken his authority and rule, which also included Zionism.
– Eli Birnbaum
1877 CE: SAMUEL ALEXANDER
Born in Australia, he proved himself a brilliant student and became the first Jew to be awarded a fellowship to Oxford, England. His was considered one of the greatest philosophical minds of the twentieth century. Alexander’s most important work is entitled Space, Time and Deity.
1877 CE: THOMAS EDISON INVENTS THE PHONOGRAPH
Menlo Park, NJ: At age 30 Edison, “the wizard of Menlo Park,” stuns America with the phonograph. One of the most prolific inventors in history, Edison would ultimately hold 1,093 U.S. patents, aside from overseas patents.
1877 CE: JOSEPH SELIGMAN
Seligman was refused admission to the Grand Union Hotel in Saratoga Springs because he was Jewish. Seligman was a renowned philanthropist and helped the Union cause during the Civil War for which in recognition, President Grant had offered him the post of Secretary of the Treasury. Judge Henry Hilton ruled that it was bad for business to allow Jews to enter the resort. Though the Grand Union Hotel was not the first incident in the USA, it received a great amount of publicity.
1877 CE: JUDAH MAGNES
Rabbi and Jewish leader. Though ordained as a Reform rabbi, Magnes was a traditionalist and became close to Solomon Schechter. He was instrumental in helping establish the American Jewish Committee together with his brother-in-law Louis Marshall. Magnes was a strong Zionist who believed in Jewish defense while accepting the unique role of Zionism as proposed by Ahad Ha’am. In 1922 he immigrated to Eretz Israel and helped establish the Hebrew University where he served as chancellor from 1925-35 and first president (1935-48) until his death.
– Eli Birnbaum
1878 CE: BERLIN CONGRESS
June 13: At a summit of European powers discussing the Balkan region, civil rights were “guaranteed” for Romanian Jews. The Romanian populace and government soon ignored this order.
– Eli Birnbaum
1879 CE: HENRY FORD, 16, SCHOOL DROPOUT
–of a suburban Detroit school, walks to the city to find work.
He finds work as an apprentice machinist.
Twenty nine years down the road in 1908, Henry Ford’s Ford Motor Company would introduce the Model T car in October, 1908. Sticker price: $825
More than 15 million Model Ts were manufactured.
(That historic record was surpassed by the Volkswagen Beetle 93 years later on February 17, 1972)
1879 CE: BLOOD LIBEL: GEORGIA, RUSSIA
March: Ten Jewish men from a mountain village were brought to Kutaisi, Georgia to stand trial for the alleged kidnapping and murder of a Christian girl. The case attracted a great deal of attention in Russia (of which Georgia was then a part): “While periodicals as diverse in tendency as Herald of Europe and Saint Petersburg Notices expressed their amazement that medieval prejudice should have found a place in the modern judiciary of a civilized state, New Times hinted darkly of strange Jewish sects with unknown practices.” The trial ended in acquittal, and the orientalist Daniel Chwolson published a refutation of the blood myth.
1879 CE: WILHELM MARR
First used the term anti-Semitism in his slanderous book The Victories of Judaism over Germanism.
– after Eli Birnbaum
1879 CE: CHURCH OF CHRIST, SCIENTIST (CHRISTIAN SCIENTISTS)
–founded in Boston by Mary Baker Eddy.
1879 CE: ALBERT NEISSER
Discovered the bacillus of gonorrhea. Although he was baptized, he employed many Jews and encouraged them in their work.
1879 CE: BIRTH OF MODERN ANTI–SEMITISM
Adolph Stoecker, a German theologian and anti–Semitic leader, founded the “Christian Social Workers Party” (later known as the CSP). Orginaly designed to fight against Social Democracy, it soon became synonymous with anti– Jewish demagogy. His Christian Socialist Workingmen’s Union was a front for boycotting and/or bypassing Jewish businesses in favor of those belonging to the Teutonic race. Thus, a Jew became qualified to be a Jew not by his religion (which left him the option of conversion) but by his race, which not even the baptismal waters could cure. Stoecker can also be “accredited” with making anti–Semitism a national issue.
– Eli Birnbaum
1879 CE: LEON TROTSKY (BRONSTEIN) BORN
Trotsky was the son of a Jewish Odessian farmer. Believing there was no future for the Jewish people as a people, he became a contemporary of Lenin, helping him with his publication of Iskra (Spark). He was exiled and arrested many times before the Revolution. Trotsky played an important role in the Communist government and only after Lenin’s death did Stalin expel him from the party. He was exiled in 1928 first to Turkey then Norway and finally to Mexico. Trotsky was assassinated on August 21, 1940 by a friend, presumably on Stalin’s orders. Trotzky did not accept the concept of Jewish identity and was violently opposed to Zionism. He died in 1940.
– after Eli Birnbaum
1880 CE: NOVEL THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV
–completed by Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky
1880 CE: RUSSIA – ORT
(Russian initials for Obstchestuo Resemes lenovo Truda)
The Society for the Encouragement of Handicraft was established by Baron Horace de Guenzburg. Its goal was to organize vocational programs for poor Jews throughout the world.
1881 CE: “PALE” WAVE
Soaring Jewish immigration into the USA from Russian persecution (1881–1890 CE)...primarily from “The Pale” in Russia.
–hits 21,000/annum rate for the decade
1881 CE: POPE JOHN XXIII
The first Pope to speak out forcefully on behalf of the Jews. Pope John (1958-1963) followed the controversial Pope Pius XII who during the holocaust had never publicly condemned the murder of the Jews. Pope John was outspoken in his sympathy for those Jews slaughtered by the Nazi’s. He composed a “Prayer of Repentance” in which he begged forgiveness for all that the Church had done to the Jews.
1881 CE: ALEXANDER II OF RUSSIA WAS ASSASSINATED
March 13:
After numerous attempts by a radical revolutionary organization known as Narodnaya Volya (the Peoples’ Will), they succeeded in killing the czar, and with him died his half–hearted liberalism. On the same day of his assassination he had signed an order creating two national elected commissions, which would work with the council of state. He was succeeded by his son Alexander III.
– Eli Birnbaum
1881 CE: REIGN OF ALEXANDER III
Devoted to medievalism, he urged the return to a Russian civilization. Alexander III attacked and persecuted liberals and revolutionaries alike. He did not though revert to reestablishing serfdom or canceling many of the judicial reforms. The most influential person during his reign was Pobestonostov, his financier and procurator of the Holy Synod, who earned the title “the Second Torquemada.” The newspapers in Moscow, Kiev, and Odessa began a campaign against the Jews. The outcome of the anti–Jewish pogroms, which were to continue almost unabated until 1905, sparked the mass emigration of Jews from Russia and its environs to the West.
– Eli Birnbaum
1881 CE: KHERSON, ELIZABETHGRAD
A tavern dispute on blood libels spawned massive outbreaks against the Jews (in which soldiers often joined) in Kiev (May 12) and Odessa (May 15). In all, over a 223 pogroms occurred in Russia over the next two years. Ignatyev, the Minister of the Interior, insisted that the Jews caused the pogroms. General Drenbien refused to endanger his troops “for a few Jews.”
– Eli Birnbaum
1881 CE: “GUNFIGHT AT THE O.K. CORRAL”
October 26: 3 PM (duration: 30 seconds)...in Tombstone, Arizona.
The most “famous” gunfight of the Old West...Sheriff (City Marshal) Virgil Earp and two very newly deputized assistant sheriffs, his brother Wyatt Earp plus Doc Holliday—in shootout with four rustler–cowboys.
The rustler–cowboys are Frank (McLaury), Tom (McLaury), Claiborne and Clanton… Three of the four rustler–cowboys, the McLaury brothers and Clanton, killed in the gunfight. The 4th, Claiborne, killed in an unrelated gunfight the following year, in 1882—in the same town.
1881 CE: WARSAW
December 25: Warsaw, Poland
Anti–Jewish riots began in Poland. In Warsaw twelve Jews were killed, many others were wounded, and some women were raped. Two million rubles worth of property was destroyed. All of this led to an increase of emigration to the west.
1882 CE: ARNOLD ROTHSTEIN “THE BRAIN” BORN
Gambler and criminal mastermind known as The Czar of the Underworld, Rothstein began his career as a traveling salesman. He was accredited with being the designer of the synthesis between big business and organized crime. Rothstein had his hands in everything, including allegedly fixing the outcome of the 1919 World Series. He was also the archetype for the underworld boss. His students were a Who’s Who of crime, including Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano. Rothstein was killed over a gambling debt, but although he was dying, he refused to name his murderer. He died in 1928.
– Eli Birnbaum
1882 CE: ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, 32, WRITES TREASURE ISLAND
Winter: Davos, Switzerland. Stevenson writes one of the most everlasting young boys’ adventure novels of all–time.
Pirate Long John Silver – with a parrot on his shoulder – and the other characters of Treasure Island will sail into immortality. Long John Silver, leader of the mutineers, is charming, intelligent, ruthless, manipulative—and totally without a conscience.
Stevenson was Scottish novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer.
b. November, 1850, Edinburgh, Scotland; d. Samoa
1882 CE: THE MAY LAWS
May 15: St. Petersburg, Russia: Wide–ranging and severe anti–Jewish regulations enacted by Czar Alexander III that were postured as “temporary,” but which would remain in effect for thirty–five years, long enough to spark mass the mass emigration of over two million Jews, many of whom would find their way to America (including my own maternal great–grandparents).
1882 CE: HOVEVEI ZION
(Lovers of Zion)
This Russian Zionist group and BILU (the other key Russian Zionist group) found Rishon LeZion (translation: first to Zion) agricultural co–operative settlement (the first Zionist settlement) in Palestine,
a–nu bah–nu artza,
livnot
– u–l’ihibanot, bah
*
we have come to our Land
to build it
– and to be built–up, by it
*
This group was integral to First Aliyah spanned 1882–1903 [the First Aliyah meaning the first wave of immigration to modern Israel (then, Palestine)]. See exhibit chart which summarizes the first several aliyot.
Hovevei Zion group financially–backed by Baron Edmund James de Rothschild.
[BILU was a contemporaneous related Russian Jewish group of primarily young idealists with almost precisely the same ideology and activist goals as the stronger Hovevei Zion. The first group of Biluim was founded by fourteen ex–university students from Kharkov (Ukraine, Russia) who joined in the founding of Rishon LeZion, and later founded the settlement of Zichron Yaacov. Both settlements are in the Galil, a.k.a Galilee, northern Israel.]
– after Wikipedia
1882 CE: THOMAS EDISON RECEIVES PATENT FOR 2–WAY TELEGRAPH
1884 CE: MODERN HEBREW
Jerusalem: Eliezer ben Yehudah, catalyst of modern Hebrew, publishes The DEER (in then, Palestine), a Hebrew language newspaper (in Palestine), which advocated Zionism.
Then, ben Yehudah founds The Committee of the Hebrew Language; Academy of the Hebrew language; and publishes The Complete Dictionary of Ancient and Modern Hebrew.
b. 1858 in Lithuania; d. 1922 in Jerusalem.
1885 CE: THE BALTIMORE CATECHISM
Written specifically for North America, it emerged as the standard Catholic school text from 1885 to the late 1960s.
1885 CE: SAMUEL MONTAGU, FIRST LORD SWAYTHLING
Banker, and philanthropist. Actually born Montagu Samuel, his name was switched when he attended grade school. In addition to being a successful banker, he served in Parliament from 1885 for 15 years and was responsible for the adoption of the metric system (Weights and Measures Act). Montagu was actively involved in many projects helping the poor and founded the Jewish Workingmen’s Club. He was a practicing Orthodox Jew and founded the Federation of Synagogues (1887), which united most of the smaller congregations.
– Eli Birnbaum
1886 CE: HA–YOM
February 12: The first Hebrew daily newspaper was published in St. Petersburg, Russia.
