1956 CE – 2008 CE

1956 CE: TAU

Tel Aviv University founded.

TAU has over 30,000 students in 2007, and is a quite–important player on the Israel cultural scene.

 

1956 CE: GINSBURG – VIDEOTAPE

Charles Ginsburg commercially develops videotape.

Apr 14: Redwood City, CA: Quadruplex video recording machines introduced by AMPEX Corporation.

Research Team Leader: Ginsburg. Born: San Francisco, 1920; died 1992.

 

1956 CE: IN GOD WE TRUST

–designated U.S. national motto

 

1956 CE: HUNDRED FLOWERS CAMPAIGN

Summer, China: Commencement of an approximately one–year period during which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) encouraged a variety of views and solutions to national policy issues. The campaign was launched by Mao under the slogan: “Let a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend...”

 

1956 CE: SUEZ CANAL NATIONALIZED

July 26: Sinai, Nasser nationalizes the Suez Canal.

 

1956 CE: SINAI CAMPAIGN

Gaza Strip and Egypt.

Oct 30: Sinai, Britain, France and Israel form an alliance: Israel is to invade Sinai and seize the Suez Canal under Anglo–French political cover—and supporting limited military actions—to force Egypt to cede control of the canal to Anglo–French oversight.

“The 1956 Sinai Campaign”...(Israeli operation name: Kadesh)...Moshe Dayan Israel Chief of Staff oversees the Israeli military sweep of Sinai...his key lieutenants include Ariel Sharon (future Prime Minister), and Rafael Eytan (future Chief of staff).
– after Wikipedia

 

1956 CE: JACOB JAVITS ELECTED AS THE U.S. SENATOR FROM NY

–Jewish–American. Reelected three more times, serving until 1981.

The Javits Center on West 34th Street in NY is named in his honor.

 

1956 CE: SINAI ROLLBACK

Dec: SINAI CAMPAIGN undone.

U.S. President Eisenhower forces them (Britain, France and Israel) to back–off and exit Sinai.

The Israelis exit by March 1957…messy for all–concerned.

 

1957 CE: SABIN

Develops oral polio live–virus vaccine.

–which precludes the actual contraction of the disease.

This vaccine, endorsed by the US Public Health Service in 1961, effectively eliminated polio from the United States.

Sabin’s professional ally Hilary Koprowski played a key and prerequisite role.

SABIN: Albert Bruce Sabin was born in 1906 in Bialystock, Russia (now Poland) to Jewish parents, Jacob and Tillie Saperstein. In 1921 the family immigrated to America. In 1930 Albert became a naturalized US citizen and in the process changed his name to Sabin.

KOPROWSKI: In 1939, subsequent to the Nazi invasion, Dr. Hilary Koprowski and his wife Irene, a biologist, fled Poland to Brazil. There he worked for the Rockefeller Foundation in Rio de Janeiro. Koprowski’s field of research employing his signature live–vaccine modality was instrumental in finding a vaccine for yellow fever; then, polio. The lines are blurred as to where Koprowski’s polio vaccine development ended–off and where Sabin’s polio vaccine achieved a breakthrough. Koprowski’s list of honors received around the world is long and numbing.

 

1957 CE: SPUTNIK I

Oct 1: The Russians place a space capsule in orbit… a “wake–up call” for USA.

 

1957 CE: FATE INTERVENES FOR LEONARD BERNSTEIN

Nov 14: Leonard Bernstein is emerging fill–in as Conductor of the NY Philharmonic (Born Aug. 25, 1918; died Oct. 14, 1990).

Britannica –
“[Jewish] American conductor, composer, and pianist noted for his accomplishments in both classical and popular music, for his flamboyant conducting style, and for his pedagogic flair, especially in concerts for young people.

Bernstein played piano from age 10. He attended Boston Latin School; Harvard University (A.B., 1939), where he took courses in music theory with Arthur Tillman Merritt and counterpoint with Walter Piston; the Curtis Institute of Music, Philadelphia (1939–41), where he studied conducting with Fritz Reiner and orchestration with Randall Thompson; and the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood, Mass., where he studied conducting with Serge Koussevitzky.

In 1943, Bernstein was appointed assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic; the first signal of his forthcoming success came on Nov. 14, 1943, when he was summoned unexpectedly to substitute for the conductor Bruno Walter. His technical self–assurance under difficult circumstances and his interpretive excellence made an immediate impression and marked the beginning of a brilliant career. He subsequently conducted the New York City Center orchestra (1945–47) and appeared as guest conductor in the United States, Europe, and Israel. In 1953 he became the first American to conduct at La Scala in Milan.

From 1958 to 1969 Bernstein was conductor and musical director of the New York Philharmonic, becoming the first American–born holder of those posts. With this orchestra, he made several international tours in Latin America, Europe, the Soviet Union, and Japan. His popularity increased through his appearances not only as conductor and pianist but also as a commentator and entertainer. Bernstein explained classical music to young listeners on such television shows as “Omnibus” and “Young People’s Concerts.” After 1969, he continued to write music and to perform as a guest conductor with several symphonies throughout the world.”

Encyclopaedia Britannica Online. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/62641/Leonard–Bernstein (accessed April 5, 2009)

 

1958 CE: MAO ZEDONG LAUNCHES THE GREAT LEAP FORWARD

By the time Mao and his leap are finished, twenty million Chinese will die of starvation.

 

1958 CE: ECONOMIST JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH PUBLISHES THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY

 

1958 CE: MARVIN MINSKY JOINS THE FACULTY OF MIT

(Born Aug. 9, 1927)

Britannica –
“[Jewish] American mathematician and computer scientist, one of the most famous practitioners of the science of artificial intelligence (AI).

Following service in the U.S. Navy from 1944 to 1945, Minsky enrolled in 1946 at Harvard University to explore his many intellectual interests. After completing research in physics, neurophysiology, and psychology, Minsky graduated with honors in mathematics in 1950. In 1951 he entered Princeton University, and in that same year he built the first neural network simulator. In 1954, with a doctorate in mathematics from Princeton, Minsky returned to Harvard as a member of the prestigious Society of Fellows. He invented the confocal scanning microscope in 1955.

In 1957 Minsky moved across town to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to pursue his interest in using computers to model and understand human thought. Among others interested in AI was John McCarthy, an MIT professor of electrical engineering who had developed the LISP computer programming language and contributed to the development of time–sharing computer systems (systems in which multiple users interact with a single mainframe computer). In 1959 Minsky and McCarthy co–founded what became the MIT AI Laboratory. It quickly became one of the preeminent research centers and training grounds for the nascent field of AI. Minsky remained at MIT for the rest of his career, becoming Donner Professor of Science in 1974 and Toshiba Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at the MIT Media Laboratory in 1990.”

Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/384568/Marvin–Lee–Minsky (accessed April 16, 2009)

 

1959 CE: THE “KITCHEN DEBATE”

Dream Kitchen, American Exhibition in Moscow: Vice President Richard Nixon has an impromptu debate with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. The Soviet leader doesn’t believe that the average American family could actually potentially afford such a kitchen. Nixon insisted it could. In 1959, indeed it could.

 

1958 CE: EXODUS

(The book...about the ship)

American novelist Leon Uris publishes Exodus.

–Revolving around the Haganah’s endeavors to land the immigrant ship “Exodus” into then–Palestine...later (1960) to become the epic movie, as well.

[Known for his very extensive research, often on Jewish–related themes, Uris impacted world perceptions: important works: Exodus (1958); Mila 18 (1961); QB VII (1970); Jerusalem (1981); The Haj (1984); Mitla Pass (1988), among other gems].

 

1958 CE: CLIFF HILLEGASS PUBLISHES HIS FIRST CLIFFSNOTES

…for Shakespeare’s Hamlet, in the basement of his home in Lincoln, Nebraska.

 

1959 CE: RUSSIA LAUNCHES LUNA 1

Jan 1: Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, Soviet Union: Russia launches “First Cosmic Ship,” later dubbed Mechta and later dubbed Luna 1. Originally intended to hit the moon, a malfunction caused it to miss the moon by 6,000 km at its closest. Nevertheless, Luna 1 achieved several scientific historic “firsts,” including, amongst others:

• the first man-made object to reach escape velocity from the earth’s gravitational field
• the first ever detection and observations of the solar wind
• the first man-made object to reach heliocentric orbit (orbit around the sun)
– after it missed its intended goal of crashing into the moon.

 

1959 CE: REVOLUTIONARY FIDEL CASTRO

At age 33, he overthrows the Batista dictatorship in CUBA.

Castro then proceeds to jail his fellow revolutionary leaders to neutralize them as potential threats to his power monopoly. Most then spend the rest of their days in Castro’s political prisons.

 

1959 CE: STEVEN SPIELBERG, 12, RECEIVES HIS FIRST MOVIE CAMERA

–An 8mm Kodak

His first film is a 3 1/2 minute Western. Budget: $8.50 (talk about “creeping overhead”).

 

1959 CE: FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT’S PHILADELPHIA SYNAGOGUE

“Situated in a quiet suburb north of Philadelphia is Beth Sholom – the only synagogue designed by Frank Lloyd Wright during the architect’s long and storied career. The building marks an epilogue of sorts: Wright designed the synagogue near the end of his life and died only months before its dedication in 1959.”

http://www.haaretz.com/culture/arts-leisure/frank-lloyd-wright-s-philadelphia-synagogue-depicts-spirituality-through-modern-architecture-1.421367

 

1959 CE: RUSSIAN ROCKET IMPACTS THE MOON

Sept: Luna 2 spacecraft and rocket hit the moon (30 minutes apart).

The spacecraft and rocket contained several stainless steel pennants bearing the Soviet Coat–of–Arms.

 

1960 CE: THE FIRST XEROX IS SHIPPED

It was shipped to the Standard Press Steel Company in Jenkintown, PA.

The machine weighed 650 pounds. The invention took Chester Carlson, the inventor, 24 years to perfect; and the Japanese 24 weeks to copy (just kidding!).

 

1960s CE: THE SHADOW ARMY

Backing up the black Civil Rights movement was a complete Shadow Army – the Jews.

Heart, Mind, Body & Soul: In synagogues, Day Schools, Sisterhood Meetings, Parlor Meetings, demonstrations and on the front lines in the Deep South, the Jews of America signed–up.

PBS Documentary –

“American Jewish community and the Civil Rights movement

Many in the Jewish–American community supported the Civil Rights Movement and Jews were more actively involved in the civil rights movement than any other white group in America. Many Jewish students worked in concert with African Americans for CORE, SCLC, and SNCC as full–time organizers and summer volunteers during the Civil Rights era. Jews made up roughly half of the white northern volunteers involved in the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer project and approximately half of the civil rights attorneys active in the South during the 1960s.

Jewish leaders were arrested with Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in St. Augustine, Florida, in 1964 after a challenge to racial segregation in public accommodation. Abraham Joshua Heschel, a writer, rabbi and professor of theology at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York was outspoken on the subject of civil rights. He marched arm–in–arm with Dr. King in the 1965 march on Selma…

The American Jewish Committee, American Jewish Congress, and Anti–Defamation Leagues actively promoted civil rights…”

From Swastika to Jim Crow – PBS Documentary, http://www.pbs.org/itvs/fromswastikatojimcrow/ (accessed July 7, 2009)

 

1960 CE Abduction! EICHMANN

Adolf Eichmann (Nazi war criminal) abducted.

...extra–legally by MOSSAD, (Israel foreign intelligence service), at a Buenos Aires, Argentina, and bus stop – 8:05 P.M. Wednesday May 11, 1960…

Then, after ten days in Israeli–captivity at a “Mossad–safe house” near his abduction, heavily–sedated Eichmann [a.k.a. “Ricardo Klement” of Buenos Aires] was spirited out of Buenos Aires, Argentina on an El Al Bristol Britannia commercial flight on May 21. Hanged 11:00 am, May 31, 1962, Ramleh prison, Israel…after 14–week “trial and conviction”…Eichman was maintained in a glass–booth during the trial….televised live worldwide. Ninety concentration–camp–survivor witnesses testify, among other witnesses. Eichman was prosecuted and convicted of, among other crimes, mass–murder and “crimes against humanity.”

 

1960 CE: PODHORETZ NAMED COMMENTARY MAGAZINE EDITOR–IN–CHIEF

Brownsville, Brooklyn–bred. The son of Jewish immigrants from Galicia, Central Europe, Columbia University and JTS–educated.

Norman Podhoretz will hold sway over the American Jewish intellectual scene from his Commentary Editor–in–Chief perch for 35 years, until 1995. He remains Commentary’s Editor–at–Large through completion of this work (end of 2008).

He has strongly advocated a color blind society on the social front, and is the “godfather” of the Neo–Conservative (“Neo–Con”) movement on the international front. Few Jewish American intellectuals have ever wielded such significant and long–tenured influence.

He is married to the author Midge Decter, is the stepfather of Rachel Decter (Elliott Abram’s wife) and is the father of the syndicated columnist John Podhoretz.

 

1960s CE: MILITANT BLACK POWER–PLAY

Employing time–honored fascist doctrine tactics, the militant wing of the Black Power movement first demonized the Jews in general, through vitriol and slander, then went after Zionism, then went after the premier Jewish activists in the Civil Rights movement, and then went after “Whitey” in general.

First, creating a wave of hate, and then riding it to power.

Stokely Carmichael, Farrakhan, Rev. Wright: “birds of a feather” hate–surfing together.

 

1961 CE: CHRISTIAN BROADCASTING NETWORK FOUNDED

 

1961 CE: ROSE ART MUSEUM FOUNDED AT BRANDEIS

Waltham, MA: Leading collection of modern and contemporary art in New England. Jewish–oriented museum at Jewish–oriented Brandeis.

The collection was launched originally with iconic works by Jasper Johns, Rauschenberg, Any Warhol, Ray Lichtenstein, and Willem de Kooning.

[Later, in 2009, an uproar would ensue after Brandeis announced it would sell off the entire collection in the face of the financial “Meltdown” of the so–called Great Recession. The Rose family was not amused.]

 

1961 CE: RUSSIA LAUNCHES A MAN INTO SPACE

Apr 12: Russia launches the first human (cosmonaut), Yuri Gagarin, into outer space and the first to orbit the Earth. He was 27. His spacecraft was Vostok 1.

 

1961 CE: MERTON

Thomas Merton’s The New Man

Trappist Monk (in Kentucky), writer, philosophical writer.... (1915 CE – 1968 CE); author of over 50 books...

Merton was a true philosophical artist.

(Author’s note: Merton would have made a great Jewish philosopher)

 

1961 CE: JOSEPH HELLER PUBLISHES CATCH–22

But, there was a catch.

 

1961 CE: JFK APPOINTS ARTHUR GOLDBERG TO THE SUPREME COURT

Associate Justice of the Supreme Court: Oct 1, 1962 – July 2, 1965
US Secretary of Labor Jan 21, 1961 – Sep 30, 1962
US Ambassador to the UN 1965–1968

Goldberg was the youngest of eight children of Ukrainian Jewish immigrants.

 

1962 CE: CHAGALL

Feb 6: (Twelve Tribes) “Chagall Windows” (stained glass) dedicated in Jerusalem…

…at Hadassah–Hebrew University Medical Center Synagogue in Jerusalem.

…Parisian–Russian artist Marc Chagall b. 1887, Belarus, Russia; d. 1979 France.

 

1962 CE: JOHN GLENN

–becomes the first American to orbit the Earth.

Feb 20: on “Friendship 7”

 

1962 CE: WILT CHAMBERLAIN SCORES 100 POINTS

“Wilt the Stilt” of the Philadelphia Warriors at the time, shatters all NBA basketball scoring records in this game against the NY Knicks (March 2 in Hershey, PA). [The Warriors won 169–147]

 

1962 CE: MAGNES MUSEUM FOUNDED IN CALIFORNIA

As noted in Encyclopaedia Judaica on Magnus Museum {1997} [CD–ROM] –
“Magnes Memorial Museum, Judah L., The Jewish Museum of the West. The Judah K. Magnes Museum in Berkeley, California, was founded in Oakland in 1962, moving to its current location in 1966. The museum is named in honor of Judah L. Magnes who was born in the Bay Area. In 1974 the museum was accredited by the American Association of Museums, the first U.S. Jewish museum to receive such recognition.

The general purpose of the museum is to “collect, preserve, and make available artistic, historical, and literary material reflecting Jewish life and cultural contribution throughout history.” The museum is also a repository for historical documents and landmarks of Western U.S. Jewry. To that end, the Western Jewish History Center was initiated in 1967…

The Institute for the Righteous Acts, a Documentation and Resource Center on the Altruistic Behavior of Rescuers of Jews in the Nazi Era is another department of the museum. The aim of this institute is to study the rescue of Jews by non–Jews during the Nazi era; to search into the motivations of the rescuers’ acts through empirical studies of the rescuers; and to apply the results of the studies to moral education and the training of positive character traits.”

 

1962 CE: VIETNAM:

By mid–1962, John F. Kennedy (president since Jan 1961) had raised the number of US military advisors in Vietnam from 700 to 12,000...the figure would reach 16,000 by the time of Kennedy’s assassination, Nov 1963. (The 16,000 figure included Green Berets Special Forces, as well as American pilots in a newly–crafted joint South Vietnamese–US Air Force). America had de facto committed.... With Kennedy’s assassination, Lyndon B. Johnson would inherit the ambivalent and contorted politico–military–strategic imbroglio...