1886 CE: YESHIVA UNIVERSITY
Y.U... founded in NY. (Washington Heights)
(Orthodox…Modern Orthodox); a leading multi–faceted American University;
Logo: Torah U’Madda (Torah and Modern Knowledge). Presidents to–date: Rabbi Bernard (Dov) Revel; Rabbi Meir Bar–Ilan (temporary); Rabbi Dr. Samuel Belkin; Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm; Richard M. Joel…
Graduate schools including some world–renowned, include Albert Einstein (Medical School), Cardozo (Law School), Belfer (Science and International Affairs), Bernard Revel (Jewish Studies), Ferkauf (Psychology), Wurzweiler (Social Work), Azrieli (Education and Administration), REITS (Rabbinic), Stern (Women’s Undergrad), Sy Simms (Business).
Approximately 3,000 undergrads + 3,000 post–grad.
(My oldest graduated from Y.U.)
1886 CE: GERONIMO, 57, IS CAPTURED
Wilcox, AZ: Geronimo, Apache commander, had led the U.S. Cavalry on a chase lasting most of thirty years.
The Mexican Army had ‘started the fight’ when they massacred Geronimo’s family back in 1851. Geronimo then waged war against both the Mexican and against the American expansionists into Apache territory. Americans at the time regarded him as a villain. History does not.
1886 CE: JTS
Jewish Theological Seminary, founded in NY.
–by Rabbis Sabato Morais and Alexander Kohut
One of the academic and spiritual centers of Conservative and world Judaism; with extraordinary and radically disproportionate intellectual impact on world Jewry through this day.
(See also related, renowned and notable: American Jewish University, L.A.; Seminario Rabinico Latino Americano, Buenos Aires; Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies, Jerusalem).
1886 CE: SAMUEL GOMPERS
–assumes leadership of the American Federation of Labor
Born January 27, 1850, London, England; died December 13, 1924, San Antonio, Texas, U.S.
Britannica –
“American labor leader and first president of the American Federation of Labor (AFL).
Gompers emigrated in 1863 from England to New York City, where he took up his father’s trade of cigar making and in 1872 became a naturalized citizen. His careful leadership of labor interests earned Gompers a reputation for conservatism. In a period when the United States was bitterly hostile to labor organizations, he developed the principles of “voluntarism,” which called for unions to exert coercion by economic actions—that is, through strikes and boycotts. In 1886 Gompers fostered the separation of the cigar makers and other craft unions from the Knights of Labor to form the AFL, of which he was president from 1886 to 1924 (except for one year, 1895). He distrusted intellectual reformers, fearing their influence would divert labor’s efforts away from economic goals. To make unionism respectable as a bulwark against radicalism and irresponsible strikes, he encouraged binding written trade agreements and advocated the primacy of national organizations over both local unions and international affiliations.
Gompers is noted for having shifted the primary goal of American unionism away from social issues and toward the “bread and butter” issues of wages, benefits, hours, and working conditions, all of which could be negotiated through collective bargaining. Gompers’s AFL became the model of unionism in the United States, achieving economic goals through national trade unions that organized a network of locals and supported them.”
Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/238225/Samuel–Gompers (accessed December 1, 2008)
1886 CE: HELEN KELLER, 6, INTRODUCED TO TUTOR ANNE SULLIVAN
Tuscumbia, Alabama: Born June 27, 1880: Her father had been an officer in the Confederate Army, and her mother was a cousin of Robert E. Lee. Helen was rendered both deaf and blind by a childhood disease, possibly meningitis or scarlet fever (at age nineteen months).
She was brought by her parents to Baltimore, Maryland for a consultation with (the inventor) Alexander Graham Bell, a well–known expert, as well, in deafness. In turn, Bell suggests that the Keller’s contact the Perkins Institute for the Blind further north in Boston.
The Institute, in turn, assigned one of its graduates, communication teacher Anne Sullivan, to work with Helen. Sullivan, then twenty years old, and herself visually impaired. Sullivan went on to work with Keller in different capacities (instructor, governess, and companion) – for 49 years. Sullivan will later be immortalized on the stage as “the Miracle Worker.”
Helen Keller was to learn Braille and become the first deaf–blind person to graduate college in the U.S. (Radcliffe, magna cum laude, 1904, at age 24). She also went on to learn how to read French, German, Greek and Latin.
Keller and Sullivan traveled to over 39 countries together, and Helen achieved celebrity status in many countries, including Japan. In the U.S., Helen Keller was a political activist, whose activities spanned a spectrum of liberal, socialist, and educational causes.
Her twelve books include:
The Frost King (1891),
The Story of My Life (1903)
The World I Live In (1908)
and
Out of the Dark (1913).
– after Wikipedia
1886 CE: DAVID BEN GURION BORN
Came to Eretz Israel as David Green in 1906. He joined the Jewish legion, rose in the ranks of the Zionist Labor Party, and created the Histadrut or Labor Confederation. Ben Gurion formulated the official Zionist policies during the Second World War and became Israel’s first Prime Minister. He founded his own party (MAPAI) and joined with the religious parties and the general Zionist party to form a coalition. He served on and off until 1963 as Minister of Defense and Prime Minister. He played an important part in the Israeli victory in 1956. After 1963 he retired to a kibbutz (Sde Boker) in the Negev, which he called on the younger generation to settle.
– Eli Birnbaum
1886 CE: JULIUS POPPER (ROMANIA–ARGENTINA)
Explorer. Popper succeeded in finding gold on the Island of Tierra del Fuego and established himself there as a representative of a mining company. To protect himself against poachers he brought in armed men. After a number of “battles” he became the “Sovereign” of the Island, printing money and even stamps. As the mines began to produce less money he returned to Argentina where he lived as a popular literary figure. He died under uncertain circumstances.
– Eli Birnbaum
1887 CE: “ELEMENTARY, MY DEAR WATSON”
Fictional Detective Sherlock Holmes and (his loyal friend) Dr. John Watson make an appearance, courtesy of Scottish author (and physician), (Sir) Arthur Conan Doyle.
His classic – The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes [an anthology of stories published 1891–1892].
Then, we’ll talk.
1887 CE: NEW RESTRICTIONS (RUSSIA)
Although Jews were forcibly conscripted into the army, they were banned from all military schools. This was soon followed by Jews being prohibited from joining the army medical corps and military bands. At the same time, Jewish communities were severely fined if the quota of Jewish conscripts wasn’t reached. In addition, new education restrictions were instituted: no more than ten percent of Jews in the Pale and five percent outside the Pale were allowed to attend University.
– Eli Birnbaum
1888 CE: BURTON
British Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton completes his celebrated translation of The Arabian Nights.
…a.k.a. One Thousand and One Nights.
10–volumes. Three years. 1001 fables translated.
The first European version (1704–1717) was translated into French by Antoine Galland from Arabic texts and other sources. Galland’s version, the 12–volume Les Mille et Une Nuits, included stories not in the original Arabian texts. The Galland add–ons, asserted to be via an Aleppo (Syria) storyteller included the now iconic “Aladdin’s Lamp” and “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.”
But all classic translations have the same “framing”: A Persian king Shahryar discovers the infidelity of his new bride. Filled with rage towards “virgins” he takes one young lover after another, executing each of them in the morning. As the king has executed all the virgins in the kingdom, Scheherazade, his own daughter offers herself up to him.
However, Scheherazade does not wish to meet the “morning fate” of her predecessors. Her strategy is to start a tale each night and not finish it, so that the king must spare her until the next night to complete the tale….which she does, but then starts another tale…stretching a thousand and one Arabian nights…until…
1889 CE: GUSTAVE EIFFEL BUILDS THE PARIS TOWER NAMED FOR HIM
Most Parisiens at the time not enamored by the product.
1889 CE: ALFRED LORD TENNYSON WRITES “CROSSING THE BAR”
Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,
But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.
Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;
For though from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crossed the bar.
1889 CE: RUSSIA
Jews were not allowed to practice law without a special permit.
– Eli Birnbaum
1890 CE: FRITZ LANG BORN
Film director – Lang began his career as a painter. His early expressionist films – Dr. Mabuse the Gambler, Die Nibelungen, and Metropolis – made him an important player in German film. Though offered directorship of the Third Reich’s film industry by Goebbels he fled to France and then to the USA, fearing that the Nazis would discover that his mother was Jewish. His American films included Fury, Scarlet Street and While the City Sleeps. They were considered prime examples of film noir.
– after Eli Birnbaum
1890 CE: “ZIONISM”
Nathan Birnbaum, Austrian Jewish political philosopher and editorialist, coins the word “ZIONISM” – in his journal Self Emancipation…
Previously, founder in 1883 at age nineteen of KADIMAH, a Jewish nationalist organization.
Later, Secretary General of Zionist organization Agudath Israel, and a preeminent organizer and personage of the first Zionist Congress (see 1897 CE).
“ZIONISM” was defined as “an international movement for the return of the Jewish people to their homeland—and the resumption of Jewish sovereignty over the Land of Israel” …. Ready. Aim….
Birnbaum himself (b.1864, Austria; d. 1937, Netherlands) later evolved religiously ultimately as Orthodox; he emigrated to the Netherlands in 1933; his three sons all made names for themselves in the arts and/or academia.
His first son Solomon Birnbaum became a renowned academic linguist and historian.
[b. Vienna (1891) > Germany > Great Britain (1933) > Canada (1970); d. Toronto (1989)]
1890 CE: VAN GOGH
Van Gogh fatally shot himself in a wheat field.
He had sold only one painting in his life. The Dutch post–Impressionist painter became a symbol for the suffering artist. He has reentered popular culture as the subject of the Don McLean ballad, Vincent in 1971...
Starry, starry night…
1890 CE: DAIMLER
Germany: DMG: Daimler Motoren Gesselschaft founded.
The iconic German automobile industry is born.
In 1926, DMG merged with Benz & Cie becoming Daimler–Benz.
Gottlieb Daimler: b. March, 1834, Schorndorf, Kingdom of Wurtenberg, German Confederation; d. March, 1900, probably Stuttgart, Germany
1890s CE: RABBI ABRAHAM KHVOLES
Georgia, Russian Empire
As noted in Encyclopaedia Judaica on Abraham ha–Levi Khvoles {1997} [CD–ROM]
“At the end of the 1890s Rabbi Abraham ha–Levi Khvoles (1857–1931)—a pupil of the famous Lithuanian rabbi Isaac Elhanan Spektor—was elected chief rabbi of the town of Tzkhinvali. His only language for communicating with his congregation was Hebrew, and as time passed the number of Jews of the town using this language increased considerably. In 1906 Khvoles established the first talmud torah in Georgia where about 400 pupils studied. He was the first in Georgian Jewish life to introduce education for girls, inviting for this purpose a female Hebrew teacher. To accustom the Jews to crafts and skills he brought in experienced teachers who taught boys shoemaking, leather tanning, soap–boiling, and other skills. He sent some of his best students to the Lithuanian yeshivot to continue their education and receive the title of rabbi.”
1891 CE: JEWS EXPELLED FROM MOSCOW
March 28–29: Passover, Russia
Grand Duke Sergei, the Czar’s brother who had just become governor of Moscow, ordered the expulsion of all Jews from the city. Permission to remain was only given to those who would convert or to women who were willing to become prostitutes. In addition, a few thousand former cantonists who were registered and wealthy merchants were allowed to continue residing in Moscow. In January 1892, in middle of a deep cold spell, the Jewish quarter was surrounded and Jews who had until then avoided expulsion were hunted by the police and firemen. In all, approximately 14,000 Jewish families were expelled to the Pale.
– Eli Birnbaum
1891 CE: THE JCA
–Jewish Colonization Association formed
London: September: Baron Maurice de Hirsch, a German–Jewish banker / businessman / philanthropist who lived in France, England and in the Austro–Hungarian Empire founds the Jewish Colonization Association (in England). The JCA was endowed with upwards of the enormous amount (at that time) of 12,000,000 pounds–sterling by him and his wife directly or later via their estates. The fund was established by Hirsch to provide opportunities for persecuted Russian Jews to reestablish themselves, generally in agriculturally oriented colonies in South America (primarily Argentina), Canada and Palestine. At the time, it was probably the largest charitable trust in the world.
His other “grand scale” philanthropic activities involved and included:
• the Alliance Israelite Universelle of Paris
• in 1881 organizing a benevolent trust in the United States for the benefit of Jewish (primarily Russian) immigrants
• c. 1882, after negotiations with the Russian government, single–handedly funding a system of secular education for the Jews of the Russian Pale of Settlement
1891 CE: WOODBINE, NJ
August 28: Was established as an agricultural community with funding from Baron de Hirsch and his Baron de Hirsch Fund. The fund was dedicated to promoting rural Jewish communities in the United States and joined with the ICA (Jewish Colonial Association) in 1900. An agriculture school was established there in 1894. It became quickly apparent that it would be almost impossible to make a living only through agriculture, and light industry was also brought in. Other communities were established in New Jersey, including Vineland, Toms River, and Farmingdale, as well as many others throughout the USA. All were part of the efforts to absorb new Jewish immigrants in rural areas, as well as teach them the language and a trade.
– Eli Birnbaum
1891 CE: THOMAS EDISON BUILDS KINETOSCOPE
–forerunner to modern motion pictures
The device, a peep–hole viewer, was installed at penny arcades, where people could watch short (and very simple) film flicks.
1892 CE: THE EDISON FACTORY DISTRIBUTES THE “VITASCOPE”
–invented by Thomas Armat, distributed by Edison, and used as a motion picture projector for public screenings (i.e. for the first movie theaters)
1892 CE: EDUARD SCHNITZER (EMIN PASHA)
October 20: Was assassinated. He had taken on the Turkish name Emin Pasha and traveled throughout Africa as an explorer, linguist, adventurer, administrator, and especially as a doctor. He spent much of his time in Khartoum (in the Sudan) while serving as a governor under General Gordon. Pasha was a tireless fighter against the slave, trade which was still rampant. He had returned to Central Africa on a semi-political voyage for Germany when he was murdered by slave traders.
– Eli Birnbaum
1893 CE: DIESEL
Berlin: Rudolf Diesel publishes a treatise in German “Theory and Construction…” which laid the basis for his invention of the diesel engine.
Born March, 1858, Paris; d. Sep, 1913 English Channel (lost overboard) but living in Berlin (unresolved whether accident, suicide or murder)
1893 CE: PISSARRO HITS STRIDE
Camille Pissarro, French Impressionist painter. Portuguese Sephardic Jewish.
Born July 10, 1830; died November 13, 1903
Britannica –
“Painter and printmaker who was a key figure in the history of Impressionism. Pissarro was the only artist to show his work in all eight Impressionist group exhibitions; throughout his career, he remained dedicated to the idea of such alternative forums of exhibition. He experimented with many styles, including a period when he adopted Georges Seurat’s “pointillist” approach. A supportive friend and mentor to influential artists such as Paul Cézanne and Paul Gauguin, he was described by many who knew him as ‘Father Pissarro.’”
Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/461800/Camille–Pissarro (accessed December 1, 2008)
1893 CE: MAX NORDAU
Author, theater critic, physician and Zionist leader. Nordau had achieved international fame as a writer prior to meeting Herzl at the Neue Freie Presse. The Dreyfus Affair awakened him, as well as Herzl to anti-Semitism. Nordau became Herzl’s first convert and together they formulated the goals for the Basel Program. Nordau was a proponent of aggressive political Zionism. His famous “Nordau Plan” called for the settling of five hundred thousand Jews in Eretz Israel as a means of acquiring a Jewish state (1920). Jabotinsky later (1936) adopted Nordau’s plan as the basis for his Ten–Year Plan.
– Eli Birnbaum
1893 CE: EDVARD MUNCH PAINTS “THE SCREAM”
Norway: Also could be translated as the shriek.
“In a page in his diary headed Nice 22.01.1892, Munch described his inspiration for the image thus:
I was walking along a path with two friends—the sun was setting—suddenly the sky turned blood red—I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence—there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue–black fjord and the city—my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety—and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature.”
–José María Faerna, MUNCH, Harry N. Abrams, New York, 1995, pp. 16–17.
1894 CE: JACK BENNY (BENJAMIN KUBELSKY)
Like many comedians of his era, he began in vaudeville and became known for using his violin as a prop. In 1932, he began his radio show, The Jack Benny Program and in 1950, made the successful transition into television winning two Emmy awards. Benny was famous for his alter–ego personality: never aging beyond 39, a tightwad persona, and inept violin playing (he was actually generous in real life and an exceptional violinist). Trademarks of his comic routine was when he paused, resting his chin on his hand, and uttered the word “Well!” or telling his audience in an aside, “Now cut that out!”
– Eli Birnbaum
1895 CE: ALBERT EINSTEIN, 16
…fails the entrance exam to the (technical school) Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule in Zurich.
1895 CE: JULIUS ROSENWALD BUYS A STAKE IN SEARS, ROEBUCK
Born Aug. 12, 1862; died Jan. 6, 1932
Britannica –
“U.S. merchant and unorthodox philanthropist who opposed the idea of perpetual endowments and frequently offered large philanthropic gifts on condition that they be matched by other donations. He was especially noted for his aid to the education of blacks.
After moderate success in the clothing business in New York City (1879–85) and Chicago (1885–95), Rosenwald bought a one–fourth interest in Sears, Roebuck and Co., which became the world’s largest mail–order house and chain of retail stores. In 1910 he succeeded Richard Warren Sears as president, and in 1925 he was named chairman of the Sears board of directors. Rosenwald and A.H. Loeb, treasurer of the company, established an exemplary savings and profit–sharing program for employees. Under Rosenwald’s leadership, Sears began to manufacture its own merchandise and instituted the policy of guaranteeing full refunds to dissatisfied–customers.
Generous to Jewish charities, Rosenwald nonetheless opposed Zionism. From the early 1900s he was concerned with the welfare of U.S. blacks, and in 1917 he established the Julius Rosenwald Fund (to be expended within 25 years after his death and liquidated in 1948), the chief purpose of which was the improvement of education for blacks. Augmented by local taxes and private gifts, the fund paid for the construction of more than 5,000 schools in 15 southern states. In Chicago, he established (1929) the Museum of Science and Industry, contributed heavily to the University of Chicago, and founded dental infirmaries in the public schools.”
Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/509950/Julius–Rosenwald (accessed December 5, 2008)
1895 CE: NOBEL PRIZE FOUNDED
–by Alfred Nobel
Born Oct. 21, 1833; died Dec 10, 1896.
Britannica –
“A Swedish chemist, engineer, and industrialist, who invented dynamite and other, more powerful explosives and who also founded the Nobel Prizes.
Alfred Bernhard Nobel was the fourth son of Immanuel and Caroline Nobel. Immanuel was an inventor and engineer who had married Caroline Andrietta Ahlsell in 1827. The couple had eight children, of whom only Alfred and three brothers reached adulthood. Alfred was prone to illness as a child, but he enjoyed a close relationship with his mother and displayed a lively intellectual curiosity from an early age. He was interested in explosives, and he learned the fundamentals of engineering from his father. Immanuel, meanwhile, had failed at various business ventures until moving in 1837 to St. Petersburg in Russia, where he prospered as a manufacturer of explosive mines and machine tools. The Nobel family left Stockholm in 1842 to join the father in St. Petersburg. Alfred’s newly prosperous parents were now able to send him to private tutors, and he proved to be an eager pupil. He was a competent chemist by age 16 and was fluent in English, French, German, and Russian, as well as Swedish.
Alfred Nobel left Russia in 1850 to spend a year in Paris studying chemistry and then spent four years in the United States working under the direction of John Ericsson, the builder of the ironclad warship Monitor. Upon his return to St. Petersburg, Nobel worked in his father’s factory, which made military equipment during the Crimean War. After the war ended in 1856, the company had difficulty switching to the peacetime production of steamboat machinery, and it went bankrupt in 1859.
Alfred and his parents returned to Sweden, while his brothers Robert and Ludvig stayed behind in Russia to salvage what was left of the family business. Alfred soon began experimenting with explosives in a small laboratory on his father’s estate. At the time, the only dependable explosive for use in mines was black powder, a form of gunpowder. A recently discovered liquid compound, nitroglycerin, was a much more powerful explosive, but it was so volatile that it could not be handled with any degree of safety.
Nevertheless, Nobel in 1862 built a small factory to manufacture nitroglycerin, and at the same time he undertook research in the hope of finding a safe way to control the explosive’s detonation. In 1863 he invented a practical detonator consisting of a wooden plug inserted into a larger charge of nitroglycerin held in a metal container; the explosion of the plug’s small charge of black powder serves to detonate the much more powerful charge of liquid nitroglycerin. This detonator marked the beginning of Nobel’s reputation as an inventor as well as the fortune he was to acquire as a maker of explosives.”
Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/416842/Alfred–Bernhard–Nobel (accessed December 8, 2008)
1896 CE: GIACOMO PUCCINI PRODUCES LA BOHÈME
Puccini was an Italian composer who also wrote Tosca, Turandot and Madama Butterfly, among others.
Some of his arias, such as “O ma babbino caro” and “Nessun dorma” have become part of popular culture.
(b. 1858; d. 1924)
1896 CE: “CAIRO GENIZAH”
Oxford University, England: First trove of Cairo genizah documents forwarded by Solomon Schechter (of England) to Bodleian Library of Oxford.
A second trove, three tomes the size of the first one, was arranged after a second expedition to Cairo within two years of the first, by Schechter.
Schechter had actually forwarded the first trove (1896) unopened fro Cairo to the Oxford library. However, two female Scottish (translation: non–Jewish) researchers alerted Schechter to the extraordinariness of the find, including the apparently first–ever (in the original) found Hebrew manuscript of Ecclesiasticus (Kohelet by King Solomon)—as opposed to extant Greek and Latin translations. The “Scottish” research was the catalyst for the subsequent second exposition (c. 1897), which proved historic, and which propelled Schechter onto the world stage.
*
A genizah is a set–aside storage area or “depository” in a synagogue or yeshiva where worn or damaged Jewish books or papers (potentially containing God’s name) are sequestered temporarily for periods of time—until ultimate book burial in a Jewish cemetery—to honor God’s name on them—by precluding their untimely or mundane destruction.
A genizah thus also potentially becomes a “time capsule,” of sorts.
A major genizah—dating from medieval times—in the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Fustat, Egypt (now called Old Cairo, Egypt) was “discovered” and brought to the world’s attention in the mid–1860s by the Jewish traveler and researcher Jacob Saphir.
Combined with two other smaller Cairo troves of related material, ultimately over 200,000 Jewish pieces (manuscripts et al.) were “unearthed.” The 200,000 pieces span the 1,000 year time frame 870–1880 CE.
*
A rich subset of the fragments and pages spans the time frame 950–1250 CE.
This subset of material was carefully plumbed by Judaica scholar Shelomo Dov Gotein (b. 1900, Burgkunstadt, Germany; d. 1985, Philadelphia, USA 1900). Gotein’s life–work project involved developing detailed indexes of Jewish personalities within the 300 year time frame just–noted.
*
The chief scholar associated with researching the entire Cairo trove is the British scholar and rabbinic Solomon Schechter. See his listing a little further down [1902]…
His exposition of these Cairo treasure troves brought him world acclaim.
Now archived (150,000+ pieces at University of Cambridge, England; 40,000+ at JTS in NY; 11,000+ in John Rylands University Library, Manchester, England). They are currently being digitized.
Do you hear that, Google?
1897 CE: ZIONIST CONGRESS / HERZL
(Aug 29) First Zionist Congress, Basel, Switzerland.
Presided over by Theodor Herzl…and by the above–noted Nathan Birnbaum.