Johnson would subsequently run on his own for the presidency Nov 1964, and win, by early 1968 the number of American servicemen in Vietnam will have risen from 16,000 to 550,000. Johnson will be succeed by Richard M. Nixon, who will preside over the depressing “end game” by the disastrous war’s end in Apr 1975, the disastrous American casualty count will register as follows: 55,209 American boys dead; 305,000 wounded; 2,000 missing—a total and unmitigated disaster on every conceivable level...aside from the tragedy and hyper–trauma to the direct casualties, their families, close friends and offspring, American society as a whole was rent...by this quagmire of quagmires...the country took, perhaps 10–20 years to “recover”...the 10,000 draft evaders were later pardoned by Jimmy Carter Jan 21, 1977 on his first day of office, consummating a campaign promise....John F. Kennedy’s “best and the brightest” advisors—many of whom were maintained by Johnson, proved to have been “not quite bright enough.” Once America was “ankle deep” in Vietnam by 11/63, it perceived itself, not unjustifiably, as simply unable to “extricate with honor”...the elusive “light at the end of the tunnel” repeatedly proved to be a mirage...and the one reminder–lesson of this “police action” was that best to engage far–away campaigns only excruciatingly carefully, inasmuch as—once–in, it is almost impossible to get out.

 

1962 CE Confrontation! CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS

Oct 22: JFK goes on national TV and announces U.S. quarantine of shipping to Cuba…as nuclear missiles supplied by the Soviets have been discovered on the island after US analysis of photographs by U–2 spy plane over flights of Cuba.

With the US blockade in–place and authorized to use small explosives to impose its blockade, at 10:25 A.M. Oct 24, the approaching Soviet ships go “dead in the water”—as the Soviets have “blinked.”

 

1962 CE: “UNTIL HELL FREEZES OVER”

Oct 25: Televised Emergency UN Security Council session, Manhattan: During the Cuban missile crisis, as US Ambassador to the UN Adlai Stevenson gives his presentation; he forcefully “presses his case.” Pressing the debate aggressively against the Soviet Union, Stevenson demanded that Valerian Zorin, the Soviet Ambassador, answer whether or not Russia had installed missiles in Cuba: Don’t wait for the translation; answer “Yes” or “No”

Following Zorin’s demurral to answer the aggressive debating posturing, Stevenson followed through with his (now immortalized and) resonant – “I am prepared to wait for my answer until Hell freezes over.”

Well, actually, all hell almost did break loose on the planet but the Kennedy’s “worked matters out” with (the Soviet chief) Khrushchev with nuclear brinksmanship.

Arch–intellect Stevenson – a darling of the Jews notwithstanding his two presidential–election defeats at the hand of Eisenhower in the ‘50s, had climaxed with a legacy flourish.

 

1962 CE: GERSHON SCHOLEM COMPLETES ORIGINS OF THE KABBALAH

A.k.a. Gerhard Scholem (1897–1982) was a Jewish philosopher and noted kabbalah scholar rose in Germany; emigrates in 1923 to the British Mandate of Palestine.

The work noted above was originally published in German under the title Ursprung and Anfange der Kabbala.

First English translation 1987 (25 years later) by JPS
(Jewish Publication Society, NY)
[Note: material in this 1987 English translation provided key kabbalistic buttress for the philosophical work God and Evil by KTAV (already in manuscript form at–the–time, but published in November 1988)].

 

1963 CE: PUFF!

PETER, PAUL and MARY release Puff the Magic Dragon

Based on a 1953 poem by 19–year–old Cornell student Leonard Lipton, who had passed it on to fellow Cornell student Peter Yarrow...who later joined Paul Stookey and Mary Travers to form the legendary musical group.

...the song’s saga takes place “by the sea” in the fantasy land “of Honah Lee.”

Peter, Paul and Mary’s iconic recordings include,
among others–
500 Miles
Lemon Tree
If I had a Hammer (by Pete Seeger)
Where Have All the Flowers Gone? (by Pete Seeger)
The Times They are a–Changing (by Bob Dylan)
Blowin’ in the Wind (by Bob Dylan)
Leaving on a Jet Plane (by John Denver)

The group was originally launched at The Bitter End (folk music cafe’) in Greenwich Village in NYC in 1961 by impresario Albert Grossman (who also managed Dylan in the ‘60s).

 

1963 CE: “THE DEPUTY”

Feb 20, West Berlin: “The Deputy, A Christian tragedy”: A drama by Rolf Hochhuth, which indicts Pope Pius XII for failure to speak out forcefully against the Nazi terror–war against the Jews.

The play was first performed on February 20, 1963 in Berlin (in German). It received its first English production in London, by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1963.

“The Deputy” was made into a film Amen by Costa Gavras in 2002.

 

1963 CE: READING OF BIBLE

Campaign by Madalyn Murray O’Hair results in U.S. Supreme Court ruling prohibiting reading of Bible in public schools.

 

1963 CE: THE BEATLES

–releases “I Want to Hold Your Hand” in UK.

Written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, the song was the starting gun for “the British Invasion” of America—and their assault on America’s music charts led by one of the 20th century’s iconic musical groups.

 

1963 CE: DYLAN

Penultimatec iconic late–20th Century American musical personage....captures the soul of many...releases “Blowin’ in the Wind”...Along with his song “The Times They Are a–Changin” becomes a quasi–anthem for both the anti–Vietnam War groundswell, as well as for the Civil Rights movement.

Born Robert Allen Zimmerman (Jewish name Zushe ben Avraham) in May, 1941 in Duluth, Minnesota, and raised there and in Hibbing, Minnesota on the Mesabi Iron Range.... Dylan, who in 2008 is still successfully touring, (named “The Never Ending Tour” by Dylan) achieved lasting iconic status in the inter–related 1960s American pop, anti–Establishment, and protest cultures.

Once Dylan wrote a song and recorded it, the song with its Dylan–cachet and inherent magic, when then re–released by other leading recording artists, often achieved mega–resonance.

Confidante Joan Baez, as well as Peter, Paul & Mary (just below) projected—and often helped launch his new songs around the globe, helping to immortalize all the entities concerned (meaning, the songs, Dylan the songwriter and all the groups involved).

(FYI, I personally preferred the British group Chad & Jeremy).

 

1963 CE: UNIVERSITY OF HAIFA

Opened in the Israeli Mediterranean port city.

Over 17,000 students in 2007…the university is affiliated with Hebrew U in Jerusalem.

 

1963 CE Dream! “I HAVE A DREAM”

Aug 28: Martin Luther King, March–on–Washington.

…followed 3 months later by the assassination (Nov 22) of President John F. Kennedy (in Dallas, Texas).

 

1963 CE: GERMAN–AMERICAN PAUL TILLICH WRITES THE ETERNAL NOW

NY: Charles Scribner & Sons publishers

 

1963 CE: BIRMINGHAM CHURCH BOMBING

10:18 A.M., Sept 15: Sixteenth Street Baptist Church: Birmingham, Alabama: Nineteen sticks of dynamite planted by the local Ku Klux Klan are ignited as 26 children walk into the church basement Sunday morning for closing prayers. Four black young teenage girls are killed.

At the funeral for three of the four girls, Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke of life as being “as hard as crucible steel.”

On July 2, 1964 (8 1/2 months later), President Lyndon Johnson signed the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, codifying that equal rights of African Americans are guaranteed in the law of the land.

***

Aside from Martin Luther King, Jr., important American Civil Rights Leaders widely revered across a wide spectrum of America, include, among others–

Ralph Abernathy (1926–1990)
Julian Bond (b. 1940)
Coretta Scott King (1927–2006)
Stanley Levison (1912–1979)
John Lewis (b.1940)
A. Philip Randolph (1889–1979)
Bayard Rustin (1912–1987)
Michael Schwerner (1939–1964)
Roy Wilkins (1901–1981)
Hosea Williams (1926–2000)

 

1964 CE: MARTIN LUTHER KING, 35, WINS THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE

 

1964 CE: ED SULLIVAN OPENS ONE OF HIS SUNDAY EVENING SHOWS

New York, Sunday evening Feb 9:
“Ladies and gentlemen, The Beatles!”

Pandemonium ensues.

 

1964 CE: STEVEN SPIELBERG, 16, PRODUCES FIRELIGHT

Los Angeles: Budget: $400. A 140 minute science fiction film, his first “independently directed movie.” Shown at the local movie theater, it will make a $100 profit for Spielberg. Firelight will later inspire Close Encounters.

Born December 18, 1946 in Cincinnati Ohio. Early childhood in Phoenix, Arizona. After his parents divorced, he moves to Saratoga, California with his dad after his junior year in high school. His mom and three sisters stayed in Cincinnati. Spielberg’s main time with them until adulthood would be annual Passover Seders, back in Arizona.

 

1964 CE: SYSTEM / 360

Apr 7: IBM (Westchester, NY) announces mainstream computer family named IBM System/360 (a mainframe genre computer).

A client–upgradeable series and one of the most successful computers in history. Depending on model, it required space ranging from a small closet to a super–huge room...

(In Mar 2008, IBM introduces Mainframe System Z10 at $1,000,000 per unit... estimated total IBM mainframe sales in 2007: $3 billion out of a total of $100 billion IBM sales).

Computer Science emerges into mainstream 1960s onward…Silicon Valley, CA (south and contiguous to San Francisco) has been the scientific nexus.

 

1964 CE: SSSJ

Apr 27: Jacob Birnbaum founds the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry...first meeting at Columbia University.

With point–person Glen Richter, the American Jewish community is energized and focused.

By the late 1980s, the grass–roots group will have achieved its primary goals.

 

1964 CE: SWAMP MURDER

June 21: Civil Rights activists Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner murdered by the Klu Klux Klan near Philadelphia, Mississippi.

All three Civil Rights activists were in their 20s. Chaney was a CORE field worker from Meridian, Mississippi; Goodman (an anthropology student) and Schwerner (a social worker) were (Jewish) activists from New York.

Massive FBI effort subsequently puts the Klan perpetrators behind bars [7 men found guilty].

 

1965 CE: MOSSAD OPERATION: CUKURS

Feb 23: Mossad assassinates Nazi war criminal Herberts Cukurs in Uruguay on a trip away from his Brazilian residence.

 

1965 CE: FEYNMAN

Richard Feynman is co–winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics.

Son of Melville Feynman, 1895 immigrant from Minsk, Russia.

Richard’s resume notes Far Rockaway High School, MIT, Princeton, the Manhattan Project, Cal Tech, and Challenger Disaster Commission.

He went to MIT in Boston, because he had been blocked from attending Columbia University by its Jewish quota. Very upstanding people.

Feynman: “Scientific advance is the confidence in the ignorance of experts”

 

1965 CE: REV. EDWARD FLANNERY

Publishes “The Anguish of the Jews.”

Subtitled “A Catholic priest writes of 23 centuries of anti–Semitism.”

After (a diplomatic) 21 pages covering the ancient world, where the Jews were often the social elite and/or wealthy communities, Flannery devotes the next 252 pages covering Church–inspired or directed anti–Semitism, when the Jews were not in such good measure—as a consequence of the Church.

Flannery does what none of the Jewish historians had done: He produces the first important work (that I am aware of) comprehensively documenting the Church’s central and multi–century–long role in anti–Semitism.

 

1965 CE: “NOSTRE AETATE”

Oct 8...

Vatican Council II under Pope Paul VI

“The Catholic Church decries hatred, persecutions, and displays of anti–Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone…”

The fatal flaw – and problem, however, is that all of the above – hatred, persecutions, displays of anti–Semitism, aside from incitement to persecutions, demonizations—REMAIN fully incubated in—and disseminated through—the most sacred documents of Christendom… and the central saga of Christendom—the Passion of the Christ Saga—most often selectively assembled from the most inflammatory vignettes of the four Canon Gospels.

To my knowledge, there was no cosmic moral exemption given to religion–sponsored programs, allowing them hate–mongering and demonization privileges.

Note, as well, that there are front–and–center components in Nostre Aetate itself essentially reiterating the tenuous construct that the “Jewish leadership” pressed for the death of Jesus. Thus, while the left hand of Nostre Aetate decries hatred and bigotry, the right hand incubates the same. All in the very same late–20th century document.

To wit, leading–off the paragraph preceding the ecumenical statement above…

“True, the Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead, pressed for the death of Christ…”

This is factually unsubstantiated, and most probably wildly exaggerated, and is indeed, the central incendiary charge employed against the Jews for almost two millennia, which ultimately doomed millions (of real, actual human beings).

Thus, the same 19 centuries–old inciting to riot polemic is reaffirmed, yet once again, post–Holocaust, in a document heralded as an ecumenical breakthrough.

The alleged Nostre Aetate “breakthrough” of course, is that my daughter, a Jewish–American college student in the 21st century, is not, according to the Vatican’s Nostre Aetate, to be held personally responsible for the execution of Jesus of Nazareth by Roman Prefect Pontius Pilate in the first century. Thus, after 17–20 centuries of fabricating the allegation that there even ever was a Sanhedrin Trial, the Catholic Church in 1965 via Nostre Aetate now “exculpates” my daughter from personal responsibility 20 centuries later for an action the Jews were not culpable of to begin with. That is the crux of the nefarious and convoluted Catholic Church spin–gambit here.

“Any alleged capital trial by the Sanhedrin of Jesus is thus a convenient historical fabrication.”

– Lawrence Schiffman, Professor of Jewish History, NYU, “Double Injustice,” (Journal of) Reform Judaism, April 2004
http://lawrenceschiffman.com/?page_id=141 (accessed September 2, 2009)

Nostre Aetate

For full text:
See paragraphs 12 – 15 (in Nostre Aetate) in particular.
(See above First Century in this TimeLine)

Respectfully, Nostre Aetate’s renouncing of anti–Semitism, while simultaneously reiterating the core incendiary libel, is a “mixed–bag,” at best. The core problem is not lanced. The normative Passion saga—selectively constructed from incendiary vignettes found in sundry Gospels, themselves constructs of dubious historicity, and defames the Jews.

This is the destructive diabolical gambit, ongoing for centuries. The Canon Gospels are laced with defamations of the Jews; then, the Passion Sagas cherry–pick the Canon Gospels for the most incendiary material to charge–up the crowd.

The American Jewish power elite are reading the finer print in the NY Times. But, across the land–mass of Europe and the steppes of the Soviet Union, they are not necessarily reading the finer print in the NY Times page 14; they are, however, still absorbing the demonization vignettes in Catholic Church every Sunday morning from the local re–telling and re–spinning of the Passion saga. And it is these demonization vignettes which set–the–stage for bigotry, persecution and murder.

The blue–chip (and valiant and tenacious) American Jewish Committee may have been somewhat deflected, but the veteran players of the College of Cardinals certainly were not. The Passion Sagas will be protected. Hatred sells.
Schematically–

(Over the centuries, primarily in Europe)

“Demonize; then Posture”

(i.e. Demonize the Jews in the virulent European Passion Sagas… and then Posture, case–by–case, “depending on how the wind is blowing,” as anti–Semitic abominations unfold over the centuries) has been replaced by–

“Demonize; then Decry”

(i.e. Demonize the Jews in the Passion sagas, but Decry the Holocaust)

or, in a variant

“Demonize; then Decry & Dialogue”

Spin at its very best.

–while many millions (of Jews) are brutalized…

 

1965 CE: KOSINSKI RELEASES THE PAINTED BIRD

Manhattan: Polish–American writer Jerzy Kosinski holds court.

He was born Josek Lewinkopf in Lodz, Poland, 1933; but his father gave him the name Jerzy Kosinski to assume an identity as a young 5 year–old Christian child under the Nazi regime, which had just invaded Poland.

Kosinski was hidden by a Catholic Polish family during WWII in Poland (shielded somewhat by a forged baptismal certificate issued by a local Roman Catholic priest). He became facile at artifice and was not shy employing it. In any event, arriving in the United States in 1957, he maneuvers through the upper currents of American literary circles in the 1960s–1990s.

In Kosinski’s quasi auto biographical, heavily fictionalized novel (where reality and fiction merge) about childhood in occupied Nazi Poland, Kosinki posits, as well, how the different colored bird (the “painted bird”)—symbolizing the Jew—will sometimes head the flock, but, more often than not, will end up being attacked by the flock.

 

1966 CE: AGNON AND SACHS

S. Y. Agnon (Israel) and Nelly Sachs (Sweden) jointly win the Nobel Prize in Literature.

–representing, respectively, as Sachs observed, and as the Nobel Committee undoubtedly knew, “Israel” (via Agnon) and the “the tragedy of the Jewish people” (via Sachs).

 

1966 CE: MAO ZEDONG AND THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION

China, May 16: The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was launched by Mao Zedong. It was actually a struggle for power within the Communist Party of China and eventually led to civil war.

At first, the campaign is supposedly to rid China of its “liberal bourgeoisie” elements and to continue the class struggle by China’s youth who formed Red Guards group around the country. However, it evolved into destructive chaos.

The revolution caused massive upheaval and destruction across China.

 

1966 CE: SONTAG RELEASES AGAINST INTERPRETATION

(Sontag born Jan. 16, 1933; died Dec. 28, 2004)

Britannica –
“[Jewish] American intellectual and writer best known for her essays on modern culture.

Sontag (who adopted her stepfather’s name) was reared in Tucson, Arizona, and in Los Angeles. She attended the University of California at Berkeley for one year and then transferred to the University of Chicago, from which she graduated in 1951. She studied English literature (M.A., 1954) and philosophy (M.A., 1955) at Harvard University and taught philosophy at several colleges and universities before the publication of her first novel, The Benefactor (1963).

During the early 1960s she also wrote a number of essays and reviews, most of which were published in such periodicals as The New York Review of Books, Commentary, and Partisan Review. Some of these short pieces were collected in Against Interpretation, and Other Essays (1966)…

Sontag’s essays are characterized by a serious philosophical approach to various aspects and personalities of modern culture… In addition to criticism and fiction, she wrote screenplays…”

Encyclopaedia Britannica Online. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/554590/Susan–Sontag (accessed May 2, 2009)

 

1966 CE: CYNTHIA OZICK PUBLISHES HER FIRST NOVEL

Born Apr. 17, 1928

Britannica –
“American novelist, short–story writer, essayist, and intellectual whose works seek to define the challenge of remaining Jewish in contemporary American life. By delving into the oldest religious sources of Judaism, Ozick explored much new territory.