The major achievements of the Congress were:
• its formulation of the Zionist platform, known as the “Basel Program”
• the founding of the World Zionist Organization
• the adoption of the Hatikvah as the anthem of the movement
In response to the Dreyfus Affair, Herzl had written Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State). When it was published in English in 1896 (a year before the big congress), he became the leading spokesman for Zionism. Herzl was a formidable force on the international stage, adroitly advancing the Zionism concept via conferences, books and a personal international campaign. Herzl later wrote Altneuland, which translates to Old–New Land (1902), which outlined Herzl’s vision for a Jewish state in Palestine.
Born in Budapest, Hungary in 1860, Herzl died in Austria at age 44 in 1904. His will stipulated that he wished to be buried in a vault next to his father at the family plot (in Austria) “and to lie there till the Jewish people shall take my remains to Palestine.” In 1949, one year into the new Jewish State, and 45 years after Herzl’s death, the people of Israel did just that: They moved his remains to Jerusalem where they named the entire extraordinary mountain cemetery in his honor: Har Herzl (The Mountain of Herzl)—Israel’s “Arlington cemetery,” where its war dead lie in rest with exquisite honor on a mountain overlooking Judea.
1897 CE: MOSES ALEXANDER
The first Jewish Governor of an American State, Alexander was born in Germany, began his political career as the mayor of Chillicothe Missouri, and then became mayor of Boise, Idaho before becoming governor. He was active in the Jewish community and helped found the first synagogue in Idaho. The town of Alexander, Idaho is named after him.
– Eli Birnbaum
1897 CE: THE BUND FOUNDED
Vilnius, Lithuania: Internationalist, socialist Jewish–culture–centered movement founded (opposed Zionism)
Britannica –
“Jewish Socialist political movement founded in Vilnius in 1897 by a small group of workers and intellectuals from the Jewish Pale of tsarist Russia. The Bund called for the abolition of discrimination against Jews and the reconstitution of Russia along federal lines…In April 1920 the Bund divided into two groups: the majority merged with the Communist Party while the minority, led by Rafael Abramovich, maintained its separate identity until suppressed by the Bolshevik government (see 1917 CE: THE BOLSHEVIKS). The Bund was active in Poland between World War I and World War II.”
Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/84617/Bund (accessed November 18, 2008)
(Note: The main business district in contemporary Shanghai overlooking Shanghai Bay is also called “the Bund” to this day. The same Jewish socialist group had an “Asian office” centered in the area of the businesses of the prominent Jewish expatriates in Shanghai, which apparently caused quite a stir.)
1897 CE: LOUIS “LEPKE” BUCHALTER
Crime boss. Though quiet, Lepke was known for his violence. He ruled over an army of gangsters who controlled unions and the extortion rackets. Lepke was one of the founders of the National Crime Syndicate and was in charge of the enforcement branch, which became known as “Murder Inc.” In 1944 he was executed in Sing Sing Prison for killing a truck driver.
– Eli Birnbaum
1898 CE: GEORGE GERSHWIN BORN
Brooklyn, NY
Considered by some to be the greatest Twentieth Century composer. He studied under Rubin, the composer of Hiawatha, and Gettysburg Requiem, and had a powerful influence on American music. His immortal Rhapsody in Blue, a classical jazz piece, was performed by Paul Whitman in 1924. Other great works include Porgy and Bess and An American in Paris.
– Eli Birnbaum
1898 CE: SPANISH AMERICAN WAR BEGAN
April 24: USA
Fifteen Jews serving on the battleship the USS Maine were killed when it sank. Five thousand Jews served in the American Army, a ratio of 20% more than the general population including 30 army and 20 naval officers. The first person of Colonel Roosevelt’s Rough Riders to reach the top of San Juan Hill was also a Jew – Irving Peixotto and the first to be killed was Jacob Wilbusky.
1898 CE: THEODORE ROOSEVELT LEADS HIS ROUGH RIDERS
–Up both Kettle Hill and San Juan Hill in Cuba in the Spanish–American War. He then rides his “hero” status right into the White House in September, 1901 via the vice presidency. His boss earlier in the first year of his White House stint, President William McKinley was assassinated after six months in office, springing ‘T.R.’ into the Oval Office. From San Juan Hill to the presidency of the United States within 3 years.
1898 CE: AHAD HA’AM
His life journey: roughly: Russia > Austria > Germany > Russia > (intermittent visits to Palestine) > England > Palestine.
End of 1898: Ahad Ha’am’s longstanding–advocated themes of Hebrew Culture and Hebrew Language as proposed prime integral components of Zionism, get incorporated into mainstream (Herzlian) Zionist theology/program.
Meaning, a “culturally Jewish state for the Jewish people” as opposed to just a “state for the Jews.” Ahad Ha’am had prevailed.
He was born Asher Hirsch Ginsberg near Kiev, Russia
(b. 1856 Skvyra; d. 1927 Tel Aviv).
Moved to London for 14 years at age 64 in 1908 until 1922....then back to Palestine for his final five years....
[Author – After that little 14–year London interlude, he’s lucky he got all those nice Israeli Zionist streets named after him...]
1898 CE: “J’ACCUSE !”
–Article electrifies France… Paris, (Jan 13).
In front page banner headline piece of L’Aurore, Paris Literary Newspaper, French journalist Émile Zola accuses eight generals of the French Army General Staff—by name—of covering up the innocence of (framed) Jewish artillery officer Captain Alfred DREYFUS.
Dreyfus had been exiled to Devil’s Island [off the northeast coast of South America], three years earlier in 1895, after having been ‘convicted’ of espionage by a French military tribunal in 1894. Animosity towards the Jews swept France.
From Rome, the Catholic Church in its time–honored tradition of fueling the fire encouraged the hate–fest which engulfed France following Dreyfus’s trumped–up conviction–
If there is one nation more than any other which has the right to turn to anti–Semitism, it is France…
– Vatican newspaper L’Observatore Romano, 1898
– As cited in Constantine’s Sword. p. 457
(Chapter: Alfred Dreyfus and La Croix)
In 1899 Dreyfus was re–tried and re–convicted. Dreyfus was freed by order of French President Emile Loubet and ultimately rehabilitated by the French, and made a Knight of the French Legion of Honor in July 1906.
Two years after being “knighted,” he was wounded by a would–be assassin 1908 while attending the funeral of his champion, Zola.
Note: A granddaughter of Dreyfus would be murdered by the Nazis at Auschwitz four and a half decades later. (More on this in the Holocaust–related entries later)
Note: The term “J’Accuse!” in the Dreyfus context was used by British journalist and anarchist Bernard Lazare for the title of a predecessor pro–Dreyfus expose article in the French journal L’éclair September 15, 1896, one year and four months before the Zola (January 1898 ) headline article. Zola was presumably pegging–off the original article, and its headline, to “capture the energy” of the legacy of the expose.
Note: Not all Jews saw the Dreyfus affair as emblematic of organic French anti–Semitism. The Jewish philosopher Emmanual Levinas often cited the words of his father: “A country which tears itself apart to defend the honor of a small Jewish captain, is somewhere worth going.”
Note: A foreign Jewish journalist came to Paris to report on the 1896 re–trial of Dreyfus for his Hungarian newspaper. He was not amused. Nor, unlike Levinas’s father, did he see a silver lining in this case. His name was Theodore Herzl. Later that year, he would write his iconic work, Der Judenstaat, “The Jewish State” (more below).
1898 CE: “WAR OF THE WORLDS”
Iconic science fiction novel by H. G. Wells, which describes an invasion of England by aliens from Mars.
The 1938 radio broadcast, 40 years later—on Mercury Theatre on the Air—an episode of intense American radio drama which simulated new bulletins of an actual invasion from Mars—was (probably deliberately) so realistic that many listeners believed an invasion was actually in–progress, causing possibly America’s most notable example of (at least partial) mass hysteria.
1899 CE: POLNA, BOHEMIA
Twenty–two year old Leopold Hilsner was arrested for allegedly murdering a Christian girl. It soon developed into a ritual murder accusation. Although no evidence linking him and the murdered girl was ever presented, Hilsner was forced to sign a confession and was sentenced to death. Through the intervention of T.G. Masaryk (later to be president of Czecholovakia) his sentence was commuted to life. In 1916 he was granted an Imperial pardon and set free.
1899 CE: FREUD RELEASES THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS
–psychoanalytic classic for all time
Britannica –
“In what many commentators consider his master work, Die Traumdeutung (published in 1899, but given the date of the dawning century to emphasize its epochal character; The Interpretation of Dreams), he presented his findings. Interspersing evidence from his own dreams with evidence from those recounted in his clinical practice, Freud contended that dreams played a fundamental role in the psychic economy. The mind’s energy—which Freud called libido and identified principally, but not exclusively, with the sexual drive—was a fluid and malleable force capable of excessive and disturbing power. Needing to be discharged to ensure pleasure and prevent pain, it sought whatever outlet it might find. If denied the gratification provided by direct motor action, libidinal energy could seek its release through mental channels. Or, in the language of The Interpretation of Dreams, a wish can be satisfied by an imaginary wish fulfillment. All dreams, Freud claimed, even nightmares manifesting apparent anxiety, are the fulfillment of such wishes.
More precisely, dreams are the disguised expression of wish fulfillments. Like neurotic symptoms, they are the effects of compromises in the psyche between desires and prohibitions in conflict with their realization. Although sleep can relax the power of the mind’s diurnal censorship of forbidden desires, such censorship, nonetheless, persists in part during nocturnal existence. Dreams, therefore, have to be decoded to be understood, and not merely because they are actually forbidden desires experienced in distorted fashion. For dreams undergo further revision in the process of being recounted to the analyst.
The Interpretation of Dreams provides a hermeneutic for the unmasking of the dream’s disguise, or dreamwork, as Freud called it. The manifest content of the dream, that which is remembered and reported, must be understood as veiling a latent meaning. Dreams defy logical entailment and narrative coherence, for they intermingle the residues of immediate daily experience with the deepest, often most infantile wishes. Yet they can be ultimately decoded by attending to four basic activities of the dreamwork and reversing their mystifying effect.”
Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/291598/The–Interpretation–of–Dreams (accessed January 5, 2009)
Freud, Jewish, born May 6, 1856; died Sept. 23, 1939.
1899 CE: BOXER REBELLION
November: Northern China: Chinese peasant–based revolution
–protesting against foreign domination of China. Foreign railroad workers (building railways) were attacked. As were Christians, held responsible, as a group, for foreign domination.
Subsequently, in June 1900, the Boxers (the Society of Right and Harmonious Fists) invaded Beijing and killed 230 diplomats and foreigners. 55 days later, a multi–nation coalition of 20,000 troops entered Beijing and rescued the remaining diplomats who were sequestered in terror in embassies, etc.
Reforms implemented subsequent to the crisis, set the stage for the end of the last Chinese dynasty, the Qing Dynasty, in turn, setting the stage for the Chinese Republic, and the brutal 20th century journey it would subsequently take.
1899 CE: MARCONI INVENTS THE RADIO
Italy: Guglielmo Marconi, inventor and entrepreneur, best known for his development of the radiotelegraph system.
In 1909 shares the Nobel Prize in Physics with Karl Ferdinand Braun (German inventor) “in recognition of their development of wireless telegraphy.”
Later in life in the ‘30s, becomes an apologist for Fascist Italy.
Born 1874 near Bologna, Italy; dies 1937 in Rome.
1899 CE: THORSTEIN VEBLEN
Economist Thorstein Veblen introduces the concept of “conspicuous consumption.”
–in The Theory of the Leisure Class.
An American of Norwegian extraction, Veblen was the founder of the Institutional economics movement (along with John R. Commons).
1899 CE: GIDEONS INTERNATIONAL FOUNDED
a.k.a. The Gideons
–founded in Boscobel, Wisconsin.
Founded as an early para–church organization, the Gideons is an evangelical Protestant organization. Dedicate to distributing copies of the Bible—in over 80 language and more than 175 countries.
The Gideons seem to have an affinity for hotel and motel–room distribution.
60–70+ million copies were distributed per year 2006, 2007, and 2008. Approximately 1.5 billion bibles have apparently been distributed since 1908, when Gideon bible distribution commenced.
1900 CE: BADEN–POWELL PUBLISHES HIS PAMPHLET
Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden–Powell publishes a pamphlet Aids to Scouting.
Scouting for Boys would follow in 1908.
Before founding the Scout Movement, Baden–Powell was a lieutenant–general in the British Army. Baden–Powell is known in military circles for having organized the successful defense of the city of Mafeking in the Boer War (in the South Africa region), where the greatly outnumbered British garrison managed to survive a 217 day siege (October 1899 – May 1900) before being relieved.
1900 CE: KONITZ, GERMANY
A blood libel occurred after the death of a local student. Wolf Israelski was accused and arrested, while Count Plucker promoted riots against the Jews. After Israelski was proven innocent, two others, Moritz Lewy and Rosenthal, were arrested on the same charge. Rosenthal and Lewy were acquitted, but Lewy was sentenced to four years for denying he knew the victim. All the evidence was based on the testimony of a petty thief, Masloff, who later received only one year for perjury.
1900 CE: JOSEPH CONRAD WRITES LORD JIM
1901 CE: PICASSO, 20, BEGINS HIS BLUE PERIOD
(More on Picasso below)
1901 CE: CARNEGIE BANKROLLS 65 BRANCH
LIBRARIES IN NY
–They will complement the 2,800 libraries Andrew Carnegie will fund across the United States. Carnegie provided the buildings. The local towns provided the books.
His Carnegie Steel Company eventually merged into U.S. Steel.
Scottish immigrant turned industrialist – and philanthropist extraordinaire – does good. Very good.
1902 CE: SCHECHTER
Solomon Schechter becomes president of JTS (Jewish Theological Seminary) in NY—and reorganizes it as the flagship of Conservative Judaism.
Six years earlier, his 1996 his exposition (the first 50,000+ pieces of an ultimate 200,000+ piece collection) of the manuscript treasures of the Cairo Geniza, turbo–charged the study of Medieval Judaism.
Romanian–born English rabbi, Schechter founded United Synagogue of America, and was a prime architect of the American Conservative Jewish movement…
Posthumously, an important and extensive network of Conservative Jewish day schools was named in his honor.
1902 CE: ARTHUR RUPPIN
Zionist, sociologist and father of modern Jewish demography. He founded what was later known as the Israel Land Development Authority (ILDC) which was dedicated to expanding settlement and agriculture. He also helped design new urban quarters in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Kfar Ruppin in the Beit Shean Valley was named after him.
– Eli Birnbaum
1902 CE: ARCHITECTURAL FIRM ALBERT KAHN ASSOCIATES FOUNDED
Britannica –
“Born March 21, 1869; died Dec. 8, 1942.
An industrial architect and planner known for his designs of American automobile factories. In his time he was considered the world’s foremost industrial architect and the “father of modern factory design.”
Kahn’s father, a rabbi, brought his family to the United States in 1881. Kahn had little schooling but was taken on as a student by George D. Mason, a leading Michigan architect. Following this apprenticeship, Kahn traveled for a year in Europe on a scholarship won in a competition sponsored by American Architect magazine. After working with various Detroit architects, Kahn established his own firm (1902), which developed into one of the largest in architectural history. In 1904 he was given his first commission for an auto factory by the Packard Motor Car Company.”
Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/309683/Albert–Kahn (accessed January 9, 2009)
1903 CE: JACK LONDON WRITES THE CALL OF THE WILD
1903 CE: MARIE SKLODOWSKA–CURIE
–becomes the first female recipient of the Nobel Prize
Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to Marie Curie, Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel “in recognition of their joint researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel.”
Eight years later (1901), Marie Curie would win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, as well. Curie was the first person to win two separate Nobel Prizes.
[The second was Linus Pauling (Chemistry–1954, Peace–1962)]. Note that Becquerel was also the doctoral supervisor of Marie at the University of Paris. Marie, in turn, was the mother of a Nobel Laureate, as well, Irene Joliot–Curie (chemistry: aluminum research).
CURIE CONTEXT: 1867: born Marie Skłodowska in Warsaw, Poland, Russian Empire; 1891: moves to Paris; 1894: meets Paul Curie (then an Instructor at the School of Physics and Chemistry (Paris); later in 1894: Marie’s first husband dies; 1895: Marie marries Paul Curie; July, 1898 > Marie and Paul discover chemical element Polonium (named after her native Poland); December, 1898: Marie and Paul discover Radium; 1906: Paul Curie dies (struck by a horse–drawn vehicle); 1909: Marie becomes first female professor at the Sorbonne (Paris); 1921: Marie Curie and Claudius Regaud found the Curie Institute (for cancer research) in Paris; 1932: Curie founds Radium Institute (oncology) back in her hometown Warsaw in Poland; 1934: succumbs to radiation poisoning in Savoy (France in modern times).
1903 CE: THE KISHINEV POGROM
Apr 6: Kishinev, Russia: Last day of Pesach (Passover) / coinciding that year with Easter:
YIVO –
“The Kishinev pogrom was an anti–Jewish riot that took place in Kishinev, then the capital of the Bessarabia province of the Russian Empire (now the capital of Moldova) on April 6–7, 1903.
The riot started after an incident on April 6 when a Christian Russian boy, Mikhail Rybachenko, was found murdered in the town of Dubossary, about 25 miles north of Kishinev. Although it was clear that the boy had been murdered by a relative (who was later found), the Russian–language anti–Semitic newspaper (Bessarabetz, meaning “Bessarabian”), published by Pavel Krushevan, insinuated that he was murdered by the Jews. Another newspaper, (Svet, “Light”), used the ages–old blood libel against the Jews (alleging that the boy had been killed to use his blood in preparation of matzo).
The US President Theodore Roosevelt to Tsar Nicholas II of Russia: “Stop your cruel oppression of the Jews.”
A lithograph in relation to the first Kishinev pogrom. (Library of Congress)
The Kishinev pogrom spanned three days of rioting against the Jews. Forty–seven (some put the figure at 49) Jews were killed, 92 severely wounded, 500 slightly wounded and over 700 houses looted and destroyed. The Times published a forged dispatch by Vyacheslav von Plehve, the Minister of Interior, to the governor of Bessarabia, which supposedly gave orders not to stop the rioters, but, in any case, no attempt was made by the police or military to intervene to stop the riots until the third day. This non–intervention is an argument in support of the opinion that the pogrom was sponsored or, at least, tolerated by the state.”
YIVO Institute for Jewish Research Pogroms Online, http://www.yivoinstitute.org/downloads/Pogroms.pdf (accessed June 14, 2009)
New York Times –
“The anti–Jewish riots in Kishinev, Bessarabia, are worse than the censor will permit to publish. There was a well laid–out plan for the general massacre of Jews on the day following the Russian Easter. The mob was led by priests, and the general cry, “Kill the Jews,” was taken–up all over the city. The Jews were taken wholly unaware and were slaughtered…. The dead number 120 and the injured about 500. The scenes of horror attending this massacre are beyond description. Babes were literally torn to pieces by the frenzied and bloodthirsty mob. The local police made no attempt to check the reign of terror. At sunset the streets were piled with corpses and wounded. Those who could make their escape fled in terror, and the city is now practically deserted of Jews.”
“Jewish Massacre Denounced,” New York Times, April 28, 1903, p 6.
1903 CE: GERTRUDE STEIN MOVES
–into 27, Rue de Fleurus, Paris
Born Feb. 3, 1874; died July 27, 1946.
Britannica –
“Avant–garde American writer, eccentric, and self–styled genius whose Paris home was a salon for the leading artists and writers of the period between World Wars I and II.
Stein spent her infancy in Vienna and in Passy, France, and her girlhood in Oakland, California. She entered the Society for the Collegiate Instruction of Women (renamed Radcliffe College in 1894), where she studied psychology with the philosopher William James, and received her degree in 1898. She studied at Johns Hopkins Medical School from 1897 to 1902 and then, with her older brother Leo, moved first to London and then to Paris, where she was able to live by private means. She lived with Leo, who became an accomplished art critic, until 1909; thereafter she lived with her lifelong companion Alice B. Toklas (1877–1967).”
Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/564945/Gertrude–Stein (accessed January 7, 2009)
Stein, Jewish, b. February, 1874, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; d. July, 1946, Paris, France
1903 CE: WRIGHT BROTHERS SOAR
The first controlled powered and sustained heavier–than–air human flight.
Dec 17: Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
Altitude: about ten feet above the ground.
1903 CE: PROTOCOLS FRAUD
Russia: St. Petersburg’s Znamya newspaper publishes incendiary anti–Semitic literary fraud The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
1904 CE: THE JEWISH MUSEUM (OF NY) FOUNDED
Fifth Avenue at 92nd Street on “Museum Mile”
Housed in the former Warburg mansion. Over 25,000 Jewish–related objects on display. Major and vibrant expositions and programs ongoing.
1904 CE: “PAYBACK TIME”: SCHIFF FINANCES JAPAN AGAINST THE CZAR
Wall Street Financier Jacob Schiff, Chairman of Kuhn, Loeb & Co. finances underdog Japan against Tsarist Russia in the Russo–Japanese War of 1904–5, shortly subsequent to then–recent (anti–Jewish) pogroms in Kishinev (Russia).
Stunning the world, but not stunning their astute financier, the Japanese defeat the Russians. Schiff subsequently (1905) awarded the (Japanese) Order of the Sacred Treasure, and in 1907, the Order of the Rising Sun and then, the first foreigner to be awarded the Order of the Emperor Meji (in the Imperial Palace).
In the 1940s, Japan would defy its axis ally the Nazis, and instead of persecuting any Jews within its reach, would de facto offer them safe haven and then shield them (in Shanghai, then under the Japanese Occupation) from any Nazi encroachments (“the Schiff effect”). Included among the rescuees – the entire student body of the legendary Mir Yeshiva was transported from Mir, Poland (now Belarus) across Russia/Siberia eastward to Shanghai – and saved.
1905 CE: TY COBB, 18, IS TRADED FOR $750
He was traded by the Augusta (Georgia) Tourists to the Detroit Tigers.
1905 CE: E=MC2
...the Nuclear Age begins, courtesy of Albert Einstein, an assistant patent examiner at the Swiss Patent Office in Bern...
The Annus Mirabilis (wonderful year) Papers – 4 separate papers published in the leading German physics journal by Einstein – including one on the aforementioned Theory of Relativity.
Awarded Nobel Prize in Physics 1921...
...when Hitler became chancellor of Germany in Jan 1932, Einstein, who was in California at the time, elected to stay in the USA...then becomes closely affiliated with the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University (NJ)
Einstein, Jewish, b. March, 1879, Ulm, Kingdom of Wurttemberg, Ottoman Empire; d. April, 1955, Princeton, New Jersey
1905 CE: GERMAN LEO BAECK
–publishes The essence of Judaism
Britannica –
“Reform rabbi and theologian, the spiritual leader of German Jewry during the Nazi period, and the leading liberal Jewish religious thinker of his time. His magnum opus, The Essence of Judaism, appeared in 1905. His final work, This People Israel: The Meaning of Jewish Existence (1955), was written in part while Baeck was in a Nazi concentration camp…
Baeck’s masterwork masterpiece, The Essence of Judaism (1905), establishes him as a leading liberal Jewish theologian.”
Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/48611/Leo–Baeck (accessed January 7, 2009)
Born May 23, 1873, Lissa, then in Germany, now Poland; died Nov. 2, 1956, London
1905 CE: THE SCHLIEFFEN PLAN
The German General Staff’s early 20th century plan for fighting a possible two–front war: First, attack France to the west; then, Russia to the east. The plan envisioned the capitulation of France within 42 days. Then, turning the German war machine on Russia to the east.
Kaiser Wilhelm is quoted as saying: “Paris for lunch; dinner in St. Petersburg.”