Ozick received a B.A. in English in 1949 from New York University and an M.A. in 1950 from Ohio State University. Her first novel, Trust (1966), is the story of a woman’s rejection of her wealthy American Jewish family and her search for her renegade father in Europe. It has echoes of Henry James in its juxtaposition of American and European settings. In subsequent books, such as Bloodshed and Three Novellas (1976), Ozick struggled with the idea that the creation of art (a pagan activity) is in direct opposition to principles of Judaism, which forbids the creation of idols. The psychological aftermath of the Holocaust is another theme of her work, especially in Levitation: Five Fictions (1982) and the novels The Cannibal Galaxy (1983) and The Shawl (1989). She often drew upon traditional Jewish mysticism to expand upon her themes. One of her recurring characters is Ruth Puttermesser. In 1997 Ozick published The Puttermesser Papers, a short novel consisting of narratives and false memories of the aging Puttermesser, who in one story brings a female golem to life in order to save New York City, with disastrous results.”

Encyclopaedia Britannica Online. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/437176/Cynthia–Ozick (accessed May 2, 2009)

 

1966 CE: ABBA EBAN

–named Foreign Minister of Israel

Britannica –
“Abba Eban – Israel statesman, in full Abba Solomon Eban, original name Aubrey Solomon (b. Feb 2, 1915; d. Nov. 17, 2002).

Foreign minister of Israel (1966–74) whose exceptional oratorical gifts in the service of Israel won him the widespread admiration of diplomats and increased support for his country from American Jewry.

Brought up in England, Eban studied Oriental languages (Arabic, Hebrew, and Persian) and classics and lectured at the University of Cambridge. In 1941, as a British army major, he served as an aide to the British minister of state in Cairo. In 1946 he worked with the Jewish Agency as a political information officer to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine. He also served as the liaison officer with the United Nations (UN) Special Committee on Palestine in 1947 and as a member of the delegation to the General Assembly that played a critical role in the passage (1947) of the UN resolution to partition Palestine.

When the new state of Israel was admitted to membership in the UN in 1949, Eban became its permanent representative and served in that post until 1959. From 1950 to 1959 he served concurrently as ambassador to the United States.

First elected to the Israeli Knesset (parliament) in 1959, Eban was minister of education and culture under Prime Minister David Ben–Gurion from 1960 to 1963, and from 1959 to 1966 he was also president of the Weizmann Institute of Science. He served as deputy prime minister in 1964–65 and later was Israel’s foreign minister from 1966 to 1974. As foreign minister, he sought to strengthen relations with the United States and to bring about Israeli association with the European Economic Community.

When Israel was threatened with an Arab blockade in May 1967, Eban traveled to Paris, London, and Washington, D.C., to seek a peaceful solution. When diplomacy proved fruitless, Eban supported the military decisions in the Six–Day War in June. His eloquent defense of Israel’s actions before the Security Council and the General Assembly of the UN was widely admired. He sat in the Knesset as a member of the Israel Labor Party until 1988.

Eban’s published works include Voice of Israel (collection of speeches, 1957), The Tide of Nationalism (1959), My People (1969), a history of the Jews, An Autobiography (1977), Personal Witness (1992), and Diplomacy for the Next Century (1998).”

Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/177524/Abba–Eban (accessed May 5, 2009)

Eban: Dec 1973: “The Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity” (i.e. for peace) after the Geneva peace talks.

 

1967 CE:MALAMUD’S THE FIXER

New York: The Fixer, Bernard Malamud’s novel about anti–Semitism in czarist Russia—was subsequently awarded both the National Book Award, as well as the Pulitzer Prize.

His first four noted works were:

Armistice (short story) [1940]
The Natural (novel) [1952] eventually the baseball movie with Robert Redford
The Assistant (novel) [1957] about a Jewish American immigrant who takes in a drifter
The Magic Barrel (short story collection) [1958]
winner, National Book Award

His 1969 Man in the Drawer won the O. Henry Award (short stories, of course).

A CCNY grad, Malamud was one of the leading American Jewish authors of the 20th century (b. 1914, Brooklyn; d. 1996, NY).

“I write a book or a short story three times. Once to understand her, the second time to improve her prose, and a third to compel her to say what it still must say.”

 

1967 CE: STEINHARDT

Founds Steinhardt, Fine, Berkowitz & Co. hedge fund in NY.

By Spring 2008, Michael Steinhardt will have bankrolled various Jewish causes to the tune of over $125 million, (including Birthright Israel).

–Aside from substantial funding to conservation causes (e.g. the Wildlife Conservation Society) and secular institutions (e.g. NYU).

 

1967 CE: CHAIM POTOK RELEASES THE CHOSEN

Chaim Potok: Collects degrees from (Orthodox) Yeshiva University (B.A. in English Literature) and (Conservative) JTS (M.A. in Hebrew Literature plus rabbinic ordination) both in Manhattan.

Prior to university, Potok spent summers as a teenage camper at (Conservadox) Camp Ramah in the Poconos. After his degree–gathering sprint, Potok served as a US Army Chaplain in Korea 1955–57. He was later editor of the journal Conservative Judaism 1964–1975.

The protagonists in Potok’s important body of fiction works are often Orthodox Jewish.

His first four noted released works are:

Jewish Ethics, 1964–1969 (non–fiction: 14 volumes)
The Chosen, 1967
The Promise, 1969
My Name is Asher Lev, 1972

 

1967 CE: BORGES

He commences work with American translator Giovanni.

–and breaks into English–speaking world arena.

Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899 CE – 1986 CE).

One of his early masterworks was–

The Garden of Forking Paths (1941)
[sometimes published under name Labyrinth]

Borges was appointed Director of the National Public Library in 1955. Due to a hereditary condition, by that time he had became completely blind. (He was in his mid–fifties)

Borges –
Let neither tear nor reproach besmirch
this declaration of the mastery
of God, with magnificent irony,
granted me both
the gift of books and the night

Translated later by Giovanni:
The Book of Imaginary Beings (1967)
Dr. Brodie’s Report (1970)
The Book of Sand (1975)

Borges was later an inspiration to Italian writer Umberto Eco, and portrayed as a key figure – the blind fourteenth century monk and librarian – in Eco’s mystery–classic, The Name of the Rose (1983).

 

Early 1967 CE: May: prelude to Six Day War:

Egyptian leader Gamal Abdul Nasser –
Expels the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) – which had served as a buffer for twenty years between Israel and Egypt – from the Sinai Peninsula. Masses a 100,000–man Egyptian army with 1,000 tanks on the border with Israel Calls for unified Arab action against Israel Blockades the choke–point to the Red Sea, the Straits of Tiran, to all Israeli or Israeli bound shipping… Note that blockades are conventionally categorized as “Acts of War”…The Jewish world and friends collectively “holds its breath”…

 

1967 CE: 1^ST DAY OF THE “SIX DAY WAR”

June 5: daybreak, Middle East.

Operation Moked (i.e. Operation “Focus”), Israeli air force strikes Egyptian airfields at dawn.

Israeli turns the tables on its blockading enemies – and catches them off–guard; Israeli warplanes (188 aircraft) destroy the air force (300 planes) of Egypt on the ground, and by the end of the day, virtually wipe out the air forces of Syria and Jordan….netting the Israelis total air dominance….The Israeli lightning land offensive follows on the heels of its air dominance…. Israel gains effective control of a very respectable portion of the Middle East within 6 days… and major, crucial bargaining–chips in future negotiations…

 

1967 CE: 3^RD DAY OF THE “SIX DAY WAR”

June 7: Return to Jerusalem: the Old City of Jerusalem, retaken by Jewish forces

Israeli paratroopers, 35th Paratrooper Brigade, penetrate the historic Old City of Jerusalem through Lion’s Gate… and capture the historic center of gravity of Judaism.

The City of David is now back in Jewish hands – 1996 years, 10 months and 11 days after the Roman Legion of Emperor Titus, after a multi–year siege, finally overwhelmed the starving Zealot–aligned Jewish fighters defending the very same gate in 70 CE…

A shudder runs down the spine of the international Jewish collective consciousness; it has been less than 25 years since probably the nadir of the Jewish historical journey – Auschwitz.

Defense Minister Dayan elects to maintain the Dome of the Rock—Al Aqsa Mosque—in the Old City under Muslim stewardship, by investing the Muslim Waqf (religious Trust) authority to manage the Temple Mount…de facto boxing–out Israeli and/or Jewish visitors, notwithstanding the mosque’s physical location literally above the buried ruins of the Jewish Temple.

 

1967 CE: 6^TH DAY OF THE “SIX DAY WAR”

June 10: Golan Heights captured…

Israeli forces under General Peled complete capture of Golan Heights from Syria, Israel’s arch enemy…facilitated by crucial intelligence supplied by legendary spy Eli Cohen. Cohen had penetrated the inner–circle of the Syrian political–military–social hierarchy by 1965, before being exposed and torture–executed in Damascus….

 

1967 CE: NO! NO! NO!

Sept 1: Khartoum (Sudan): Summit meeting of eight major Arab leaders:

“The Three Nos” of Khartoum:
No recognition of Israel;
No negotiation with Israel;
No peace with Israel.

 

1967 CE: MIDRASHA SCHOOLS

Post–1967 CE: Midrasha network of schools

Flowering of (cutting–edge) Midrasha network of Advanced Torah Learning schools for young women in Israel... in Jerusalem…mostly one–year programs abroad (in Israel) for Anglo–American Modern Orthodox students…many schools with advanced classes for women in Talmud....(Talmud study by and large hitherto having been a “male preserve” over the centuries through the mid–twentieth).

 

1967 CE: STEPHEN BIRMINGHAM WRITES OUR CROWD

–a chronicle of the illustrious and prominent (heavily Ashkenazic) Eastern Seaboard (primarily New York) Jewish families of the 19th and early 20th century.

As of 2007 there have been 14 editions of the fascinating (Harper & Row) book.

As noted, the term Ashkenazic means – of Western European origin. Originally (in the Middle Ages) it was a more focused term, delineating very specifically, German or French extraction.

In 1997, Birmingham issued The Grandees: America’s Sephardic Elite.

As noted, the term Sephardic is a somewhat blurred term. The Sephardim traversed from Spain (1492) > across the Mediterranean and the Arabian Peninsula and outwards to the far corners of the world over several hundred years > then, have double–backed back to Israel and France – in the past several hundred years, but in the last 60 years, in particular. A large contingent migrated to America, of course.

 

1967 CE: GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ COMPLETES ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE

Colombian novelist and writer Márquez popularizes a literary style known as magical realism.

Of course, many will find this technique incomprehensible. But the Nobel Prize for Literature will find its way to him in 1982. Márquez would subsequently finish his other quite widely known novel, Love in the Time of Cholera (1985).

 

1968 CE: EMIL FACKENHEIM WRITES QUEST FOR PAST AND FUTURE: ESSAYS IN JEWISH THEOLOGY

Fackenheim was a noted and impactful American Jewish philosopher and Reform rabbi (1916–2007).

See Exhibit re: The 614^th Commandment

 

1968 CE: PRAGUE SPRING

Jan 5: Political–leader Alexander Dubcek gains control of the Communist Party in Czechoslovakia (“CSSR”).

He begins instituting sweeping reforms in and around springtime ‘68. Freedoms of speech, media and travel are widely expanded.

Then, August 21, about nine and a half months into Dubcek’s tenure, the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact allies invade. They send 20,000 troops, and 2,000 tanks into the capital and other centers–of–gravity to crush the movement.

Subsequently the great bulk of Dubcek (“Prague Spring”) reforms are reversed via the Soviets’ hand–picked reactionary Gustáv Husák.

 

1968 CE: DAKAR

Jan 25: Israeli submarine I.N.S. DAKAR lost.

Dakar and its crew lost in peacetime after successful sea trials off of Scotland, en route from Portsmouth, England to port in Haifa, Israel. Its sunken hull and remains found off of Crete 50 km from Haifa.

Dakar means swordfish.

 

1968 CE: BILL GATES, AGE 13, FOOLS AROUND WITH COMPUTERS

He was a high school student in Seattle, Washington

 

1968 CE: “2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY”

–Groundbreaking film directed by Stanley Kubrick.

The film deals with themes of human evolution, technology, artificial intelligence and extraterrestrial life. It stars HAL, a fictional “Model 9000” [also fictional] supercomputer who has a nice modulated voice, and is into dialoguing with astronauts.

 

1968 CE: MOSSAD OPERATION: “PLUMBAT”

–in support of Israeli nuclear weapons effort:

The German freighter “Sheersberg A” disappeared for several days on its way from Antwerp (Belgium) to Genoa (Italy). When the freighter reappeared in Iskenderun, a Turkish port, its cargo of 200 tons of uranium oxide (yellow cake) was missing; the cargo had been transferred at sea to an Israeli freighter.

 

1968 CE: O. J. SIMPSON, 21, OF USC, WINS THE HEISMAN TROPHY

 

1968 CE: PHANTOMS

Dec 27: U.S. agrees to sell fifty F–4 Phantom jet fighters to Israel.

 

1969 CE: ROBERT M. BEREN ACADEMY FOUNDED IN TEXAS

Houston: Modern Orthodox; primary and secondary school; originally Southwest Texas Hebrew Academy.

 

1969 CE: AMERICAN EXISTENTIAL PSYCHOLOGIST ROLLO MAY WRITES LOVE AND WILL

NY: Dell Publishing

 

1969 CE: “ONE SMALL STEP”

July 20: Man (USA) lands on the moon...Apollo 11 Mission, commanded by Neil Armstrong sets down lunar lander Eagle with Buzz Aldrin...(from fiction to reality: Jules Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon – 1865 – becomes reality).

 

1969 CE: BEN–GURION UNIVERSITY

(Of the Negev) founded in Beersheba, Israel

Originally named University of the Negev...named, of course, after Israel’s iconic War Of Independence leader….the university mandated to promoting development of the Negev in 2008; 18,000 students....satellite mini–campuses near kibbutz Sde Boker (Jacob Blaustein Institute for Desert Research) and in Eilat….

 

1969 CE: NEWMAN TEAMS UP WITH REDFORD IN “BUTCH CASSIDY”

A Western (film) about two bank robbers…

Paul Newman teams up with Robert Redford in “Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid.”

Born to a Jewish father and Christian Scientist mother in Shaker Heights, IL, Newman said he considers himself Jewish: “It’s more challenging.”

Britannica –
“A charismatic American film actor, who was an enduring screen presence in the second half of the 20th century.

Newman served as a navy radio operator during World War II and upon his discharge enrolled at Ohio’s Kenyon College (B.A. 1949). He completed one year of graduate studies in theatre at Yale University but gained his most important experience at New York’s Actor Studio…

In 1960 Newman led an international cast in Otto Preminger’s epic film Exodus, based on the novel by Leon Uris about the founding of Israel.

In 1961 he essayed the role which perhaps best defined his screen persona, that of pool shark “Fast” Eddie Felson in The Hustler…

Two enormously popular films teamed Newman with costar Robert Redford and director George Roy Hill.

The comic western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) received seven Oscar nominations and was among the top–grossing films of the year. In 1973 the pair portrayed Depression–era con men in The Sting, a widely seem work that won the Academy Award for best picture.”

Encyclopaedia Britannica Online. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/413027/Paul–Newman (accessed May 10, 2009)

Newman died of cancer – September 26, 2008 in Westport, CT.

 

1969 CE: MOSSAD OPERATION: CHERBOURGH

Five French–built missile boats spirited out of French shipyard at Cherbough Harbor by the Mossad.

…the five advanced missile boats had been paid–for by Israel, but sequestered by the French in–port, when the French suddenly imposed an arms embargo.

 

1970 CE: PHILOSOPHER BERTRAND RUSSELL DIES AT 97

Born and died in Wales.

A multi–faceted life as a philosopher, historian, logician and mathematician in England, filled in the interim years.

 

1970 CE: MASS OF PAUL VI REPLACES TRIDENTINE MASS

 

1970 CE: TOURO COLLEGE

“Touro College was chartered by the Board of Regents of the State of New York in June 1970. Under the leadership of its founding president, Dr. Bernard Lander, the College opened with a class of 35 Liberal Arts and Sciences students in 1971. A Women’s Division was added to the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and Schools of General Studies, Law and Health Sciences were subsequently organized. The College organized sister institutions in Israel and Russia. The School for Lifelong Education, offering a non–traditional contract–learning–based program, was organized in Fall 1989. The Institute for Professional Studies (IPS) – Machon L’Parnasa was established in early 1999 to provide higher education with practical applications for the ultra–orthodox community. The Graduate School of Education and Psychology and the International School of Business were established, as well as other colleges, branches and divisions.

Touro College is a Jewish–sponsored independent institution of higher and professional education. The College was established primarily to enrich the Jewish heritage, and to serve the larger American community. Approximately 17,500 students are currently enrolled in its various schools and divisions.”

Touro College Online, http://www.touro.edu/general/about.asp (accessed August 13, 2009)

 

1970 CE: SADAT RISES

Sept 28: President Nasser of Egypt dies...

Vice President Anwar El–Sadat assumes the reins of power In Egypt; Sadat ends three year War of Attrition between Egypt and Israel – in the Sinai and along the Mediterranean coast… Israel had lost 1424 soldiers and 127 civilians over the three year duration (July 1, 1967 – Aug 7, 1970)… Sadat will, in due course, launch the carefully and astutely–planned Yom Kippur assault and war eastward across the Suez Canal three year and two months later (see also later, 1977 CE: “ANWAR SADAT”).

 

1971 CE: NERUDA

Chilean, Pablo Neruda, awarded Nobel Prize for literature.

[His poetry collections include: “Odes to Common Things”… “Residence on Earth” … note: While Neruda’s poetry is sublime, the political views of Neruda are his alone – and “do not necessarily reflect the views of this broadcasting network”].

 

1971 CE: LIBERTY UNIVERSITY FOUNDED BY JERRY FALWELL

 

1971 CE:GORDIS WRITES FAITH FOR MODERNS

Classic text, albeit essentially out of print by 2008.