Integral to the plan, was rolling the German Army to France through neutral Belgium (presumably unopposed by Belgium), without inciting third party countries. However, as it turned out, when the Schlieffen Plan was put into effect in WWI, first, Belgium fought back tenaciously; and second, Britain was not impressed by the invasion of Belgium, and declared war on Germany. The combination, in turn, enabled both the French and Russian armies to mobilize much more effectively than the Germans had anticipated.
Count Alfred von Schlieffen was the author of the ill–fated plan; his deputy Helmuth von Moltke the Younger put the plan “into effect” (as Schlieffen had retired) launching WWI.
WWI would prove disastrous to Germany and hyper–destructive to the Western world at–large. The extent of the disaster then set the stage for WWII, which again proved disastrous to Germany and hyper–destructive to many other warring and civilian parties—including the Jews. Total dead from the two wars growing out of the 1905 Schlieffen plan – 100 million+.
1906 CE: ALBERT SCHWEITZER
–publishes The Quest of the Historical Jesus (English translation 1910)
1906 CE: NAHUM SOKOLOW
Articulate and versatile essayist and publicist. During the 1930s he headed the Jewish Agency and the World Zionist Organization. He was also editor of Hatsefirah and published a history of Zionism, which mainly dealt with the period from 1917-1920. His Hebrew translation of Herzl’s Altneuland was entitled Tel Aviv, which subsequently became the name of the first new Jewish city in Eretz Israel. Sokolow collaborated with Weizmann in London to negotiate the Balfour Declaration and its acceptance by Britain’s allies.
– Eli Birnbaum
1907 CE: BEZALEL
Bezalel Academy of Art and Design. founded in Jerusalem...
World–renowned range of art programs through Masters degrees.
1907 CE: PICASSO, 26, PAINTS LES DEMOISELLES D’AVIGNON
1907 CE: THE CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA
–First volume appears in 1907; last in 1914
a.k.a. Old Catholic Encyclopedia
The writing of the encyclopedia apparently commenced in January, 1905, with the editorial board and the captive publisher all NY–based.
The encyclopedia was later updated by the Catholic University of America and a 17–volume New Catholic Encyclopedia was first published in 1967, then in 2002.
1909 CE: EMBRYONIC KIBBUTZ DEGANIA
Southern end, Sea of Galilee, Land of Israel (originally Kvutzat Degania).
[A kibbutz is a collective community in Israel which was traditionally based on agriculture. The kibbutz is a form of communal living that combines socialism and Zionism. Kibbutzim began as utopian communities, but have gradually embraced a more “scientific” Socialist approach. Today, farming has been partly supplanted by other economic branches, including industrial plants and high–tech enterprises. Although less than five percent of Israelis live on kibbutzim, they are disproportionately represented in key positions and high–status fields.]
Degania Alef (Dganya Alef) or Degania #A was the first kibbutz established by Jews in the areas of the Land of Israel then under Ottoman rule. It was founded in 1910 by ten men and two women led by Joseph Baratz. The land had previously been owned by a Persian family resident in Beirut.
Despite its small size, Degania Alef has been home to many famous Israelis and members of the pre–state Yishuv (settlement). The poet Rachel, the “prophet of labor” A.D. Gordon, and Joseph Trumpeldor all worked at Degania Alef, while many early members of Degania Alef left to found other kibbutzim. Gideon Baratz was the first child ever to be born in a kibbutz and (later Chief of Staff) Moshe Dayan was the second, both in Degania Alef.
Degania Alef should not be confused with Degania Bet, which is a separate kibbutz. Both lie along the southern shores of the Sea of Galilee.
In 2007, Degania Alef announced that it would undergo “privatisation.” Instead of assigned jobs and equal pay under the rule of the elders, the reorganization would allow people to seek their jobs, earn their salaries, and own their homes.
– after Wikipedia
1909 CE: NAACP FOUNDED
Feb 12: The oldest and most influential black civil rights organization, founded in Baltimore, MD, by a diverse group, which included (co–founder) Dr. Henry Moskowitz, a Jewish physician, Civil Rights activist, and later, Commissioner of Public Markets in NYC (1917).
1909 CE: “RACHEL THE POETESS”
–settles in Eretz–Israel (Palestine)
As noted in Encyclopaedia Judaica on Rachel Bluwstein {1997} [CD–ROM]:
“Rachel (pseudonym of Rahel Bluwstein, 1890–1931), Hebrew poet in Erezt Israel. Rachel was born in Saratov, on the Volga in northern Russia, and raised in Poltava. She began writing poetry in Russian at the age of 15 and also studied painting. In 1909 she emigrated to Erezt Israel, settling in Rehovot. She abandoned her native Russian idiom and learned Hebrew.
Under the influence of the pioneer Zionist Hannah Maisel (Shohat) she became a pioneer and was one of the first trainees at the young women’s training farm at Kinneret. At Kinneret she met Aaron David Gordon, the philosopher of Zionist agrarianism, and to him she dedicated her first Hebrew poem, “Halokh Nefesh” (“Mood”), in Ha–Shilo’ah, 37, (1920).
Having decided on an agricultural life, she studied agronomy at the University of Toulouse (1913). Unable to return to Erezt Israel because of World War I, she went to Russia, where she taught Jewish refugee children. After the war, she settled in Deganyah [Degania]. However, having contracted tuberculosis during the war, she soon became too ill for farm life and had to spend the rest of her life in hospitals and sanatoria.
Rachel is among the first modern Hebrew poets who wrote in a conversational style. Her knowledge of Hebrew was drawn from both the developing spoken idiom and the Bible. She was also influenced by the conversational school, which then prevailed in Russian poetry (Blok, Akhmatova, and Yesenin).
Her poems are characterized by a clear, uncomplicated lyrical line and a musicality, then rare in Hebrew poetry. Invariably short, her poems are elegiac and nostalgic in tone, many of them reflecting the pessimism of a young writer on the brink of death.
These qualities made her writings very popular with younger Hebrew readers and with the general public. Many of the poems, including the widely sung “Kinneret,” have been put to music. Rachel also translated Russian, Yiddish, and French poetry and wrote occasional pieces of criticism.
Two volumes of her verse appeared in her lifetime: Safi’ah (“Aftergrowth,” 1927), Mi–Neged (“From Opposite,” 1930), and one posthumously, Nevo (1932). These were collected in Shirat Rachel (“The Poetry of Rachel,” 1935), the eighth edition (1961) of which also contains her other works as well as a biography by Bracha Habas and a bibliography of her poems and their translations.”
1909 CE: JESUIT MAGAZINE AMERICA
–begins publication in NY; Roman Catholic orientation, of course, but on the ‘left’
sometimes tangles with the Vatican….45000 circulation
1910 CE: BJE founded
BJE Online –
“The mission of the Board of Jewish Education of Greater New York is to motivate, strengthen and increase Jewish identity and commitment to the Jewish people through educational services and acculturation programs in New York.
Founded in 1910, BJE serves the entire metropolitan area, Nassau/Queens and Westchester County, and every denomination – Conservative, Reform, Orthodox, Reconstructionist and unaffiliated—with sensitivity to each.
We provide comprehensive services to more than 700 Jewish day, congregational and nursery schools, serving 176,000 youngsters, as well as group leaders from community centers and camps.”
BJE official website, http://www.bjeny.org/bjeny.asp (accessed July 30, 2009)
1910 CE: HENRY MATISSE PAINTS THE DANCE
1910 CE: SHIRAZ BLOOD LIBEL
The Jews of Shiraz, Iran, are falsely accused of murdering a Muslim girl. The entire Jewish quarter was pillaged; the pogrom left 12 Jews dead and about 50 injured.
– after Wikipedia
1910 CE: O. HENRY, 48, WRITES THE RANSOM OF RED CHIEF
–One of his most famous short stories
O. Henry “owns” the short story genre.
His personal life was quite “colorful,” as well.
1911 CE: AGADIR CRISIS
July: Agadir Port, Morocco: Deployment of the German gunboat Panther to the Moroccan port—across the Mediterranean from the British port of Gibralter—sparks international tension.
The gunboat move was supported by the German press, and opposed by the British and French governments.
The French, with British backing, subsequently established a protectorate over Morocco, the German gunboat diplomacy gambit having backfired on Germany politically.
1911 CE: NORWEGIAN EXPLORER ROALD AMUNDSEN
–reaches the South Pole
Dec 14: Thirty–five days before the team of Englishman Robert Falcon Scott. Scott is beaten both by Amundsen and then by the elements. He freezes to death at the South Pole.
1912 CE: TITANIC SINKS!
1912 CE: JASCHA HEIFETZ
–At age 11, he plays the Mendelssohn violin concerto at a private party in Berlin.
He is accompanied on the piano by famed violinist Fritz Keller, who remarks –
“Well gentlemen, we can now all break our violins across our knees.”
1912 CE: MODIGLIANI’S SCULPTURE PEAKS
Born July 12, 1884, Livorno, Italy; died January 24, 1920, Paris, France.
Britannica –
“Italian painter and sculptor whose portraits and nudes—characterized by asymmetrical compositions, elongated figures, and a simple but monumental use of line—are among the most important portraits of the 20th century.
Modigliani was born into a Jewish family of merchants. As a child he suffered from pleurisy and typhus, which prevented him from receiving a conventional education. In 1898 he began to study painting. After a brief stay in Florence in 1902, he continued his artistic studies in Venice, remaining there until the winter of 1906, when he left for Paris. His early admiration for Italian Renaissance painting—especially that of Siena—was to last throughout his life…
In 1909 Modigliani met the Romanian sculptor Constantin Brâncusi, on whose advice he seriously studied African sculpture. To prepare himself for creating his own sculpture, he intensified his graphic experiments. In his drawings Modigliani tried to give the function of limiting or enclosing volumes to his contours. In 1912 he exhibited at the Salon d’Automne eight stone heads whose elongated and simplified forms reflect the influence of African sculpture…
Little–known outside avant–garde Parisian circles, Modigliani had seldom participated in official exhibitions. Fame came after his death, with a solo exhibition at the Bernheim–Jeune Gallery in 1922 and later with a biography by André Salmon. For decades critical evaluations of Modigliani’s work were overshadowed by the dramatic story of his tragic life, but he is now acknowledged as one of the most significant and original artists of his time.”
Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/387356/Amedeo–Modigliani (accessed January 17, 2009)
1912 CE: SZOLD
–founds Hadassah (in NYC).
Henrietta Szold (1860–1945 CE) founds Hadassah Jewish Women’s Organization…rescues 22,000 Jewish children from Nazi Europe… among other (less intense) ongoing fraternal and social services worldwide…now, a powerhouse organization…Szold was also Talmudic scholar and Zionist leader…born in Baltimore, MD, the daughter of a rabbi.
1912 CE: YOUNG ISRAEL
NCYI – National Council of Young Israel – founded (in NYC).
…by Israel Friedlander, Mordecai Kaplan and Charles Rubinstein.
Manhattan–based, currently has 150 affiliate congregations and 25,000 member families in North America…with, as well, Israel affiliate Yisrael Hatzair with 50 congregations…gradually tilting right–ward as a group.
1912 CE: HOUDINI
“The Handcuff King” (b. 1874 – d.1926) ...immortal magician/escape artist Houdini performs his most famous escape act: The Chinese Water Torture Cell.
In America since arriving in Wisconsin in 1878 at age 4...born Erik Weisz in Budapest, Hungary...later Ehrich Weiss...then Harry Houdini.
The son of Rabbi Samuel Weiss...who relocated his family to Manhattan’s (Upper) East Side (from Wisconsin) in 1887.
1912 CE: EMMA LAZARUS AND THE STATUE OF LIBERTY
Liberty Island: NY: Bronze Plaque engraved with the Lazarus poem “The New Colossus” (a sonnet she wrote in 1883) is affixed to the Statue of Liberty.
Born July 22, 1849; died Nov 19, 1887
Britannica –
“American poet and essayist best known for her sonnet
‘The New Colossus,’ written to the Statue of Liberty.
Born into a cultured family of Sephardic (Spanish Jewish) stock, Lazarus learned languages and the classics at an early age.
About 1881, with the wave of immigration to the United States from European and Russian ghettoes, Lazarus took up the defense of persecuted Jews and of Judaism and began to work for the relief of immigrants. She published numerous essays in the Century and the weekly American Hebrew on the pogroms and persecutions and the often equivocal attitude of the Christian West. She was an early advocate of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. In 1882 she produced Songs of a Semite, which included such powerful pieces as “The Dance to Death,” “The Banner of the Jew,” and “The Crowing of the Red Cock.” Her sonnet “The New Colossus” was chosen to be inscribed on the base of the Statue of Liberty, the monument it celebrates, and it remains a most moving and eloquent expression of an American ideal: “Give me your tired, your poor,” the sonnet concludes, “Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. / Send these, the homeless, tempest–tost to me, / I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/333210/Emma–Lazarus (accessed January 25, 2009)
Lazarus’s last book, a series of prose poems published under the title By the Waters of Babylon, appeared in 1887.
1913 CE: HASHOMER HATZAIR
(Translation: The Youth Guard)
–founded in Galicia, Austria, and was also the name of the group’s political party in the YISHUV (Jewish settlement) in the pre–1948 British Mandate of Palestine
Socialist–Zionist youth movement…illustrious history…its center–of–gravity transplanted to Israel
1913 CE: ADL
Anti–Defamation League of B’nai B’rith founded (in NYC).
–by Sigmund Livingston in response to the case of Leo Frank.
Frank was a NY engineer who took a job in Atlanta as manager of the American Pencil factory… When 13–year–old Mary Phagan from his factory was found raped and murdered, the state of Georgia, first ‘legally’ lynched him in 1913, then, in 1915, a group of Georgians kidnapped Frank from prison and physically lynched him.
ADL is a dynamic and effective powerhouse organization adroitly spearheaded by National Director Abraham Foxman since 1987….current annual budget exceeds $50,000,000… Current chairman in 2007 – Glen Lewy.
1914 CE: CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA COMPLETED
Published by Robert Appleton Company, NY. The first volume had appeared in March 1907.
1914 CE: JAPAN JOINS THE “ALLIED FORCES” IN WWI
1914 CE: CECIL B. DEMILLE, 32, DIRECTS THE SQUAW MAN
–in a small town in southern California
Originally a 1905 stage play, the film was the first feature–length movie made specifically in Hollywood.
1914 CE: CANADA: MONTREAL JEWISH PUBLIC LIBRARY FOUNDED
The Jewish Public Library (JPL) is unique among Montreal and world Jewish institutions. It is a constituent agency of FEDERATION CJA (the central address for Jewish philanthropy and community service in Montreal)….Celebrating its 90th anniversary in 2004, the Library serves the educational, informational, cultural, and recreational needs of Jewish Montrealers of all ages and backgrounds.
1914 CE: ARCHDUKE FRANZ FERDINAND OF AUSTRIA ASSASSINATED
June 28: Sarajevo, Austro–Hungarian Empire: Proximate cause to WWI a month later—although hard to sort through the various interplays and plat–lines.
1914 CE: WWI BREAKS OUT
July 28, Noon: Austria declares war on Serbia. Other outbreaks play out over the next several months.
World War I (1914–1918).
The Entente Powers (initially France, Britain, Russia, and then joined later by Italy and the USA) v. The Central Powers (initially Germany, Austria–Hungary, and later joined by the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria).
Ended by the Treaty of Versailles, which was then followed by the creation of the League of Nations.
1915 CE: BERNARD REVEL
Rabbi Dov (Bernard) Revel becomes first titular head of REITS
REITS (Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary) is the rabbinical training seminary of Yeshiva University.
REITS becomes one of the key components of embryonic Yeshiva University, and Revel becomes president of the university at large.
Revel was born near Kovno, Lithuania. Later, after yeshiva study and ordination in the USA, as well, he receives a doctorate in philosophy from Dropsie College (at the University of Pennsylvania). Then, before heading REITS, he had a small stint as an Oklahoma “oil man,” where he made a respectable fortune (according to legend, anyway).
In 1987 he appeared on a $1 US Postage stamp as part of the “Great American” series.
A renowned yeshiva day school in Queens, Yeshiva Dov Revel of Forest Hills was named after him...along with Yeshiva University’s Hebrew Studies graduate school.
1915 CE: ONSET OF THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
Britannica –
“Series of brutal campaigns conducted against the Armenian subjects of the Ottoman Empire by Sultan Abdulhamid II in 1894–96 and by the Young Turk government in 1915–16.
It is estimated that nearly two million Christian Armenians lived in the Ottoman Empire by the late 1880s. The Armenians in the eastern provinces at that time, encouraged by Russia, began promoting Armenian territorial autonomy.
As the movement grew, various political groups were organized, culminating in the formation of two revolutionary parties called Hënchak (“The Bell”) and Dashnaktsutyun (“Union”) in 1887 and 1890, respectively. At the same time, Abdülhamid, intent on suppressing all separatist sentiments in the empire, drastically raised taxes on the Armenians and aroused nationalistic feelings and resentment against them among the neighbouring Kurds. This gave Armenian radicals a pretext to revolt. When the Armenians in Sasun refused to pay the oppressive taxes, Turkish troops and Kurdish tribesmen killed thousands of them and burned their villages (1894).
In the hope of calling attention to their cause, Armenian revolutionaries staged another demonstration two years later: they seized the Ottoman Bank in Istanbul. In the mayhem that followed, more than 50,000 Armenians were killed by mobs of Muslim Turks whose actions were apparently coordinated by government troops.
The last and deadliest of the massacres occurred during World War I (1914–18). Armenians from the Caucasus region of the Russian Empire formed volunteer battalions
to help the Russian army against the Turks. Early in 1915 these battalions recruited Turkish Armenians from behind the Turkish lines. In response, the Turkish government ordered the deportation of about 1,750,000 Armenians to Syria and Mesopotamia. In the course of this forced exodus, about 600,000 Armenians died of starvation or were killed by Turkish soldiers and police while en route in the desert…Hundreds of thousands more were forced into exile.”
Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/35323/Armenian–massacres (accessed February 6, 2009)
1915 CE: LUSITANIA
June 7: British luxury ocean liner RMS Lusitania torpedoed by German U–Boats.
1,198 killed including many American passengers...shifted public opinion in many countries increasingly against Germany.
1915 CE: ROBERT FROST, 41
–composes the poem The Road Not Taken
–published in the August issue of The Atlantic Monthly.
Last paragraph –
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
1916 CE: JUSTICE BRANDEIS
June 5: Louis D. Brandeis of Boston sworn–in as (the first Jewish) Justice of the Supreme Court.
He grew up Louisville, KY... Harvard Law School... Boston law practice... appointed by President Woodrow Wilson ...confirmed after turbulent Congressional hearings....serves 23 years....
A leader of the American Zionist movement,
A kibbutz (in Israel, of course) – Ein HaShofet (Spring of the Judge) – is named after him....along with a certain university in Waltham, MA.
1916 CE: JABOTISNKY AND TRUMPELDOR
....create the Zion Mule Corps a.k.a. The British Jewish Legion (c. 1916 –1917 CE) in WWI.
The Legion served as an important embryonic training ground for future Jewish defense leadership in Palestine.
Zev Jabotinsky (spiritual father of Begin, the Irgun, and later, the Herut party) and Joseph Trumpeldor prevail upon the British to allow the formation of a Jewish Legion unit to fight alongside the British against the Ottoman Turks, who then controlled Palestine…the Jewish Legion unit then, serves in Battle of Gallipoli…
Trumpeldor, born in Pyatigorsk, Russia, December 1880; then, at age 38 in 1918 after the Zion Mule Corps service in WWI, returns to Russia and organizes HeHalutz, a youth organization that prepared immigrants for aliyah (immigration to Israel); Trumpeldor died in Palestine defending Tel Hai (in the Upper Galilee) from Arab marauders in March, 1920.
Jabotinsky, an iconic and towering Jewish historical figure, was born Oct 1880 in Odessa, Russia. He was a Revisionist Zionist leader, author, orator, soldier and founder of the Jewish Self–Defense Organization in Odessa. A lifelong proactive leader on behalf of Jewish self–defense across Russia, Poland, and Palestine. He died Aug 1940 in the USA (while on a visit from Israel in NY State; visiting a Betar camp).
1916 CE: “LAWRENCE OF ARABIA”
T.E. Lawrence... British Intelligence Officer—liaison with the Arabs—who fought with Arab Irregulars (backed by the British and French)—spear headed by Grand Sharif Hussein—revolting (1916–1918) against the Ottoman Empire Turks across the expanse of the Ottoman Arabia region.
Lawrence’s historical role: successfully convincing various Arab leaders to coordinate their revolt (through Lawrence) to advance British interests, as well as the Arab rebellion.
Often in (white–linen) Arab headdress and robe, Lawrence was immortalized by the writings and film production of the contemporary (often sensationalist) war correspondent Lowell Thomas.
At the end of hostilities (1918), the Arabs felt severely betrayed by the terms in–place of the hitherto private/secret Sykes–Picot Agreement (Britain–France with Imperial Russia assenting) of two years earlier, May, 1916.
1916 CE: ROCKWELL, 22, COVER ARTIST
Norman Rockwell paints the first of his 321 covers for The Saturday Evening Post.
1916 CE: RASPUTIN
“The Mad Monk”... “The Black Monk”...Russian mystic in the Imperial inner circle, particularly close to young Tsarevich Alexei and, later to his mother, Tsaritsa Alexandra... Rasputin widely believed to have grossly manipulated the head of the family, Tsar Nicholas II, during the later years of the Romanov Dynasty.
Dec 16: A group of Russian nobles murder Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin by poisoning him and shooting him... and then, as an insurance measure, clubbing the dead body and submerging/drowning it... Then, still wary of him, to further “play it safe” with the former formidable mystic, they burnt the corpse...
1917 CE: “BALFOUR DECLARATION OF 1917”
Letter from the UK’s Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Lord Rothschild, who was seen as a representative of the Jewish people…
“… The British government viewed with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people…”
…but Britain will backtrack—at the moment of maximum Jewish vulnerability—at the beginning of WWII.
(See 1939 CE: MACDONALD WHITE PAPER)
(Not to be confused with Balfour Declaration of 1926 relating to British Commonwealth dominions)
1917 CE: THE BOLSHEVIKS
Russian (Bolshevik) Revolution:
The “February Revolution”
–overthrew the Czar (Nicholas II) on Feb 23
The “October Revolution”
–installed the Bolsheviks on Nov 7
...followed by the Russian Civil War (1917–1922).
1917 CE: SARAH AARONSOHN SHOOTS HERSELF
Jewish patriot and heroine. In 1915 she witnessed the Turkish massacre of Armenians, an experience which may have triggered her joining her brother Aaron in NILI’s (see 1915) spy operations against the Turks. In 1917 on a visit to Egypt she was warned by the British not to return to Eretz Israel, but she refused to comply. Upon her arrival, she warned the members of NILI to disband but remained at home in Zichron Yaakov so as to allay any suspicion. She was arrested by the Turkish military authorities on October l of the same year. After three days of torture, and fearing that she may reveal information, she managed to shoot and kill herself.
– after Eli Birnbaum
1917 CE: BAIS YAAKOV
Jewish girl’s school movement founded.
–by seamstress Sarah Schenirer in Kraków, Poland… now worldwide…full–time schools for religious (often Haredi) Jewish girls…close connection with Agudath Israel Jewish religious movement.
1917 CE: “GOD BLESS AMERICA”
Irving Berlin composes “God Bless America” while in the US Army... introduced nationally only 21 years later (sung by Kate Smith) in riposte to Hitler’s increasing menace. An unofficial – or backup – national anthem of America to the more complex and difficult to sing “The Star–Spangled Banner.” [See also 1940 CE: WHITE CHRISTMAS]
1917 CE: SHOLEM ALEICHEM
His play “Tevye the Milkman” performed posthumously in 1917.