Excellent and erudite primer for Modern Traditional/Observant Judaism.

A careful analysis of the work manifests the convergence of “Conservadox” with “Modern Orthodox.” Both movements will provide disproportionate “intellectual fire” for late 20^th century and early 21^st century Judaism.

Robert Gordis (1908–1992), was, among other stellar achievements, a leading conservative rabbi, one–time president of the Rabbinical Assembly, professor at JTS in NY, as well as a founder of JUDAISM, a very leading and universally–regarded quarterly journal of the Conservative movement.

 

1971 CE: ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA PUBLISHED

As noted in Encyclopaedia Judaica on Encyclopaedia Judaica {1997}
[CD–ROM] –
“The Encyclopaedia Judaica, first published in 1972 and updated through regular Year Books and Decennial volumes…

Previous Jewish Encyclopedias
The English–language Jewish Encyclopedia, the first complete work of this nature, appeared in New York at the beginning of the 20^th century (its twelfth and final volume was published in 1906). This pioneering work summed up the state of Jewish scholarship and the condition of the Jewish world at the time. It was an extraordinary achievement—especially if one considers the relatively small numbers of the English–speaking and English–reading Jewish population at the time. It was able, however, to call upon the collaboration of Jewish scholars in many countries—in particular the representatives of the Wissenschaft des Judentums, the School of Scientific Jewish Scholarship, then at its height. There were aspects that it tended to overlook or underplay, such as the world of Eastern European Jewry, Kabbalah and Hasidism, Yiddish language and literature, and the life and culture of the Jews in Muslim lands, but seen as a whole, it was a monumental work incorporating many entries which became classic statements on their subject.

The 16–volume Russian Jewish encyclopedia Yevreyskaya Entsiklopediya, which also appeared before World War I, was well conceived and in some respects brilliantly edited. Particularly outstanding was its expertise on East European Jewish subjects. The 10–volume Hebrew Ozar Yisrael (1924), an almost single–handed achievement by J.D. Eisenstein, was on a far smaller scale and had less rigorous standards, although in certain areas its articles presented useful material…

In the first years of World War II (1939–43) the Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, edited by Isaac Landman, was issued in the United States in ten volumes. It was able to reflect the growing importance of U.S. Jewry and to take into account late developments, especially in American Jewish history and biography. It had considerable merits, but was not an ambitious work. Moreover, the fact that is was published in a period of major transition in itself set a limit to its utility. It was, however, the Universal Jewish Encyclopedia which constituted the basis of the ten–volume Spanish–language Enciclopedia Judaica Castellana produced in Mexico between 1948 and 1951. The major contribution of this latter work lay in its original entries dealing with the development of Jewish life in Latin America.

After the establishment of the State of Israel, the Hebrew language Encyclopaedia Hebraica began to be published in Jerusalem by the Massada Publishing Company, directed by the Peli family. This was the first large–scale general encyclopedia in the Hebrew language—and naturally it emphasized the Jewish aspects of various subjects, some of them of high scholarly importance and in certain cases even pioneering studies in their field. But though it contains the elements of a Jewish encyclopedia, it was not—nor was it intended to be—a Jewish encyclopedia as such.

The Development of the Encyclopaedia Judaica
For many years, and especially since the cataclysmic events in Jewish history of the 1940s, the need was felt for an entirely new Jewish encyclopedia, especially in the English language for English–speaking Jewry, who now accounted for about half of the Jews of the world. Furthermore, the survivors of the editorial board of the German Encyclopaedia Judaica had always been determined that the Nazi attack on their work could not be accepted as a final defeat and the unfinished publication must be completed. However, they too recognized that now only a relatively small proportion of the Jewish people had access to a work in German and that any new endeavor in this field must be, first and foremost, in English. Dr. Nahum Goldmann, the last active survivor of the original board of editors, had long had this objective.” [see also 1934 CE: PUBLICATION HALTED at “L”]

 

1971 CE: FREIS RECEIVES LASKER AWARD

–for breakthroughs in the field of HYPERTENSION.

Dr. Edward S. Freis (Jewish), son of Lithuanian immigrant parents, was an American physician and researcher. Later on, he moved into the study of HEMODYNAMICS (blood circulation).

 

1972 CE: FISCHER AND SPASSKY MEET

Reykjavík, Iceland: Chess “grandmasters” Bobby Fischer (USA) and Boris Spassky Russia) meet…

…for the “Chess Match of the Century.”

Challenger Fischer (age 29) defeats reigning champion (for the prior three years) Spassky (age 35) in twenty–one games to become the undisputed chess champion of the world.

Fischer, Jewish, was born in Chicago in 1943. He became the youngest USA Chess Champion ever in 1956 at the age of 13, an age record that stands to this day. All told, he played in eight consecutive annual USA championships, starting with the 1956 match, winning all of them.

Fischer would die of renal disease (at age 64) January 17, 2008 in Reykjavik, site of his greatest triumph.

 

1972 CE: PRIESAND

Cleveland, OH: June 3: Sally Priesand becomes the first woman rabbi ordained in the USA by Reform’s HUC–JIR (Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion).

–followed in 1974 by the Reconstructionist Movement’s RRC (Reconstructionist Rabbinical College): Rabbi Sandy Eisenberg Sasso ordained and in 1985, by the Conservative Movement’s JTS (Jewish Theological Seminary): Rabbi Amy Eilberg ordained.

 

1972 CE: BOB WOODWARD HEARS OF A BURGLARY

Assigned to the police beat of The Washington Post, reporter Woodward writes a brief article about a presumably inconsequential break–in, at the Watergate.

 

1972 CE: “NIXON SHOCK”

Kissinger orchestrates an American overture and opening with China for President Nixon. Japan is traumatized—as is Taiwan.

 

1972 CE: THE MUNICH OLYMPICS MASSACRE

Sept 5: 4:30 AM: Black September Palestinian terrorists kill

The terrorists penetrate, attack and secure the Israeli team compound (at Olympic Village, Munich, Germany) after killing the wrestling coach Moshe Weinberg and weightlifter Yossef Romano, both attempting to stymie the attackers at the door.

After threatening to kill their hostages, the terrorists secure West German government commitment to provide helicopters for the first leg of planned kidnapping–out of the nine Israeli athletes to the Middle East.

All nine Israeli athlete–hostages die in the failed West German sniper attempt to kill the terrorists (at the helicopters on the airfield) four minutes into the early AM of Sept 6. Four of the eight terrorists killed in the abortive rescue attempt. The fifth was hunted down and killed an hour later at 1:30 AM. So, three terrorists remained alive and in West German hands.

Then, Oct 29, a little less than two months later, Palestinian terrorists hijack a Lufthansa jet, and secure the release from the West German government of the three captured Munich terrorists.

However, all of the above elicited a committed multi–year response from Israel.

Of the several original Palestinian plot organizers, only one – now in his seventies – is believed not to have been assassinated by Israel to date, June, 2008.
– after Wikipedia

[In an inter–related saga, California swimmer (Jewish) Mark Spitz was spirited–out (with his historic seven gold medals) by the United States as the murderous debacle unfolded. Spitz had set a new world record in each of the seven events.]

 

1973 CE: MUNICH–RESPONSE

Spanning 1973, Israeli–backed operatives assassinate Black September–backed operatives – across Europe (and in Beirut)… Contentious operation. Approved by Golda Meir, Premier… Issues and tactics intensely debated to this day…Issues framed subsequently by Spielberg’s film Munich. The film also became quite contentious.

 

1973 CE: TRINITY BROADCASTING NETWORK FOUNDED

 

1973 CE: SOLZHENITSYN

–publishes Gulag Archipelago.

A historic three–volume work...written prior between 1956–1958, exposing the GULAG system of (forced) labor and concentration camps spread across the Soviet Union (from 1918 through 1956).

An estimated 20–35 million Russians went through the notorious Gulag system, with 8–10 million+ estimated to have died as a direct consequence.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn was born in 1918 in Kislovodsk, Russia; Nobel Prize for literature 1970; exiled from the Soviet Union 1974; Soviet citizenship restored in 1990. He returns to the Soviet Union in 1994...awarded a Soviet Union prize by Soviet President Putin, who visited Solzhenitsyn’s home in 2007 to present it.

[Mr. Solzhenitsyn’s first major work was “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” in 1962.]

 

1973 CE: KISSINGER

Sept 22: Henry Kissinger advances

–adds “U.S. Secretary of State” to his “National Security Advisor” title.

Real politik…Detente…“China Shock” – when Kissinger advises Japan that Nixon will visit China.

Washington, DC…National Security Advisor (1969–1975), then appointed Secretary of State Sept 22, 1973…just days before the Yom Kippur War in the Middle East…until Jan 20, 1977…

A Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, moving to Washington Heights, NY in 1938, he wins Nobel Peace Prize in 1973 for role in arranging fragile (later to be broken) cease fire with North Vietnam…

 

1973 CE: YOM KIPPUR WAR

a.k.a. 1973 Arab–Israeli War
a.k.a. the Fourth Arab–Israeli War

Oct 6–26, 1973

After crucial intelligence procured from Nasser’s own London–based son–in–law (regarding an imminent Egyptian attack across the Suez Canal) is dismissed and quashed by an ego maniacal Israeli intelligence chief, Israel is caught off–guard by an intensive and well–planned Egyptian and Syrian multi–front attack and invasion.

Egyptian forces forge eastward first across the Suez Canal, then puncture right through the (thinly–manned Israeli) “Bar–Lev defensive line,” then roll onward and north–eastward through the Sinai Desert…

Syrian tanks are rolling south from the Syrian border.

Central Israel is now at–risk caught between the two converging armored forces….

Israel, at–this–point, allegedly unsheathes its alleged doomsday – (nuclear–tipped) “Jericho missiles”…

Now “up against the wall,” Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir then unleashes her human nuclear–weapon Major General Ariel Sharon.

Ramping–up to counter–attack, Sharon dusts–off “Contingency Plan: Suez–Westward–Wartime–Crossing Plans”

(which he authored several years prior)…

Sharon rushes specialized pre–positioned heavy–duty military rafts westward across the Sinai Desert to pre–hardened and camouflaged concrete raft–launching–sites at the Canal’s eastern edge; then (Oct 15–16) launches ‘Operation Valiant’ with his 143rd Armored Division employing armor–bearing rafts carrying his tanks and troops westward across the Suez Canal (just south of the tail end of the eastward–rolling Egyptian operation);

Sharon’s cross–canal maneuver encircles and entraps the Egyptian Third Army on the western/Egyptian side of the Canal in the desert. By Oct 19, Israeli military engineers had stretched four complete pontoon bridges across the Canal to supply and reinforce their counter–attacking and encircling forces...

With all supply lines to the Egyptian Third Army now severed by Sharon’s forces, the Egyptians are now in “counter–check” and in deep, deep trouble.

With the Egyptian Third Army, which also putatively protects any potential Israeli westward advance on Cairo, now encircled by Sharon and literally out of water in the desert, the Egyptians “need to deal”…

The stage is now set for a Kissinger–brokered armistice…several days later.

...and several years later, an eventual Israeli–Egyptian Peace Treaty at Camp David (Begin–Sadat); a subsequent “cold peace” with Egypt…..through publication of this work in 2008.

During the Yom Kippur War, OPEC drove–up oil prices, triggering a worldwide economic crisis.
– after Wikipedia

 

1973 CE: ROSOVSKY

Professor of Economics Henry Rosovsky named Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard.

He was the university’s first Jewish dean, at the helm of Harvard’s crown jewel division.

The astute student body heard the message “loud and clear,” as well.

Informal and de facto quotas against Jews, in particular, and other minorities would fall.

[Author – I was there, and “electric” does not fully convey the energy.]

Rosovsky, born in the Free City of Danzig (Gdansk) in 1927, would later serve as Acting President of Harvard in transition years 1984 and 1988.

 

1973 CE: BERKOVITS WRITES FAITH AFTER THE HOLOCAUST

Eliezer Berkovits: Rabbi, Theologian, Philosopher, Writer and Educator in the tradition of Modern Orthodox Judaism. Born 1908 in Romania; died 1992 in Israel.

Books written by Berkovits:
• Hume and Deism (1933) [German]
• Was Ist der Talmud? (1938) [German]
• Towards Historic Judaism (1943)
• Between Yesterday and Tomorrow (1945)
• Judaism: Fossil or Ferment? (1956)
• God, Man, and History (1959)
• Prayer (1962)
• A Jewish Critique of the Philosophy of Martin Buber (1962)
• T’nai Bi’N’suin u’V’Get (1966) [Hebrew]
• Man and God: Studies in Biblical Theology (1969)
• Faith After the Holocaust (1973)
• Major Themes in Modern Philosophies of Judaism (1974)
• Crisis and Faith (1976)
• With God in Hell: Judaism in the Ghettos and Death Camps (1979)
• Not in Heaven: The Nature and Function of Halakha (1983)
• HaHalakha, Koha V’Tafkida (1981) [Hebrew] – expanded version of Not in Heaven (above)
• Logic in Halacha (1986) [Hebrew]
• Unity in Judaism (1986)
• The Crisis of Judaism in the Jewish State (1987) [Hebrew]
• Jewish Women in Time and Torah (1990)
• Essential Essays on Judaism (2002)

 

1974 CE Terroration! MA’ALOT MASSACRE

May 15: Northern Israel: Ma’alot School massacre by Palestinian terrorists

Palestinian terrorists had infiltrated the school, and were holding the students hostage.

Twenty–one Israeli 14–16 year–old students killed, most murdered by their Palestinian captors, during the subsequent Israeli assault to free the 90–total Israeli student hostages.

The Israeli rescue–assault commenced – 3 hours 15 minutes before the terrorist deadline expiration.

 

1974 CE: OPEN UNIVERSITY

“Open University of Israel” founded…

A “distance–education” university…now with mega student count: 40,000+ students…based in Ra’anana, Israel (slightly north of Tel Aviv).

 

1975 CE: JACKSON–VANIK AMENDMENT

Passed by Congress in late 1974, signed by President Gerald Ford in Jan 1975...ties US Trade benefits to the emigration of Soviet Jews...ultimately achieves its noble aim...sponsored by Sen. Henry “Scoop” Jackson (WA) and Rep. Charles Vanik (OH)... gives “bite” to the Free Soviet Jewry Movement...

 

1975 CE Auto–Genocide: KHMER ROUGE GENOCIDE

Apr 17: Cambodia: Khmer Rouge conquers Phnom Penh, the capital

Terror regime in Cambodia 1975–1979 CE...

–Murders 1.7 million (of Cambodia’s own) people (many torture–murdered).

So, 22% of the country’s entire population of 7.5 million was murdered by its own regime. The prime targets were anyone conceivably a threat to the regime. This included the country’s professional and/or educated elite, very broadly–defined, to put it mildly. For example, if one wore glasses, one was considered an intellectual and was doomed.

The Cambodian cities were emptied and everyone forced onto “collective farms” or into forced labor projects.

The regime was eventually thrown out by invading (Communist) Vietnamese forces, who entered in November 1978 to rescue ethnic Vietnamese from the Khmer Rouge’s pickaxes.

Broadly–speaking, the United Nations commenced reorganizing the devastated country in 1991.

 

1975 CE: SAKHAROV AWARDED NOBEL PEACE PRIZE

Eminent Soviet nuclear physicist, dissident and human rights activist.

[b. 1921, Moscow; d. 1989, Moscow]

 

1975 CE: BENJAMIN NETANYAHU GRADUATES M.I.T. (Boston)

Born 1949 in Tel Aviv. Leader of the Likud Party and Prime Minister. His father, Benzion Netanyahu, is a noted Jewish historian. Benjamin Netanyahu grew up in Jerusalem and in Philadelphia, and spent his young adulthood in Boston.

Netanyahu served in an elite Israeli army unit, taking part in various across–border operations and rising to the rank of captain. He then pursued academic studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, earning a master’s degree in architecture and business administration. His fluent English and array of skills brought him to the attention of Moshe Arens, the Likkud leader then serving as Israel’s ambassador to the United States.

Arens had Netanyahu appointed “minister plenipotentiary” in the Israel Embassy in Washington where Netanyahu served from 1982 to 1986. He was then appointed by Foreign Minister Shimon Peres as Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, a post he held until 1988.

Returning to Israel, Netanyahu was elected to the Knesset in 1988 and was appointed Deputy Foreign Minister under Moshe Arens. He retained this post when David Levy succeeded Arens, but serious disagreements with Levy forced him to leave the Foreign Ministry and he became deputy minister in the Office of the Prime Minister.

Netanyahu served on the Knesset Foreign Affairs and defense Committee and led the opposition to the foreign policy of the Rabin–Peres government, vehemently opposing the Oslo Agreements, but supporting the Israel–Jordan peace treaty.

He served his first tenure as Prime Minister June 18, 1996 – July 6, 1999. (He would become Prime Minister again in March 2009.)

He has authored several books, including two on fighting terrorism, and is married to his third wife, Sara, with whom he has two sons.

His brother, Jonathan (Yonathan), was a colonel in the Israel army who was killed (very early a.m. July 4, 1976 or possibly just before midnight July 3, 1976) at age thirty leading the (ultimately successful) operation to rescue Israeli and other passengers hijacked (June 27, 1976) to Entebbe, Uganda. Jonathan was the sole Israeli military casualty of the historic rescue (see separate entry 1976 CE: ENTEBBE)

 

1976 CE: AGATHA CHRISTIE DIES AT AGE 85

Oxfordshire, England: She had written seventy–nine crime novels, several collections of stories, and fifteen plays. Agatha Christie has been translated into 103 foreign languages.

 

1976 CE: BLUMBERG

Baruch Samuel Blumberg wins the Nobel in Medicine. Born July 28, 1925.

He attended Far Rockaway High School in the 1940s, the school that also produced fellow (Jewish) Nobel laureates Burton Richter and Richard Feynman.

Britannica –
“American research physician whose discovery of an antigen that provokes antibody response against hepatitis B led to the development by other researchers of a successful vaccine against the disease. He shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1976 with D. Carleton Gajdusek for their work on the origins and spread of infectious viral diseases.

In May 1999 Blumberg was appointed director of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Astrobiology Institute. He held several different positions while at NASA, where he remained until 2004. The following year he was elected president of the American Philosophical Society.”

Encyclopaedia Britannica Online. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/70555/Baruch–S–Blumberg (accessed May 11, 2009)

 

1976 CE: STEVE JOBS, 21, COFOUNDS APPLE COMPUTERS WITH STEVE WOZNIAK

Apr 1: California.

 

1976 CE: MILTON FRIEDMAN WINS NOBEL IN ECONOMICS

–Son of Sara and Jeno Friedman 1890s immigrant from Berehovo, Ukraine…. Orthodox Jewish upbringing….Rutgers… University of Chicago… Hoover Institute–Stanford… Leader of the Chicago “school of economics”… Developer of (laissez–faire) monetarism economics…Intellectual challenger of Keynesian (interventionist) economics.

Winner of Presidential Medal of Freedom, 1988.

Friedman: “There is no such thing as a free lunch”

 

1976 CE: ENTEBBE! RESCUE

July 3: Uganda airport

–3,000 mile successful ultra–daring Israeli airborne commando raid…Mercedes–Benz gets free publicity…as an Israeli commando squad—masquerading as Dictator Idi Amin and his personal guards—driving in a replica of Amin’s shiny black Mercedes—drove down the ramp of the just–landed Israeli military transport plane leading the assault on the stunned forces at the Uganda airport.

 

1976 CE: BELLOW WINS NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE

Born June 10, 1915; died Apr. 5, 2005

Britannica –
“American novelist whose characterizations of modern urban man, disaffected by society but not destroyed in spirit, earned him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1976. Brought up in a Jewish household and fluent in Yiddish—which influenced his energetic English style—he was representative of the Jewish American writers whose works became central to American literature after World War II.

Bellow’s parents emigrated in 1913 from Russia to Montreal. When he was nine they moved to Chicago. He attended the University of Chicago and Northwestern University (B.S., 1937) and afterward combined writing with a teaching career at various universities, including the University of Minnesota, Princeton University, New York University, Bard College, the University of Chicago, and Boston University.

Bellow won a reputation among a small group of readers with his first two novels, Dangling Man (1944), a story in diary form of a man waiting to be inducted into the army, and The Victim (1947), a subtle study of the relationship between a Jew and a Gentile, each of whom becomes the other’s victim. The Adventures of Augie March (1953) brought wider acclaim and won the National Book Award (1954). It is a picaresque story of a poor Jewish youth from Chicago, his progress—sometimes highly comic—through the world of the 20th century, and his attempts to make sense of it. In this novel Bellow employed for the first time a loose, breezy style in conscious revolt against the preoccupation of writers of that time with perfection of form.

Henderson the Rain King (1959) continued the picaresque approach in its tale of an eccentric American millionaire on a quest in Africa. Seize the Day (1956), a novella, is a unique treatment of a failure in a society where the only success is success. He also wrote a volume of short stories, Mosby’s Memoirs (1968), and To Jerusalem and Back (1976) about a trip to Israel.

In his later novels and novellas—Herzog (1964; National Book Award, 1965), Mr. Sammler’s Planet (1970; National Book Award, 1971), Humboldt’s Gift (1975; Pulitzer Prize, 1976), The Dean’s December (1982), More Die of Heartbreak (1987), A Theft (1989), The Bellarosa Connection (1989), and The Actual (1997)—Bellow arrived at his most characteristic vein. The heroes of these works are often Jewish intellectuals whose interior monologues range from the sublime to the absurd. At the same time, their surrounding world, peopled by energetic and incorrigible realists, acts as a corrective to their intellectual speculations. It is this combination of cultural sophistication and the wisdom of the streets that constitutes Bellow’s greatest originality. In Ravelstein (2000) he presented a fictional version of the life of teacher and philosopher Allan Bloom.”

Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/59931/Saul–Bellow (accessed May 12, 2009)

 

1977 CE: “BEIJING SPRING”

Deng Xiaoping launches “Beijing Spring”...in China, which repudiates the Cultural Revolution...Deng unleashes the mega–economic potential of China....his reforms echoing globally to this day...a very major constructive figure of the 20th century...b. 1904; d. 1977.

 

1977 CE: APPLE

March: California: first APPLE PC, the Apple II microcomputer

...by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak (and Ronald Wayne).

 

1977 CE: FOCUS ON THE FAMILY

–founded by James Dobson

 

1977 CE: SIMON WIESENTHAL CENTER OPENED

–by dynamo Rabbi Marvin Hier

–for tolerance and the combating of anti–Semitism, founded in L.A.

Its sub–component “Museum of Tolerance” will open 14 years later, in 1993.

Two of the six films of its Moriah Films division have won Academy Awards for Best Feature Documentary: Genocide (1981) and The Long Way Home (1997).

 

1977 CE: BEGIN!

May 17: Menachem Begin, head of Likud Party, ideological heir of Jabotinsky, elected Prime Minister of Israel.

Major historical figure Begin will confound his detractors and fully engage with the Egyptian peace overture which will come 6 months into his election.….

 

1977 CE: WOODY ALLEN DIRECTS FILM “ANNIE HALL”

Screenplay by: Woody Allen & Marshal Brickman.

Britannica –
“Original name Allen Stewart Konisberg, legal name Heywood Allen.

American motion–picture director, screenwriter, actor, and author, best known for his bittersweet comic films containing elements of parody, slapstick, and the absurd. He was also known as a sympathetic director for women, writing strong and well–defined characters for them. Among his featured performers were Diane Keaton and Mia Farrow, with both of whom he was romantically involved.

Much of Allen’s comic material derives from his urban Jewish middle–class background. Intending to be a playwright, Allen began writing stand–up comedy monologues while still in high school…”

Encyclopaedia Britannica Online. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/16217/Woody–Allen (accessed May 15, 2009)

Played a major role as producer, director, screenwriter, or actor in:

What’s New, Pussycat? (1965), Play It Again, Sam (1969), Annie Hall (1977), The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), Alice (1990), Husbands and Wives (1992), Scoop (2006), Cassandra’s Dream (2007), Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008).

 

1977 CE: ANWAR SADAT (cont’d)

President of Egypt:
–addresses the Knesset [Israeli Parliament]
(November 20, 1977)

–Camp David Accords with Israel’s Menachem Begin,
Sept. 17, 1978... (Jimmy Carter presiding)... Israel withdraws from Sinai.

… Sadat later assassinated by Islamic radicals in 1981: Via first war and then, peace, Sadat set in motion a historic “chain of events”…

However, no Arab leaders attended his funeral aside from Nimeiry of Sudan… Three former American presidents do attend…

 

1978 CE: OLIVIA NEWTON–JOHN SOARS HIGHER

Olivia Newton–John Biography –

“Olivia Newton–John AO, OBE (born September 26, 1948) is a Grammy Award–winning and Golden Globe–nominated English–born, Australian pop singer, songwriter and actress of Welsh and German origin. She is an avid activist for both environmental issues and breast cancer awareness…

Olivia Newton–John was born in Cambridge, England, to a Welsh–born father, Brinley (“Bryn”) Newton–John, and a German–born mother of Jewish descent, Irene Born…Newton–John’s mother was the eldest child of Max Born, a German Nobel prize–winning physicist. Newton–John’s father was an MI5 officer on the Enigma project at Bletchley Park and was the officer who took Rudolph Hess into custody during World War II….

Newton–John’s career soared after starring in the film adaptation of the Broadway musical Grease in 1978. She was offered the lead role of Sandy after a chance meeting with producer Allan Carr at a dinner party…”

Olivia Newton–John Biography, http://www.olivianewton–john.com/bio.html (accessed July 7, 2009)

 

1978 CE: BASHEVIS SINGER

NY: Upper West Side:

Yiddish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer receives Nobel Prize in Literature.

 

1978 CE: BRITISH M.M. KAYE WRITES THE FAR PAVILLIONS

NY: St. Martin’s Press

M.M. Kay, (female), born in 1908 in India into a British military family, spent 19 years in Kenya, Zanzibar, Egypt, Cyprus and Germany…turns out to be real–life research for her masterpiece to–come in 1978.

 

1978 CE: KELLERMAN & KELLERMAN & KELLERMAN

–Jesse, son of Faye and Jonathan, born.

Faye: (b. 1952) American author of mystery novels
Jonathan: (b. 1949) American psychologist and author of suspense novels
Jesse Kellerman: (b. 1978) author, children’s poetry

All three are within the Orthodox Jewish fold.

 

1979 CE: THE RETURN OF AYATOLLAH KHOMEINI

–to Tehran, from Paris.

He proceeds to overthrows the Shah of Iran.

The hostage taking of forty–four Americans from the US Embassy will be the first sequel.

 

1979 CE: BEGIN AND SADAT

Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

 

1979 CE: MORAL MAJORITY

–founded by Jerry Falwell

 

1979 CE: BARKAY HITS PAYDIRT

Gabriel Barkay, Professor of Biblical Archaeology at Bar Ilan University (Tel Aviv) and Hebrew University (Jerusalem).

He discovers small silver plaques containing the priestly benediction(s) from the Torah [Book of Numbers (Bamidbar) 6: 22–27 [see Exhibit].

These plaques, according to the History Channel documentary (Apr 27, 2008), are apparently currently the oldest known biblically–related inscriptions, and apparently date back to 600 BCE. Thus they date back to prior to the destruction of Temple I, or roughly to the time of Jeremiah (Yirmiyahu), meaning 150 years prior to Ezra’s zenith 150 years later.

According to Barkay, the actual physical discovery was made by a young kid (7 years old) hanger on to one of his academic forays to one of the Jewish tomb–sites just outside of Jerusalem. Barkay desribes the youngster jokingly as the quintessential perpetual pest. Now, as will be seen, this perpetual pest impacted history significantly not just with his initial physical discovery (of this oldest biblically–related inscription item) – which took place in a tiny forbidding tomb, which he purposely slipped his 7–year–old frame into, but several decades later as well...for the discovery had a “kicker.”

Thus, the plot thickens in 2005:

According to Simcha Jacobovici on the same History Channel documentary noted earlier in this entry: Apparently employing advanced NASA technology in 2005, archaeologists discern a second biblical section on the plates, this time from Deuteronomy (Devarim) Chaper 7. The existence of the two biblical extracts on the same 600 BCE plates, one from Deuteronomy and one from Numbers, according to Jacobovici, undermines the “Documentary Hypothesis” (1876/7) of (the German biblical scholar) Julius Wellhausen.

But if both inscriptions appear in the same plate in Jerusalem pre–Churban I in 600 BCE (figure 600–625 BCE), they could not have been penned by separate authors (as posited by Wellhausen) in Babylon post–Churban I, 150–175 years later in 450 BCE. Concrete evidence fatally undermining the (heretical to Orthodox Judaism) “Documentary Hypothesis” challenge of Welhausen.

[Author – Four separate authors would have left a minimum of “four separate trails,” particularly in the intellectually dynamic Jewish maelstrom of metropolitan Babylon of 450 BCE, with many hundreds of scholars and rabbinics and students and scribes massed together in one metropolis.

Having “marched through hell” keeping the faith with Temple I Judaism, Torah and all, the Jews of Babylon respectfully did not need to reinvent what they already had. If “reinvention” was underfoot, the Talmud compilers might just have “noticed it.”]

Nevertheless, supporters of the Documentary hypothesis make a comprehensive case for their proposition. They might assert that the Barkay scrolls are not inconsistent with the Documentary Hypothesis, as the hypothesis posits that, although redacted by (possibly) Ezra in 450 BCE, three of the four proposed Documentary authors wrote in the 950 BCE, 850 BCE and 521 BCE periods respectively.

[The Documentary Hypothesis (a.k.a. the J E P D Hypothesis) posits 4 separate authors (J, E, P and D) of different sections of the Torah (the Five Books of Moses), edited and stitched–together by an editor, possibly Ezra (zenith: 450 BCE), according to hypothesis adherents. Yeshiva University and the Orthodox, in general, have always roundly rejected the “Documentary Hypothesis.”]

 

1979 CE: MURDER: NAHARIYA

Northern Israel

Apr 22: on the Mediterranean Coast: Palestinian Terrorist Samir Kuntar slips from a small boat onto one of Nahariya’s beaches with three other terrorists.

The four militants then killed a policeman, and then broke into a nearby apartment building. Inside the building, the terrorists kidnapped a resident, a young father, Danny Haran, and his 4–year–old daughter, Einat, taking them to a nearby beach.

Terrorist Samir Kuntar was captured and found guilty of murdering Danny Harran in front of his daughter, then turning to the child and crushing her skull against a rock with the butt of his rifle.

Smadar Harran, Danny’s wife, who had hid in the apartment crawlspace with the couple’s 2–year–old daughter, accidentally suffocated the 2–year–old to death, while trying to keep her crying inaudible from the terrorists.

Samir Kuntar, the killer, remains a vaunted hero, if not “superhero,” to this day among militant Palestinian circles.

Author’s note – to some extent, we define ourselves by our “heroes.”

Kuntar will be at the vortex of events and of excruciating negotiations in the 2006–2008 period leading–into the publication of this work.
– after Wikipedia

 

1979 CE: ANDREW GROVE BECOMES PRESIDENT OF INTEL

Britannica –
“Grove, who had been with the Santa Clara, California–based company since it was established, became CEO in early 1987... Intel Corp. is the world’s largest manufacturer of microprocessor chips used to control personal computers (PCs), announced record 1996 earnings of $5.2 billion from total sales that reached nearly $21 billion… Grove’s advancement to the top at Intel was an impressive ascent for a young man who had arrived in the U.S. with reportedly only $20 in his pocket and limited English–language skills.

Grove was born Andras Grof in Budapest on Sept. 2, 1936, the son of a [Jewish] dairyman, and immigrated to the U.S. shortly after the suppression of the Hungarian revolt by the Soviet Union in 1956. He attended the City College of New York while working as a waiter, obtaining his B.S. degree in 1960. In 1963 Grove received a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, and five years later he joined a new company that became known as Intel (a contraction for integrated electronics). The company introduced the world’s first microprocessor in 1971, and the 8088 microchip, which Intel introduced in 1978, was chosen by IBM for use in its first personal computer. By 1997 Intel controlled 85% of the world’s PC chip market, and it was estimated that in 1997 alone the company would ship over 80 million Pentium and Pentium Pro microprocessors.

Although the feisty Grove was one of the most respected managers in the industry, he was reported to occupy a simple work cubicle at Intel, eschewing the office trappings normally bestowed upon one of his business stature. It was a reflection of his open style of management, a style that had proved to be highly successful at Intel. In 1995 Grove underwent treatment for prostate cancer. By 1997, however, Grove’s radiation treatments had been successful, and some analysts predicted that Intel was on its way to becoming the world’s most profitable company.”

Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/247192/Andrew–S–Grove (accessed May 22, 2009)

 

1980 CE: MORTIMER ZUCKERMAN PURCHASES THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY

Canadian–born (June, 1937), Wharton MBA (1961) and Harvard Law graduate (1962).

A seven–year veteran of Boston–based Cabot, Cabot and Forbes real estate firm, Zuckerman founded Boston Properties in 1970 (sold for $2.5 billion in 2007). Zuckerman has parlayed some of his real estate winnings (he is in the upper half of the Forbes 400 in 2008) into literary trophy assets.

In 1984, he purchased U.S. News & World Report, where he has served as Editor–in–Chief.

He has been the publisher/owner of The NY Daily News since he purchased it 1993.

Zuckerman sold the aforementioned Atlantic Monthly in 1999.

On the community service front, he served as Chairman of the Council of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations from 2000–2003.

 

1980 CE: TED TURNER LAUNCHES CNN

Atlanta, GA: Fortuitously offering live, non–stop coverage of the unfolding Iranian hostage taking saga

–to an American public apparently ravenous for real time, nonstop news coverage of the crisis.

Timing, timing, timing.

 

1980 CE Eco: UMBERTO ECO

–publishes The Name of the Rose (Italy).

–a historical mystery set in a fourteenth century monastery.

Eco was an Italian medievalist, semiotician, philosopher, university president and novelist who polished his unique craft in the latter half of the 20th century (and into the 21st).

Best known for his novel and classic—“The Name of the Rose” (1980 in Italian, 1983 in English)… followed–up by Foucault’s Pendulum (1988 in Italian, 1989 in English)... interestingly, Eco awarded over thirty doctorates from universities worldwide, including University of Tel Aviv (1994) and Hebrew University (2002).

 

1980 CE: OTTO FRANK, FATHER OF ANN FRANK, DIES

Aug 19: Switzerland: at age 91.

The valiant father was the only nuclear family member who survived the Death Camps.

 

1981 CE: BRONFMAN

New York: Edgar Bronfman, Sr. elected president of the World Jewish Congress.

–spearheads campaigns to free Soviet Jewry, to expose the Nazi past of Austrian president Kurt Waldheim, and the campaign to compensate victims of the Holocaust and their heirs (notably in the case of the Swiss banks).

A big financial banker of HILLEL, including the Shalhevet Division (Orthodox), established The Bronfman Youth Fellowships in Israel, a leadership program for Jewish youth.

Founder of the website MyJewishLearning.com, a dynamic journalistic laboratory for elite Jewish students, blogs–included.

Awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by U.S. President Bill Clinton in 1999.

[b. June 20, 1929...Edgar M. Bronfman, Sr., is the son of Sam Bronfman (Canadian), founder of Seagrams. He (Edgar) is the father of the noted corporate financier Edgar M. Bronfman, Jr.]

 

1981 CE: OSIRAQ

June 7: Osiraq IRAQ nuclear reactor destroyed by Israeli air strike.

 

1981 CE: MUBARAK ASCENDS TO POWER IN EGYPT

Oct 14: Mohamed Hosni Mubarak ascends to President of the Republic

–following the assassination of Anwar El–Sadat by right–wing extremists.