47 years later, the play to be reincarnated as ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ on Broadway in 1964.
Sholem Aleichem (b. Shalom Rabinovich in 1859 in Russia; d. 1916 in NY) – author of numerous Yiddish plays and popular short stories – became probably the preeminent writer in Yiddish of his time for the Russian and Lithuanian Jewish “masses,” inasmuch as the “educated Jews” wrote, spoke and used Hebrew…
Employing a distinctive “folk wisdom” genre, and often compared to Mark Twain because of their markedly parallel styles....when the American icon met the Jewish newcomer in the USA, Twain remarked to the press (with apparently as straight a face as he could muster) that he (Mark Twain) was “the American Sholem Aleichem”.
With Yiddish in almost total eclipse among post–Holocaust contemporary Jewry (except in Hasidic circles – which are not his natural audience) Sholem Aleichem’s sun does indeed gently set…
…the English translations achieve some traction, but the market for his works is now minuscule, outside of various genres of libraries… he was the author of dozens of works, plays and stories.
1917 CE: ALLENBY
1917 witnessed the British conquest of Palestine from the Turks, and British General Allenby’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem (Dec 9), marking the triumphal conclusion of his “Palestine Campaign.”
The Turks had evicted the inhabitants of Tel Aviv en masse prior to the British arrival, having suspected the Jews (not unjustifiably) of pro–British sympathies. The victorious Allenby repatriates Tel Aviv’s denizens, and the grateful returnees name the main street of Tel Aviv after him – Rehov Allenby. (Allenby’s name is also honored by a main street in Jerusalem and by a key bridge over the Jordan.)
Back at home, the thrilled British heap honors upon him, as well. Allenby is subsequently to become Field Marshal Allenby, as well as Viscount Allenby and then Middle East High Commissioner (for Egypt and Sudan).
1917 CE: HEBREW UNIVERSITY FOUNDED
Israel’s oldest university was founded in 1917 in Jerusalem. A year later, Dr. Chaim Weizmann lays its Foundation Stone. Finally, seven years later in 1925 Hebrew University, with buildings completed, is officially inaugurated, and classes open.
“Hebrew U” is Israel’s preeminent liberal arts university, and its main campus is on Mt. Scopus in Jerusalem. Between 1948 and 1967 the Mt. Scopus campus was in Jordanian hands, and inaccessible to Israel….
1918 CE: BERNARD BARUCH
Baruch assumes the chairmanship of the War Industries Board (WIB)—under Woodrow Wilson.
Jewish American, Baruch (1870–1960) led a rich life post–CCNY (City College New York) as a sugar trader, financier, stock market speculator and presidential advisor.
Under Franklin Roosevelt, more than a decade after his stewardship of the War Industries Board under Wilson, he was a member of the “Brain Trust,” which helped form the National Recovery Administration during the Great Depression in the 1930s.
His legacy includes a rich assortment of Baruch–wisdoms,
as well:
“Peace does not follow disarmament; disarmament follows peace.”
“The main purpose of the stock market is to make fools of as many men as possible.”
“I made my money selling too soon.”
“Never follow the crowd.”
“To me, old age is always fifteen years older than I am.”
1918 CE: HAARETZ FOUNDED
Haaretz is Israel’s oldest ongoing major daily newspaper.
Published in both Hebrew and English, and currently sold together with the International Herald Tribune, its online Western readership is known to include many in the U.S. Congress.
Online edition: www.HAARETZ.com
1918 CE: AMERICAN JEWISH CONGRESS FOUNDED
American Jewish Congress –
“The American Jewish Congress describes itself as an association of Jewish Americans organized to defend Jewish interests at home and abroad through public policy advocacy, using diplomacy, legislation, and the courts.
In 1918, leaders within the American Jewish community, consisting of Jewish, Zionist, and immigrant community organizations, convened the first American Jewish Congress (AJCongress) in Philadelphia’s historic Independence Hall. Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, Felix Frankfurter, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, and others joined to lay the groundwork for a national democratic organization of Jewish leaders from all over the country, to rally for equal rights for all Americans regardless of race, religion or national ancestry.
In addition to its stated goals of equal rights for all, it was founded to broaden Jewish leadership and to present a unified American Jewish position at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. It became effective as a pressure group in 1928 under the leadership of Rabbi Wise, who remained the president and chief spokesperson of the AJCongress until his death in 1949.”
American Jewish Congress Online, http://www.ajcongress.org/site/PageServer?pagename=about (accessed July 6, 2009)
1918 CE: KURT EISNER LEADS OVERTHROW OF THE BAVARIAN GOVERNMENT
In November, leads overthrow; in December, assassinated.
Britannica –
“German socialist journalist and statesman who organized the Socialist Revolution that overthrew the monarchy in Bavaria (1918)…
In 1914 he opposed German aid to Austria–Hungary against Serbia. During the early stages of World War I, however, Eisner supported the government; but in 1917, influenced by pacifist principles, he joined the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD) of which he later became a leader. Eisner was arrested in 1918 as a strike leader but was shortly released and resumed his leadership of the USPD. In November 1918 he successfully organized a revolution that overthrew the monarchy, proclaimed the Bavarian Republic, and demanded peace. Eisner became first prime minister and minister of foreign affairs of the new republic. He strove to bring about internal security, to reconcile and unite the various socialist parties in Bavaria, and to effect economic and social reform. In February 1919 he was assassinated by a zealous reactionary student.”
Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/181550/Kurt–Eisner (accessed February 11, 2009)
1919 CE: TREATY OF VERSAILLES
June 28: near Paris: The treaty marked the end of WWI. Humiliating terms which are imposed on Germany in the Treaty of Versailles on the heels of its WWI defeat, set–the–stage for Hitler’s election victory in Germany fourteen years later in 1933. WWII will follow at the end of that decade.
Britannica –
“Peace document signed at the end of World War I by the Allied and Associated Powers and by Germany in the Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles, France, on June 28, 1919; it took force on Jan. 10, 1920.
The treaty was drafted during the Paris Peace Conference in the spring of 1919, which was dominated by the national leaders known as the “Big Four,” David Lloyd George of Britain, Georges Clemenceau of France, Woodrow Wilson of the United States, and Vittorio Orlando of Italy. The first three in particular made the important decisions. None of the defeated nations had any say in shaping the treaty, and even the associated Allied powers played only a minor role. The German delegation was presented with a fait accompli; it was shocked at the severity of the terms and protested the contradictions between the assurances made when the armistice was negotiated and the actual treaty. Accepting the “war guilt” clause and the reparation terms were especially odious to them.
The population and territory of Germany was reduced by about 10 percent by the treaty…
The “war guilt clause” of the treaty deemed Germany the aggressor in the war and consequently made Germany responsible for making reparations to the Allied nations in payment for the losses and damage they had sustained in the war. It was impossible to compute the exact sum to be paid as reparations for the damage caused by the Germans, especially in France and Belgium, at the time the treaty was being drafted, but a commission that assessed the losses incurred by the civilian population set an amount of $33,000,000,000 in 1921.
Although economists at the time declared that such a huge sum could never be collected without upsetting international finances, the Allies insisted that Germany be made to pay, and the treaty permitted them to take punitive actions if Germany fell behind in its payments.
The Big Four, especially Clemenceau, wanted to make sure that Germany would never again pose a military threat to the rest of Europe, and the treaty contained a number of stipulations to guarantee this aim.
The German army was restricted to 100,000 men; the general staff was eliminated; the manufacture of armored cars, tanks, submarines, airplanes, and poison gas was forbidden; and only a small number of specified factories could make weapons or munitions. All of Germany west of the Rhine and up to 30 miles (50 km) east of it was to be a demilitarized zone. The forced disarmament of Germany, it was hoped, would be accompanied by voluntary disarmament in other nations…
The Treaty of Versailles was bitterly criticized by the Germans, who complained that it had been “dictated” to them, that it violated the spirit of the Fourteen Points, and that it demanded intolerable sacrifices that would wreck their economy. In the years after it was ratified the Treaty of Versailles was revised and altered, mostly in Germany’s favor. Numerous concessions were made to Germany before the rise of Adolf Hitler, and by 1938 only the territorial settlement articles remained.
Many historians claim that the combination of a harsh treaty and subsequent lax enforcement of its provisions paved the way for the upsurge of German militarism in the 1930s. The huge German reparations and the war guilt clause fostered deep resentment of the settlement in Germany, and when Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland in 1936 (a violation of the treaty), the Allies did nothing to stop him, thus encouraging future German aggression.”
Encyclopaedia Britannica Online. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/626485/Treaty–of–Versailles (accessed February 10, 2009)
1919 CE: BELA KUN LEADS THE HUNGARIAN REVOLUTION
A young supporter of Lenin, he eventually became the head of the Hungarian government, forming a Soviet Republic. Kun refused to tolerate any opposition and his harsh line alienated the peasants. He was forced to flee after a series of disasters. Kun was killed by Stalin in 1939. Although totally alienated from Judaism he did appoint other Jews to governmental positions. After his collapse, anti–Jewish riots broke out. Approximately 7,000 were murdered.
– Eli Birnbaum
1919 CE: NEW SCHOOL FOR SOCIAL RESEARCH FOUNDED
Britannica –
“The New School was established in 1919 as an informal centre for adult education by a group of independent–minded scholars that included economist Thorstein Veblen, historian Charles A. Beard, and philosopher John Dewey. It soon became the first American university to specialize in the continuing higher education of adults. Among the early lecturers were John Maynard Keynes, Bertrand Russell, and W.E.B. Du Bois. The school received its charter in 1934. That same year it established a graduate faculty in political and social science that was staffed mainly by refugee [primarily Jewish] academics from Nazi Germany, who gave the school a Continental focus with a heavy emphasis on European philosophy and social thought [that graduate faculty was named the ‘University in Exile’].”
Encyclopaedia Britannica Online. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/412026/New–School–University (accessed February 9, 2009)
1919 CE: MOSCOW JEWISH STATE THEATER OPENED
The Moscow State Jewish Theater, also known by its acronym GOSET, was a Yiddish theater company established in 1919 and later shut down in 1948 by the Soviet authorities.
The theater originated before the Bolshevik revolution as the Jewish Theater Workshop directed by Alexander Granovsky, and in 1918 it attracted Solomon Mikhoels who became the leading actor and, ten years after his coming on board, its director.
The design of GOSET’s foyer was by Marc Chagall.
In January 1948, Mikhoels was murdered by the MVD (the Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs) and his death was made to look like a car accident. Months later the theater was shut down, and the members of the Jewish Anti–Fascist Committee (also headed by Mikhoels) were arrested. At least thirteen prominent Soviet Yiddish writers were executed on August 12, 1952 in the saga known as “The Night of the Murdered Poets.”
1919 CE: THE WEIMER REPUBLIC FORMED
August 11, Weimer, Germany: Parliamentary republic established after the last Hohenzollern ruler was unseated (November 28, 1918). The republic was to effectively last 14 years until the German apparatus of state was hijacked by the elected Chancellor Hitler and his Nazi party. The legal measures taken by the Nazi government February-March 1933, known as Gleischaltung (“coordination”) meant that the Nazi junta/government could as a consequence legislate contrary to the constitution (of 1919).
1919 CE: KUOMINTANG FOUNDED
October10: The Koumintang (KMT), a.k.a. Chinese Nationalist Party, is founded by Song Jiaoren and Sun Yat–sen. The KMT overthrows the Qing Dynasty of China. The Koumintang is the founding and ruling party of the Republic of China (ROC). The KMT eventually reestablished itself on the island of Taiwan after its defeat in battle by the Communist Party of China (CPC) in 1949 on the mainland.
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*
end of
Jews, Church & Civilization
Volume V
*
continued
in Volume VI