Fourteen years into his term, Mubarak delivered a historic eulogy at the (Har Herzl) Jerusalem funeral (November 6, 1995) of slain Israeli Premier Yitzchak Rabin.

Mubarak’s reign would continue until February 11, 2011, after 18 consecutive days of pro-democracy demonstrations.

 

1982 CE: ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT OF ISRAEL’S AMBASSADOR TO BRITAIN, SHLOMO ARGOV

Apr 25: Outside a London hotel

Attack blamed on Abu Nidal’s Palestinian Fatah group.

Sparks Israeli invasion of Lebanon: The First Lebanon War.

 

1982 CE: SHARON INVADES LEBANON

June: Invasion

Israel (with Defense Minister Sharon leading the charge) invades Southern Lebanon to destroy and/or drive–out the PLO... then, Sharon heads onto Beirut without clear authorization from the Israeli Cabinet or Premier.

 

1982 CE “E.T. Phone Home!” SPIELBERG

Steven Spielberg, Hollywood, CA: directs production of movie E.T. The Extra–Terrestrial.

…Spielberg, director of many exceptional and extraordinary works…perhaps the premier director in the world.

In the Jewish realm, through 2006, works include—Schindler’s List (1993), Munich (2005)…

Founder, SHOAH Foundation...mammoth international project...filmed testimony of individual Holocaust survivors – crucial historical video archives.

 

1983 CE: SPIEGELMAN

New York: Molecular Biologist Sol Spiegelman dies at 68.

Author of over 350 papers, with general focus on DNA and RNA. CCNY (1939), Columbia (1940), post–graduate work at Washington University (1942–44). Fellow at University of Minnesota, Faculty of University of Illinois.

Credited with an experiment with self–replicating RNA structures called Spiegelman’s Monster. Spiegelman was the recipient of the Lasker Award (1974) and the Feltrinelli International Prize in Biology (1981).

 

1983 CE: RITA LEVI–MONTALCINI

–awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine.

Received the prize—along with colleague Stanley Cohen—for their discovery of NGF (Nerve Growth Factor).

Born in 1909, as of 2008 she was the oldest living Nobel laureate. Born in Turin Italy to a Sephardic Jewish family, her father Adamo Levi was an electrician and gifted mathematician, and her mother Adele, a talented painter. Rita is an honorific Senator for Life in the Italian Senate.

 

1983 CE: STANLEY N. COHEN

–receives National Medal of Science…

…for groundbreaking 1972 work at the NIH (National Institute of Health)—with Herbert Boyer, in genetic engineering. Their focus was in developing methods to combine and transplant genes. Born in Perth Amboy, NJ, Cohen most recently playing with genes at Stanford.

 

1983 CE: NEIL SIMON THEATRE NAMED AFTER PLAYWRIGHT NEIL SIMON

Britannica –
“[Jewish] American playwright, screenwriter, television writer, and librettist who was one of the most popular playwrights in the history of the American theatre.

Simon was raised in the Bronx and studied at New York University before working as a comedy writer for various television shows in the late 1940s and throughout the ’50s. His autobiographical play Come Blow Your Horn became a smash success on Broadway and ran for two years after opening in 1961. The plays that followed proved extremely popular with audiences and usually had very long runs on Broadway. They include Barefoot in the Park (1963; film 1967), The Odd Couple (1965; film 1968), The Star–Spangled Girl (1966; film 1971), Plaza Suite (1968; film 1971), Last of the Red Hot Lovers (1969; film 1972), The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1971; film 1975), The Sunshine Boys (1972; film 1975), California Suite (1976; film 1978), Chapter Two (1977; film 1979), I Ought to Be in Pictures (1980; film 1982), and a trilogy of autobiographical plays consisting of Brighton Beach Memoirs (1983; film 1986), Biloxi Blues (1985; film 1988), and Broadway Bound (1986; television movie 1992). Subsequent plays include Rumors (1988), Lost in Yonkers (1991; film 1993), and The Dinner Party (2000). Simon wrote the screenplays for motion–picture adaptations of his plays as well as screenplays for a number of original motion pictures. He also wrote the books for musicals, including Little Me (1962), Sweet Charity (1966), Promises, Promises (1968), They’re Playing Our Song (1979), and The Goodbye Girl (1993).

The everyday lives and domestic problems of ordinary middle–class people are the focus of Simon’s plays, which examine his characters’ marital and other dilemmas and, for comic effect, play up the incongruity of their situations. Simon wrote two volumes of memoirs, Rewrites (1996) and The Play Goes On (1999).”

Encyclopaedia Britannica Online. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/545195/Neil–Simon (accessed May 23, 2009)

 

1983 CE: SENATOR HENRY (SCOOP) JACKSON DIES

Henry “Scoop” Jackson (b. 1912 – d. 1983) was a U.S. Congressman and Senator for the state of Washington from 1941 until his death…

As a member of the US House of Representatives, Jackson visited Buchenwald concentration camp a few days after its liberation in 1945…In 1974, Jackson sponsored the Jackson–Vanik amendment in the Senate (with Charles Vanik sponsoring it in the House) which denied normal trade relations to certain countries with non–market economies that restricted the freedom of emigration. The amendment was intended to help refugees, particularly minorities, specifically Jews, to emigrate from the Soviet Bloc. Jackson and his assistant, Richard Perle, also lobbied personally for some people who were affected by this law—among them Anatoly (Natan) Sharansky….Jackson received substantial financial support from Jewish–Americans who admired his pro–Israel views, but Jackson’s support of the Vietnam War resulted in hostility from the left wing of the Democratic Party…Jackson wax a key supporter of Israel...As a social liberal but political hawk, Jackson’s political philosophies cut across party lines. His positions have been cited as an influence on the Neo–Conservative Movement (the NeoCons) which emerged in full force later, in the 1990s and early 2000s....

Jackson died at age 71 in Everett, Washington. From the eulogy by Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of NY –
“Henry Jackson is proof of the old belief in the Judaic tradition that at any moment in history goodness in the world is preserved by the deeds of 36 just men who do not know that this is the role the Lord has given them. Henry Jackson was one of those men.”

 

1983 CE: LANIER

Jaron Lanier co–founds VPL Research.

NYC: The firm is a pioneer in—and popularized the term—“virtual reality.”

Jaron, visual artist and author, has taught Interdisciplinary Studies at UC Berkeley.

 

1984 CE: THE CONTEMPORARY JEWISH MUSEUM FOUNDED

San Francisco: The Contemporary Jewish Museum was founded in 1984 in San Francisco, California, with the goal of offering contemporary perspectives on Jewish culture, history, art, and ideas. In June 2008, the Museum moved to the Yerba Buena Gardens district into a new building designed by architect, Daniel Libeskind. Similar to Libeskind’s Danish Jewish Museum in Copenhagen, the Contemporary Jewish Museum incorporates Hebrew text into its design.

 

1984–5 CE: THE ETHIOPIANS

Operation Moses, Operation Joshua: additional operations to rescue Ethiopian Jewry...

–with the “final” planeload, (of 70 Ethiopians) only in April 2008 [coincident with the publication of this work].

When interviewed by the Israeli press, as to what stunned them the most upon arrival in late 20th Century Israel, the Ethiopians spoke not of their awe about Phantom jets
breaking the sound barrier over Israeli beaches or of other symbols of an advanced Western society, but, rather, of their “shock” that the Beit HaMikdash—the Jewish Temple—was not operational and offering sacrifices of doves.

[Note that “The Temple” has not been “operational” since 68 CE, 1940 years ago, when it came under siege by the Romans.]

 

1985 CE: E. P. SANDERS’ JESUS AND JUDAISM

 

1985 CE: VATICAN DOCUMENT

Notes on the Correct Way to Present Jews and Judaism in Preaching and Catechesis in the Roman Catholic Church

Assorted, and not insignificant, updated pro-Jewish texturing of the normative Catholic narrative.

 

1985 CE: IRWIN JACOBS FOUNDS QUALCOMM

San Diego, California

Qualcomm is involved in communication–related, and with mobile phone–related in particular. Its signature technology is CDMA, which efficiently uses bandwidth technology.

Jacobs was Assistant and Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering at MIT from 1959–1966, and Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at University of California, San Diego from 1966–1972. He has co–authored a highly regarded college textbook, entitled Principles of Communication Engineering in 1965.

Jacobs, Jewish, is a leading American billionaire (top 25) and philanthropist (over $500,000,000 lifetime).

His resume includes Cornell University (B.S. 1956), MIT (S.M. 1957), and MIT (Sc.D 1959). He gave the commencement address at MIT in 2005.

Hal Jacobs, the second of his four sons, played on the 1985 USA Maccabi volleyball team.

 

1985 CE: GATES 1.01

Microsoft Windows {version 1.0} by Bill Gates and crew.
{version 9.0 in 2005…}

 

1985 CE: ISRAELI WRITER DAVID HARTMAN WRITES A LIVING COVENANT

NY: The Free Press

 

1986 CE: NEW BRUNSWICK, CANADA: JEWISH HISTORICAL MUSEUM OPENS

Saint John Jewish Historical Museum official site –

“The museum [has] in many respects become the public face of the Jewish community in Saint John. Its primary role is to collect, preserve and display the history of the Jewish community of Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada.”

 

1986 CE: BILL GATES, 31, TAKES MICROSOFT PUBLIC

–eleven years after he took a leave of absence from Harvard.

 

1986 CE Visitation! TOAFF

Apr 13: Pope John Paul II pays “state visit” to the Great Synagogue of Rome…

…with the Pope and his selected viceroys to the left of the Aron Kodesh (Holy Ark), and Rabbi Elio Toaff and his assistants to the right—and wearing taleism (prayer shawls) over their white High Holy Day robes—the Pope refers to the Jews as “our Elder Brothers,” which will resonate across the world Jewish community to this day….

(Down the road, Pope Benedict will visit a synagogue in his native Germany in 2007, and then the Park East Synagogue—on Park Avenue on NY’s East Side—Erev Pesach—the day leading–into Passover – April 18, 2008.)

The Roman Colosseum, constructed at least in part by Churban II (Temple II destruction) Judean prisoners, and the related Arch of Titus contiguous to the Colosseum, are within a mile of the Jewish ghetto. Having been sequestered by various popes to this tiny ghetto contiguous to the Synagogue–block for the 300 year period leading up until 1870, the 2200 year–old Jewish community of Rome, one way or another, has pretty much seen it all…

 

1986 CE: SYRIA AND BLOOD LIBELS

The Matzah Of Zion was written by the Syrian Defense Minister, Mustafa Tlass in 1986. The book concentrates on two issues: renewed ritual murder accusations against the Jews in the Damascus affair of 1840, and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The book was cited at a United Nations conference in 1991 by a Syrian delegate.

On October 21, 2002, the London based Arabic paper Al-Hayat reported that the book, The Matzah of Zion, was undergoing its eighth reprint and was being translated into English, French, and Italian.

In 2003 a private Syrian film company created a 29-part television series Ash-Shatat (“The Diaspora”) This series originally aired in Lebanon late 2003, and was broadcast by Al-Manar, a satellite television network owned by Hezbollah. This TV series, based on the antisemitic forgery The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, shows the Jewish people as engaging in a conspiracy to rule the world, and presents Jews as people who murder Christian children, drain their blood, and use this blood to bake matzah.

 

1986 CE Free–at–last! SHARANSKY FREED

–after nine years in Soviet prison.

Natan Sharansky, Soviet Jewish dissident...born Anatoly Shcharansky, Jan 20, 1948 in Donetsk, Ukraine.

In the Soviet prison system 1977 through 1986...freed by the Soviets after massive ongoing for years worldwide Jewish protests (many spearheaded by his wife Avital) and a US Government swap for two Soviet spies... He later headed Israeli political party Israel BaAliyah, and held several Ministerial portfolios (2001–2005) in various Israeli governments.

Awarded both the (US) Congressional Gold Medal and the (US) Presidential Medal of Freedom...authored The Case for Democracy.

Headed Beth Hatefutsot, the innovative Jewish Diasporah Museum (opened 1978) located in Ramat Aviv, Israel (on the campus of Tel Aviv University) through the Jun 2008 cut–off point of this work.

[Would later become Chairman of the Executive of the Jewish Agency for Israel.]

 

1986 CE Night > Day! WIESEL

Oct 14: NY and Boston: Elie Wiesel, now 58, wins Nobel Peace Prize…

41 years after emerging from Buchenwald… NIGHT turns into DAWN/DAY… the Hasidic Masters would say that his “Soul is on Fire”…

Wiesel: Messengers of God: “Take sides – Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.”… Memoir: “All Rivers Run to the Sea”… (also “The Judges”; “Somewhere a Master”; “The Time of the Uprooted” et al. Wiesel is among 158 Jewish winners of the Nobel Prize (out of 750 total globally) from its inception in 1901 through 2006].

 

1986 CE: ISRAELI AIRMAN RON ARAD SHOT DOWN

Oct 16: Arad, a navigator on an Israeli plane shot down over Lebanon.

Israel would actively press for information on him for 22+ years, through closing of this volume (June ‘08). Arad is believed to have died in captivity, however.

 

1987 CE: FIRST INTIFADA

(Low level, but sustained Arab civil unrest, primarily in the West Bank).

 

1987 CE: POLLARD CONVICTED

March 4: American (Jewish) naval intelligence analyst Jonathan Pollard convicted

–on charges of passing US intelligence data on (America’s adversary) Iraq to (America’s ally) Israel.

Note that Israeli involvement of an American Jew in this type of matter, however rationalized, is also a betrayal of an unwritten agreement between American Jewry and the Israel government.

 

1987 CE: WALDHEIM BARRED BY THE U.S.

Apr 27: US Justice Dept. bars Austrian President and former UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim from entering the United States

–on the grounds that he aided in the deportation and execution of thousands of Jews and others as a German Army officer in WWII.

 

1987 CE: RONALD S. LAUDER FOUNDATION ESTABLISHED

–dedicated to rebuilding Jewish communities and (refurbishing Jewish) historical sites in Central and Eastern Europe.

Ronald S. Lauder (born February 26, 1944 in New York City) is an American businessman, civic leader, philanthropist, and art collector.

Lauder is the son of Estée Lauder and Joseph Lauder, founders of Estée Lauder Companies. He attended the Bronx High School of Science and holds a Bachelors degree in International Business from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Lauder studied at the University of Paris, and received a Certificate in International Business from the University of Brussels. He is married to Jo Carole Lauder.

In 1984 he became a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for European and NATO policy at The Pentagon. In 1986 Ronald Reagan named Lauder as the US ambassador to Austria, a position he held until 1987.

In 1987, Lauder established the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation, a philanthropic organization that is dedicated to rebuild Jewish communities in Central and Eastern Europe. The foundation also supports student exchange programs between New York and various capitals in Central and Eastern Europe.

Lauder was elected President of the World Jewish Congress on June 10, 2007.
– after Wikipedia

 

1987 CE: COELHO

Paulo Coelho, Brazilian lyricist and novelist... first book translated to English: The Pilgrimage at age 38.

Then, The Alchemist, The Valkyries, The Fifth Mountain, The Warrior of the Light and others.

 

1988 CE: ENYA–ATION!

“New Age” singer ENYA enters onto the world stage with her song “Orinoco Flow” a.k.a. “Sail Away”

–on her album Watermark, released in 1988.

Her albums “Shepherd Moons,” “The Celts,” “Paint the Sky with Stars,” “The Memory of Trees,” “Enya,” “A Day Without Rain,” “Amarantine,” and “Sounds of the Season,” among other releases, would follow.

“And Winter Came...” was to follow, November 2008.

“Enyanomics”—a term pegged to her career has entered the music industry lexicon. It means the ability to sell millions of albums without giving any live performances.

An export of Ireland, Ethne Patricia Ni Bhraonian a.k.a. Enya Brenan a.k.a. Enya (b. 1961) is both the daughter and granddaughter of musical band families. Her She began her musical career in 1950, when she briefly joined her family band, Clannad.

Enya loves cats and castles, both of which she owns.

 

1988 CE: CHRISTIAN COALITION OF AMERICA

DC: A U.S. Christian advocacy group, which includes Christian Fundamentalists, Evangelicals, Neo–Evangelicals and Charismatics.

Founded by Pat Robertson, its membership is in the $2,000,000 – 3,000,000 range.

 

1988 CE: EGYPTIAN NOVELIST NAGUIB MAHFOUZ

–wins the Nobel Prize for Literature

His novels, which had been banned throughout much of the Arab world primarily due to his support of Sadat’s peace treaty with Israel, were then subsequently un–banned.

These bouts with pan–Arab censorship are somewhat ironic for a former Egyptian Director of Censorship.

 

1988 CE: STEPHEN HAWKING PUBLISHES A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME

Hawking calls it his Theory of Everything.

Even though it is missing a few key components, we like him anyway.

In the 2000s, Hawking’s theory relating to information storage or loss vis à vis Black Holes was successfully upended by physicist Leonard Susskind (of Yeshiva university, University of Tel Aviv and Stanford).

 

1988 CE: BISHOPS COMMITTEE MOVES AGAINST INCENDIARY PASSION PLAYS

The Bishops Committee for the Ecumenical and Inter religious affairs of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops publishes (the most welcome) Criterion for the Evaluation and Dramatization of the Passion

–in order to advance towards the spirit of Nostre Aetate.

 

1988 CE: HEBREW RETURNS TO THE VOLVA

Nov 3: The Soviet Union agrees to allow the teaching of Hebrew.

 

1988 CE: GOD AND EVIL PUBLISHED

–by David Birnbaum, NY

The work proposes an original metaphysics centered around the theme that Holy Potential is at the center of the Divine, and that Potential drives the cosmos. See www.SummaM.org

 

1989 CE: RUSHDIE GOES INTO HIDING

Feb 14: After the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (then Supreme Ruler of Iran) issues a fatwa (death warrant and ban) against Rushdie and his book, Satanic Verses; Rushdie becomes a “hunted man.” Khomeini simultaneously super–propelled Rushdie onto the global stage.

(Indian) Salman Rushdie was then living in England; three weeks later, March 7, 1989, the British would subsequently break relations (for 9+ years) with Iran over the fatwa.

 

1989 CE: SIDNEY ALTMAN

Britannica –
“Canadian–American [Jewish] molecular biologist who, with Thomas R. Cech, received the 1989 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for their discoveries concerning RNA, or ribonucleic acid.

Altman attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (B.S., 1960, in physics) and the University of Colorado (Ph.D., 1967, in biophysics). He was a molecular biology fellow at Harvard University (1967–69) and at the University of Cambridge (1969–70) before joining the biology faculty at Yale University in 1971. He became a full professor at Yale in 1980, was the department chairman from 1983 to 1985, and served as dean of the undergraduate Yale College from 1985 to 1989. He took U.S. citizenship in 1984 but concurrently retained his Canadian citizenship.

Working independently, Altman and Cech discovered a new role for RNA. The old belief was that enzymatic activity—the triggering and acceleration of vital chemical reactions within living cells—was the exclusive domain of protein molecules. Altman’s and Cech’s revolutionary discovery was that RNA, traditionally thought to be simply a passive carrier of genetic codes between different parts of the living cell, could also take on active enzymatic functions. This new knowledge opened up new fields of scientific research and biotechnology and caused scientists to rethink old theories of how cells function.”

Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/17769/Sidney–Altman (accessed June 1, 2009)

 

1989 CE: AUNG SAN SUU KYI

–is placed under house arrest by the military junta controlling Myanmar/Burma.

While under house arrest, she will win the Nobel Peace Prize (in 1991).

 

1989 CE: BERLIN WALL

Nov 9: Berlin Wall falls...after 28 years and 125+ killings by East German guards.

 

1989 CE: AARON SORKIN, AMERICAN PLAYWRIGHT, GETS ROLLING

Aaron Benjamin Sorkin (born June 9, 1961) is an American screenwriter, producer and playwright…

His stage play A Few Good Men [1989] caught the attention of Hollywood producer David Brown, who bought the film rights before the play even premiered. Sorkin’s most recent feature film screenplay is Charlie Wilson’s War, about the Afghan Mujahideen.

Sorkin was born in the borough of Manhattan in New York City to Jewish parents, and raised in the NY suburb of Scarsdale.

 

1989 CE: SOVIET JEWISH EMIGRATION

–spikes upward

…in response to, among other factors, US pressure...over 70,000 Soviet Jews allowed to exit. The collapse of the Soviet Union two years later in 1991 then opened–wide the gates for the exodus.

By 2008, well over a million Soviet Jews exit Russia, perhaps over two million. (Hard to get–a–handle on the exact reliable figures, even in this matter on which there was so much Jewish focus.)

 

1990 CE: MANDELA RELEASED

Nelson Mandela released from prison in South Africa, Feb 11.

Four years three months later, Mandela was inaugurated as president of South Africa—the final counter–point to apartheid.

 

1990 CE: (PROBABLE) MOSSAD OPERATION: BULL

Alleged Mossad Operation: Canadian scientist

Gerald Bull, developer of the Iraqi supergun, (extra long range artillery) assassinated in Brussels, Belgium.

No entity has taken responsibility.

 

1990 CE: “ANCHOR’S ANCHOR”

“Wolf Blitzer is currently the host of the newscast The Situation Room [formerly Wolf Blitzer Reports] and the Sunday talk show Late Edition.

Blitzer, who has the same first name as his maternal grandfather, grew up in Buffalo, New York, the son of Jewish refugees from Poland.

Blitzer is the author of two books: Between Washington and Jerusalem: A Reporter’s Notebook (Oxford University Press, 1985) and Territory of Lies (Harper and Row, 1989).

During the 1970s, Blitzer wrote for Hebrew–language newspapers using aliases. Blitzer wrote for Al Ha–Mishmar, a newspaper affiliated with the left–wing Mapam political party under the name Ze’ev Blitzer. He also wrote for Yedioth Ahronoth, Israel’s most widely–read paper, under the name Ze’ev Barak. “Ze’ev” and “Barak” are both Hebrew names; the former means “wolf,” while the latter means “lightning,” the German word for which is “Blitz.”

 

1990 CE: IRAQ INVADES KUWAIT...

Aug 1990: Then President George H. Bush (the senior Bush) leads international military and political coalition (of 34 nations)

Operation Desert Shield (a.k.a Gulf War I a.k.a. the First Gulf War a.k.a. Desert Storm) ultimately liberates (oil–rich) Kuwait (by Feb 1991)...

Israel hit by 39 Scud missiles from Iraq... Under threat of chemical and/or germ warfare from Iraq, Israelis deploy and utilize their shelter system—as well as two U.S. Patriot missile battalions (as well as a Netherlands Patriot Squadron).

U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Colin Powell, was the military chief in overall command of the multi–national alliance, which successfully counter–attacked and liberated Kuwait.

Powell later, in 2000, becomes the first Secretary of State of the George W. Bush (the junior Bush) administration, (after the 8–year–tenure of the Clinton administration) a decade later.

 

1991 CE: “MEGA” PHILANTHROPIC GROUP ORGANIZED

Under the leadership of Charles Bronfman and Leslie Wexner – to support Jewish causes.
– Charles Bronfman
– Leslie Wexner
– Leonard Abramson
– Edgar Bronfman
– Max Fisher
– Harvey M. Meyerhoff
– Steven Spielberg
– Michael Steinhardt
– Laurence Tisch

 

1991 CE: AUSTRIAN “SERVICE LEGISTATION” ENACTED

The Austrian Holocaust Memorial Service (AHMS) is an alternative to Austria’s compulsory national military service/alternative service. Its participants serve at major Holocaust memorial institutions, in particular.

In 1991 legislation was enacted by the Austrian Government and Andreas Maislinger began organizing what became known as the Austrian Holocaust Memorial Service, and independent, though largely government–funded foundation.

The AHMS is in response to Austria’s role in the Holocaust. The Austrians specialized in demeaning their Jews, prior to transport.

 

1991 CE: OPERATION SOLOMON

–rescues remainder of Ethiopian Jewry (Beta Israel) in 36–hour airlift.

Non–stop flights by 34 Israeli aircraft transport 14,500 Ethiopian Jews to Israel... Operation Solomon transported twice as many Ethiopian Jews to Israel as Operation Moses (1984) and Operation Joshua (1985) combined...

The operation also included a flight which set a world record for the highest number of passengers on a single flight, when on May 24, 1991, an El Al 747 carried 1,122 Ethiopians... Originally the plan was for 760 passengers, but the Ethiopians were so slightly built, that 61% more were finally squeezed–in… Note that the 1,122 count does not include the two babies who were born on the flight.

 

1991 CE: HARVARD PROFESSOR ALAN DERSHOWITZ RELEASES CHUTZPAH

The book, copyrighted in 1991, deals with, among other themes, Dershowitz’s question as to whether American Jews have truly attained first–class citizenship—both, in fact, and in their own minds.

 

1991 CE: FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT

Recognized by the AIA (American Institute of Architects) as “the greatest American architect of all–time”...(through 1991, in any event...)

Developed—“organic architecture” for instance, Fallingwater (the Edgar J. Kaufman Residence) in southwestern Pennsylvania as well as “Prairie School architecture”
for instance, the Robie House (in Oak Park, Illinois)...as well as “the Usonian Home” paradigm, for instance, the Rosenbaum House in Florence, Alabama.

(b. 1867 in Oak Park, IL; d. 1959)

Aside from the above, Wright was the architect of the Imperial Hotel (Tokyo, Japan), the Guggenheim Museum (New York, NY), the Graycliff Estate (Buffalo, NY), Johnson Wax Headquarters (Racine, WI), the Louis Penfield House (Willoughby Hills, OH), the Beth Sholom Synagogue (Elkins Park, PA), among 500 completed projects.

 

1991 CE Brodskyation! JOSEPH BRODSKY BECOMES POET LAUREATE

Original Russian name Losip Aleksandrovich Brodsky.
Born May 24, 1940; died Jan 28, 1996.

Britannica –
“Russian–born American poet who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1987 for his important lyric and elegiac poems.

Brodsky left school at age 15 and thereafter began to write poetry while working at a wide variety of jobs. He began to earn a reputation in the Leningrad literary scene, but his independent spirit and his irregular work record led to his being charged with “social parasitism” by the Soviet authorities, who sentenced him in 1964 to five years of hard labor. The sentence was commuted in 1965 after prominent Soviet literary figures protested it. Exiled from the Soviet Union in 1972, Brodsky lived thereafter in the United States, becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1977. He was a poet–in–residence intermittently at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, from 1972 to 1980 and was a visiting professor at other schools. He served as poet laureate of the United States in 1991–92.”

Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/80696/Joseph–Brodsky (accessed June 1, 2009)

“I am Jewish—a Russian poet and an English essayist.”
– Brodsky

 

1991 CE: CUBA LIFTS BAN ON RELIGIOUS PRACTICE

–by members of the “Communist party,” thereby opening portals for the broader population, including Jews, to practice religion.

 

1991 CE: DISSOLUTION OF EMPIRE

Christmas: Mikhail Gorbachev, president of the Soviet Union dissolves the 15–republic empire (hitherto spanning 11 time zones) in his nationally–televised Christmas speech.

[Author – but note that Greater Russia has an historical tendency towards re–coalescing].

 

1992 CE: EXODUS – SYRIA

Assad allows the Jews of Syria to emigrate.

New York Times –
“Syria informed the United States over the weekend that is was lifting a travel ban on its 4,500 Jewish citizens, the State Department announced today.

Most of them are expected to leave. If they do, there will be no more significant Jewish populations left in the Arab world, outside of Morocco. The once flourishing Jewish populations of Baghdad, Cairo, Alexandria, Tunis and Algiers have either been evicted or fled since 1948, as a spillover from the Arab–Israel conflict.

The move by Syria constitutes a fundamental shift in policy toward its Jewish citizens, and appears to be part of an effort by President Hafez–al–Assad to make his country more acceptable to the United States now that Damascus has lost its longtime Soviet patron. Peace Talks Resume.

The Syrian decision came as Israel and its Arab neighbors – Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and the Palestinians – resumed peace negotiations, their fifth round since the Madrid peace conference in October. Israel used the opportunity to broach a very general proposal today for municipal elections for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip…

Jews in Syria suffer everything from arbitrary arrests and discrimination to limits on what jobs and business they can enter…

Lifting travel restrictions for the Syrian Jews, therefore, may be seen as part of Mr. Assad’s general reaching out to the West, which began last October with his participation in direct American–sponsored peace talks with Israel – something he had also opposed his whole political career…”

New York Times Online, http://www.nytimes.com/1992/04/28/world/syria–giving–jews–freedom–to–leave.html (accessed April 28, 1992).

 

1993 CE: OSLO

Israel and the PLO sign Oslo Accords (Norway).

[Author – the Oslo Accords were “top–heavy” in “wishful thinking”]

 

1993 CE: VATICAN–ISRAEL

December 30: Israel and the Vatican (Pope John Paul II) agree to “recognize” each other.

 

1994 CE: MENTALLY IMBALANCED BARUCH GOLDSTEIN

Hebron, West Bank, Israel: Goldstein defiles sacred Hebron and Arab life inside the Tomb of the Patriarchs.

 

1994 CE: ELIZABETH NEUFELD

–awarded the National Medal of Science.

The daughter of Russian Jews, Elizabeth’s family fled Paris in 1940 for New York, to evade the Nazi advance. Neufeld’s resume includes Hunter College High School and Queens College, both in NY. She is currently (2008) in UCLA.

Elizabeth F. Neufeld is an American geneticist whose research has focused on the genetic basis of metabolic disease in humans.

 

1994 CE: HAMAS SIGNATURE I

April 6: Afula, Israel: In its inaugural car bombing, Hamas terrorists detonate a car rigged with explosives next to a civilian bus; the explosion kills 8 and wounds 45.

 

1994 CE: RWANDA

April 6, 1994 Rwanda (Hutu tribe) President Habyarimana assassinated. (His plane was shot down by “Hutu Power” extremists.)

April 7, 1994 “Hutu Power” extremists launch a machete & spear genocide campaign against the Tutsis as a group, and against moderate Hutus.

The Tutsi, who had the “aristocratic” pedigree, represented 15% (1.1 million) of the total population of 7.3 million. Between 640,000 and 940,000 Tutsi were slaughtered (meaning 72% of the Tutsi population.) in the 100 day span of the genocide. As well, between 128,000 and 188,000 moderate Hutu were slaughtered (by Hutu extremists). Of the female Tutsi survivors of the slaughter and mass rape, many thousands had been infected with HIV.

July 1994: In an extraordinary role–reversal, the RPF (Tutsi rebel group) gains the upper hand in the civil war, and ends the “Hutu Power” genocide.

 

1994 CE: HAMAS SIGNATURE II

Apr 13: Hadera, Central Israel: Palestinian suicide bomber blows himself up on an Israeli civilian bus, killing 6 and wounding 25 Israelis.

 

1994 CE: RABIN AND ARAFAT SIGN LIMITED ACCORD

–granting Palestinian self–rule in Gaza and in the (historic West Bank city of) Jericho.

–signed by Israeli Prime Minister Yitchak Rabin and PLO leader Yasser Arafat.

 

1994 CE: LUTHERAN CHURCH DECLARATION

Apr 18: Declaration of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America to the Jewish Community.

–Dramatically renounces the anti–Semitism of its founder (Martin Luther).

 

1994 CE: “THE REBBE”

June 2: 770 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, NY: The Lubavitcher (Chabad) Rebbe, Menachem Mendel
Schneerson, dies.

“The Rebbe” was the seventh Rebbe of the Chabad–Lubavitch Movement... compilation of many of his addresses: Likkutei Sichot.... compilation of many of his letters: Igrot Kodesh

Revered as a messianic figure by many of his followers—which the rebbe countenanced—the movement’s leadership has, of consequence, been somewhat gridlocked since his death...however, the organization as a whole continues to flourish.

 

1994 CE: BUENOS AIRES BOMBING

July: Argentina: Bombing orchestrated by Iran via Hezbollah (Syria).

This was the second bombing Iran orchestrated in two years in Buenos Aires–

–against Israeli Embassy in 1992 (29 killed)
–against the Jewish Community Center in 1994 (85 killed)

Interpol (the highly–regarded international police cooperative based in Lyon, France) in Nov 2007 adds five senior Iranian government/military officials to its Most Wanted List – as a consequence of the Community Center bombing (1994..this entry) 13 years earlier...issues Interpol “Red Cards” for them.

[21 months later, in August 2009, Ahmadinejad of Iran will appoint one of the Most Wanted (killers), Ahmad Vahidi, to his cabinet as Defence Minister].

…Iran nuclear power development (or more precisely, Israel’s frustrating of same) involving Argentina, Iran and Israel apparently underlay both of the Iranian–sponsored bombings…

Argentina under Carlos Menem and under Israeli pressure terminated Argentinean nuclear assistance to Iran prior to the first bombing (in 1992)…

Israel, according to Stratfor (the American–based online strategic analysts) assassinated a top Iranian nuclear scientist back in Tehran prior to the second bombing (in 1994)…

 

1994 CE: MOROCCO ADVANCE

Morocco and Israel establish low–level diplomatic relations.

 

1994 CE: NASH WINS NOBEL PRIZE IN ECONOMIC SCIENCES

Princeton, NJ: Born 1928, John Forbes Nash, Jr., an American mathematician and economist who works in game theory, among other esoteric specialties, shares the Nobel Prize with two other game theorists (Selten and Harsanyi).

The subject of both the book and the movie A Beautiful Mind. Nash had suffered, battled, and ultimately prevailed–over schizophrenia, particularly in the 1959–1970 period, sometimes in an institutional setting.

In 1978, he won the coveted John von Neumann Theory Prize. His wife Alicia would say that perhaps all he ever needed was ‘to live a quiet life.’

 

1994 CE: THE JEW IN THE LOTUS

Rodger Kamenetz: Writer, poet, psychologist, spiritualist, English professor (LSU).

Washington, DC: Passover Seder, Spring ‘96: Kamenetz (of LSU) organized – in tandem with the International Action Network—a dedication of that year’s Pesach Seder across the USA as a tribute to the imprisoned (by the Chinese) Tibetan Panchen Lama—whose eighth birthday fell on that Passover.

The PBS documentary and the Kamenetz book, both by the same name (The Jew in the Lotus) were to follow. [The Panchen Lama, Gedhun, had been arrested by the Chinese government in 1995 (at age 5), and, as of 2008, has not been seen in public.]

On other spiritually–related themes, Kamenetz’s Stalking Elijah: Adventures with Today’s Jewish Mystical Masters would follow in 1997, along with The History of Last Night’s Dream (spiritual possibilities of dreaming) ten years later.

 

1994 CE: KING HUSSEIN

Oct 26: Israel (Rabin) and Jordan (Hussein) sign peace treaty.

Hussein bin Talal (1935–1999), King of Jordan (1952–1958) was from the Hashemite line.

Israel had at one point (during the “Black September 1970” gambit) come to the strategic aid of King Hussein, when Syrian forces had invaded from the north in support of an ultimately ill–fated fedayeen/PLO uprising.

 

1994 CE: “PEACEFUL GUYS”

Dec 10: Rabin, Peres and Arafat share the Nobel Peace Prize.

 

1995 CE: HANS KÜNG

Küng, Catholic priest, Swiss theologian, and Catholic renegade, of sorts

–becomes head of the Foundation for a Global Ethic.

The Vatican has rescinded his right to tech Catholic theology, but he remains a Catholic priest in good standing.

“Nazi anti–Judaism was the work of godless, anti–Christian criminals, but it would not have been possible without the almost two thousand years’ pre–history of ‘Christian anti–Judaism’” [Hans Küng, On Being Christian, Doubleday, Garden City (NY, 1976) p. 169].

 

1995 CE: AUSTRALIAN IMPORT DOES GOOD

James D. Wolfensohn, naturalized American citizen, commences 10–year term as president of the World Bank. Previously head of his own investment firm, James D. Wolfensohn, Inc.

A former senior partner at Solomon Brothers, Wolfensohn is a graduate of Harvard Business School.

Born in Sydney, Australia (December, 1933) to Jewish parents who had immigrated from England during the Great Depression. Father of three grown children, Sara, Naomi and Adam, and two grandsons Benjamin and Mica.

A friend of cellist Jacqueline du Pré, Wolfensohn began cello studies with her when he was 41. He is now accomplished in the field. Wolfensohn is chairman of Carnegie Hall in Manhattan and of the JFK Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC.

The balance of his resume is lengthy.

 

1995 CE: SREBRENICA MASSACRE

July: Kosovo War, Balkans: UN “safe enclave” for Bosnian Muslims:

The killing of an estimated 8,000 Bosnian Muslims by Bosnian Serbs under the command of General Ratko Mladic, and by a Bosnian Serb paramilitary unit known as the Scorpions.

 

1995 CE Assassination!

–of RABIN in Tel Aviv

Nov 4: Yitzchak Rabin, Israeli Prime Minister…
Former Chief–of–Staff… Six–Day War Hero…

....by right–wing Jewish radical.

 

1995 CE: GEODESIC DOME

VT: Buckminster Fuller students construct prototype geodesic dome.

Bennington College, VT: Architect–Visionary–Designer–Futurist–Inventor–Author, Buckminster Fuller erects the world’s first geodesic dome building that could support its own weight with no practical limits. 14’ in diameter, the geodesic dome was constructed of aluminum aircraft tubing and vinyl–plastic skin, in the form of a tetrahedron.

To prove its strength to “non–believers,” Fuller and several fellow co–worker students, actually hung from the structure’s geodesic framework. Fuller’s “launch” was successful. Within a few years, thousands of geodesic domes dotted the world. Simultaneously, Buckminister Fuller had launched the “Buckminster Fuller legend,” as well.

 

1995 CE: “MEN FOR ALL SEASONS”

MA: The Feuerstein Brothers

Dec 11: Fire burns down the hi–tech textile factory of Malden Mills in Lawrence, MA. Third–generation Modern Orthodox Jewish owners Moses and Aaron Feuerstein elect to use part of the insurance money to maintain all 3,000 local workers on–the–payroll with full benefits for six months while the factory is rebuilt.

The $25,000,000 outlay will come back to haunt the Feuersteins in the 2000s.

In any event, older brother Aaron recognized nationally at Clinton’s State of the Union Address (January 23, 1996), and awarded the Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Award, 1998.

From his base as an active member of the Young Israel of Brookline Synagogue, younger brother Moses Feuerstein, an early–on Jewish grad of Harvard Business School, for decades—personally and through surrogates—acts as a full–spectrum welcoming committee to many hundreds of Jewish college and grad–school kids parachuting–in to B.U., Harvard, MIT and Brandeis. White House–style “Private Dinners” for them included, for some at the Feuerstein’s Brookline residence. Jeans acceptable.

 

1995 CE: BETHLEHEM STATUS

Dec 21: Bethlehem passes from Israeli to Palestinian control.

West Bank, Israel: Tomb of Rachel status unchanged; remains accessible, as prior, albeit still in the midst of a danger zone.

 

1996 CE: HOLOCAUST MUSEUM HOUSTON OPENED

 

1996 CE: ATLANTA: BREMAN HERITAGE MUSEUM OPENS

 

1996 CE: ELEMENT #109 NAMED MEITNERIUM

–after Jewish female physicist, Lise Meitner

–Austrian born (November 1878), and later, a scientist in Germany, and, much later (post–1938) a Swedish theoretical physicist who studied radioactivity and nuclear physics.

Meitnerium was part of the small team which discovered nuclear fission. Her co–collaborator Otto Hahn received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1944, in–part for a paper submitted December 1938 (published in 1939) to the scientific periodical Naturwissenschaften (Germany). At that point (subsequent to the Anschluss March 11–12, 1938 in Austria) Meitner herself had been on the run from the Nazis since July, 1938, barely evading arrest. Her (blatant) exclusion from that year’s Nobel Prize has been challenged ever since. Otto Hahn continued to work for the Nazi government. The Nobel Prize Committee has yet to ‘explain itself’.

The physics ‘fraternity’ consequently gave her the extraordinary acclaim of naming an Element of the Universe after her. (Presumably having an Element named after you trumps winning the Nobel Prize…author—I hope all you Jewish mothers are listening...)

In 1917 Meitnerium and (the same) chemist Otto Hahn had discovered the first long–lived isotope of the element protactinum.

In 1923 she discovered the cause, now known as the Auger effect, of the emission from surfaces of electrons with “signature” energies. The effect is named, however, for Pierre Victor Auger, A French scientist who discovered the effect independently, but two years later, in 1925.

In 1933 she had been Acting Director of the Institute for Chemistry (Germany), protected somewhat at that point from the Nazis by her Austrian citizenship.

In 1946 named Woman of the Year by the National Press Club (USA).

In 1949 receives the Max Planck Medal of the German Physics Society.

In October 1968 she passes away in Cambridge, England (where she had resided for six years) shortly before her 90th birthday.

In 1996 she was a joint posthumous recipient of the Enrico Fermi Award (U.S. Government). 1996 (see heading of this Thunderation), 28 years after her death, was a good year for the legacy of Lise Meitner.

However, her other claim to world history may have been her pointed and quite–public castigation(s) from her position of eminence in the world scientific fraternity (which had at least twice robbed her of her due) of the ‘eminent’ German scientists who remained slavish servants of the Nazi regime through the brutal course of the war and the Holocaust, including Otto Hahn, her former collaborator in physics.

She (publicly) castigated Hahn in writing after the war—“You all worked for Nazi Germany. And you tried to offer only a passive resistance. Certainly, to buy off your conscience you helped here and there a persecuted person, but millions of innocent human beings were allowed to be murdered without any kind of protest being uttered... [it is said that] first you betrayed your friends, then your children in that you let them stake their lives on a criminal war – and finally that you betrayed Germany itself, because when the war was already quite hopeless, you did not once arm yourselves against the senseless destruction of Germany.”
– after Wikipedia

 

1997 CE: REFORM JUDAISM ADOPTS THE “MIAMI PLATFORM”

Miami, FL: Centenary of the first World Zionist Congress:
Reform Judaism adopts a platform dedicated to the
relationship between Reform Judaism and Zionism.

 

1997 CE: HARRY POTTER

–fantasy series launched by (then totally) unknown British writer, J. K. Rowling, writing at local coffee shops (especially Nicolson’s Café in Edinburgh).

After eight publishers reject the manuscript, Bloomsbury Publishers offers her a 2,500 British pound (approximately $5,000) advance in 1995. Over 400 million copies now sold. Repeat: Four hundred million.

Protagonists at mythical Hogwarts School in England: Harry Potter, Lord Voldemont, Ron Weasely, Hermione Granger.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone; the Chamber of Secrets; the Prisoner of Azkaban; the Goblet of Fire; the Order of the Phoenix; the Half–Blood Prince; the Deathly Hallows.

 

1997 CE: HONG KONG “HANDOVER” TO CHINA

July 1: The transfer of sovereignty of Hong Kong (back) from the United Kingdom to (the People’s Republic of) China—after 150 years In the British orbit. It had become a Crown Colony in 1842, and then a British dependent territory in 1983.

Hong Kong is densely populated, with 7 million people in a 428 square mile area.

 

1997 CE: FRANK GEHRY

The architect’s signature titanium–covered Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain, opens.

Dozens of major works worldwide, often with his trademark dramatic, but non–functional components...works in progress include Guggenheim Museum, Abu Dhabi (expected completion 2011).

Iconoclastic architect born Ephraim Owen Goldberg into a Jewish family in Toronto, Canada in 1929...a ‘dropout’ from Harvard Graduate School of Design in his late 20s…he currently teaches at Columbia (NY) and Yale (CT).

 

1998 CE: VATICAN DOCUMENT: WE REMEMBER

We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah

Mar 16: Published under authority of Pope John Paul II; presented by Cardinal Edward Idris Cassidy.

Incremental Vatican texturing of the Shoah with a more sympatico–to–the–Jews slant. Not insignificant.

Note: On June 7, 1979, at an international commemoration ceremony at Auschwitz, with the Carmelite Nun’s 26’ Auschwitz Cross gambit as backdrop, the same Pope John Paul II had positioned the Holocaust/Six Million as a Polish martyrdom: “Six million Poles lost their lives during the Second World War – a fifth of the Polish nation.” This gambit was to be repeated on May 29, 2006, same quote, same place, by his successor Pope Benedict. One has to presume that the Vatican Secretariat is orchestrating a long–term Holocaust/Six Million/Auschwitz iconography hijack-gambit. This is a diabolical gambit with quite–terrible implications. It dwarfs the ‘Holocaust denial’ gambit (not a Vatican gambit), which receives massive international attention.

 

1998 CE: CHARLES (CHUCK) SCHUMER ELECTED AS U.S. SENATOR FROM NY

Re–elected 2004

Smart and effective, Schumer is high up in the Senate hierarchy.

Born in Brooklyn November, 1950 to Selma and Abraham Schumer., Schumer has Harvard undergrad and law degrees. In 1980, he married Iris Weinshall, then NY City Commissioner of Transportation.

 

1999 CE: UJC FORMED

Chelsea, Manhattan:

The United Jewish Communities is the organizing umbrella body of 155 Jewish federations and 400 independent Jewish communities across North America. Thus, it holds significant major sway over much Jewish communal activity in the USA.

 

1999 CE: BARAK

(Former Chief–of–Staff) Ehud Barak elected Prime Minister of Israel.

Within a year, will be a negotiating principal in Bill Clinton’s (ultimately unsuccessful) Camp David Summit in July 2000.

Barak makes comprehensive offer to Arafat, an offer having been worked–out with Clinton in arduous negotiations with Arafat...

With Clinton’s imprimatur on the proposal, Arafat goes back to the Middle East to weigh the situation...it would appear that Egypt’s Mubarak de facto vetoed it, as not having been ‘forthcoming enough’ on Palestinian “return”...

No one knew prior to that point that Mubarak had “veto–power”... then; a major intifada unfolds...Barak then loses the Prime Ministership... (Note: Egypt receives $3 billion+ annual aid from the USA)...

In the putative deal, as regards the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, Israel was to retain below ground–level of Al–Aqsa Mosque, (meaning, the KOTEL–The Western Wall) and the Palestinians were to retain above ground, meaning the Al–Aqsa Mosque itself and the assembly grounds... This Temple Mount entente, in any event, is likely to set precedent in any future deal...

 

2000 CE: PAPAL KOTEL NOTE

Mar 26: Pope John Paul II visits the Western Wall in Jerusalem.

…and places a letter inside it apologizing for the Church’s actions against the Jews in the past.

The letter, on Papal stationery is laid–out as follows:

*papal seal*

God of our fathers
You chose Abraham and his descendants
to bring your Name to the Nations:
we are deeply saddened
by the behavior of those
who in the course of history
have caused these children of yours to suffer,
and asking your forgiveness
we wish to commit ourselves
to genuine brotherhood
with the people of the Covenant.

Jerusalem, 26 March 2000

Signed: Joannes Paulus II

 

2000 CE: STEM CELLS

Nascent Stem Cell revolution (The Millennium)...Brave New cells.

 

2000 CE: AL–AQSA

West Bank, Gaza Strip

Sept 29: “Al–Aqsa Intifada” begins

–shortly after Israeli Minister Sharon visits same.

However, the particular intifada was perhaps primed to roll, awaiting a pivot–event.

 

2000 CE: SOUTH AFRICA: MANDELA OFFICIALLY OPENS THE JEWISH MUSEUM

Dec: The South African Jewish Museum officially opened in Cape Town, South Africa.

 

2001 CE: ARIEL SHARON

Feb 6...becomes Prime Minister of Israel...

–historic and pivotal figure in Israeli counter–insurgency, military, then political and statecraft history...

 

2001 CE: WIKIPEDIA LAUNCHED

–by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger (Jan 15)

 

2001 CE: CONTEMPORARY JEWISH MUSEUM OF BERLIN REDEDICATED

Wikipedia –
“The Jewish Museum Berlin (Jüdisches Museum Berlin), in Berlin, Germany, covers two millennia of German Jewish history. World–renowned architect Daniel Libeskind designed the museum, which opened to the public in 2001. The museum was one of the first buildings designed after German reunification.

Princeton professor W. Michael Blumenthal, who was born near Berlin and was later President Jimmy Carter’s Secretary of the Treasury, has been the director of the museum since December 1997.

The original Jewish Museum in Berlin was founded on Oranienburger Straße in 1933. The Nazi regime closed it in 1938, and it wasn’t until 1975 that an “Association for a Jewish Museum” formed to resurrect the old museum. After an exhibition on Jewish history opened there in 1978, the Berlin Museum, which chronicled the city’s history, established a Jewish Department. Soon thereafter, discussions for constructing a new museum dedicated to Jewish history in Berlin began.

In 1989, the Berlin government announced an anonymous competition for the new museum’s design. A year later, Daniel Libeskind’s design was chosen for the commission for what was then planned as a “Jewish Department” for the Berlin Museum. While other entrants proposed cool, neutral spaces, Libeskind offered a radical, zigzag design, which earned the nickname “Blitz.” Construction on the new extension to the Berlin Museum began in November 1992.…

Libeskind, a musician himself, took inspiration from music and considered the museum the final act of Arnold Schoenberg’s unfinished opera, Moses und Aron…”

Wikipedia Online, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Museum_Berlin (accessed July 13, 2009)

 

2001 CE: SUMMERS

July 1: Cambridge, MA: Lawrence Summers becomes president of Harvard.

Former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury becomes first Jewish president of Harvard…tenure lasts five years...

Ultimately undone in 2006 by left–wingers in the Humanities Department (who presumably never quite forgave him for tangling frontally with rabidly pro–Palestinian academics in 2002 or with Cornel West in 2001).

But destined to “rise again” later under President Barak Obama.

 

2001 CE: ROMAN CATHOLICISM IN AMERICA

Roman Catholicism was a miniscule minority at the time of the establishment of the Thirteen Colonies, as many colonists had, of course, fled Roman Catholic persecution in Europe in the first place. Today, as the third largest Roman Catholic population in the world after Brazil and Mexico, it is the single largest profession of faith today in North America. Approximately 24.5% of Americans identified themselves as Roman Catholic, or roughly 1/3 of American Christians.

The National Council of Churches reports 67.5 million registered members of the Roman Catholic Church, with the next largest Christian denomination being Southern Baptist at 16.3 million registered members. There is a rough correlation between the growth of anti–Semitism in American and the growth of Roman Catholicism in America (primarily in the 19th and early 20th centuries), with Roman Catholic venues historically relatively the most consistently toxic–laden of the Christian denominations towards the Jews. As in Europe, the orientation of the constituents is heavily impacted by the tone set by the local bishop.

A study investigating the correlation between the unexpected dramatic rise of anti–Semitism in the young nation and the parallel growing percentage of the population which was Roman Catholic, might be useful towards getting at the root of anti–Semitism in America..

Sidestepping the contentious issue, as the ADL seems want to do, will not impress future chroniclers either. Perhaps the free pass extended to the (most certainly quite powerful) Catholic Church in America has expired…

 

2001 CE Terroration! SBARROS

Aug 9: City Center, Jerusalem.

Sbarros Pizza shop in the heart of Jerusalem, terror–bombed by Palestinian terrorist suicide–bomber

Many families decimated; fifteen Israelis killed; 100+ wounded (author – touring Jerusalem a year before with my kids, I had pizza at that very Sbarros; we sat at a table on the mezzanine balcony overlooking the main counter, and I am still haunted by the counter–service image).

 

2001 CE: TIGER WOODS, 26, DILIGENTLY COLLECTS GOLF TITLES

–the PGA, the U.S. Open, the British Open, and two Masters

 

2001 CE Terroration! SEPTEMBER 11

Tuesday morning, September 11, 2001...

Twin Towers of World Trade Center, Manhattan, destroyed…

…by Radical Islamic terrorist suicide–hijackers turning U.S. passenger planes into guided–missiles… Pentagon perimeter hit (3 of 5 Pentagon building rings penetrated …E, D, C rings take the hit… Passengers on 4th plane (“Let’s Roll!”) bring their captors crashing down with them in a Pennsylvania field – and probably save the Capitol Building in DC...iconic passenger revolt. Overall, 3,000 persons are dead at the three sites (Manhattan Twin Towers, Pentagon, Pennsylvania) due to the 19 terrorists….

America coils, and then invades Afghanistan to rout the Taliban…

Followed by U.S. invasion of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq…. heavily hinged on basis of US–asserted Iraqi nuclear weapons production… later found to be erroneous (as of spring 2008)…..fighting still ongoing Spring 2008… 4,000 U.S. Servicemen killed as of 3/23/08.

 

2001 CE: WAR ON TERRORISM ANNOUNCED

–announced by George W. Bush, 43rd president of the United States, shortly after the attacks of September 11.

 

2001 CE: KERTZER RELEASES “THE POPES AGAINST THE JEWS”

Sept 23: subtitled: “THE VATICAN’S ROLE IN MODERN ANTI–SEMITISM”

David Ketzer wrote the book while a professor at Brown University, published by Random House.

 

2001 CE: BUSH LAUNCHES OPERATION ENDURING FREEDOM

Oct 7: Washington, DC: George W. Bush, in conjunction with Great Britain, launches invasion of Afghanistan. The stated aim of the invasion was to destroy Al–Qaeda in Afghanistan and the simpatico host regime there, the Taliban.

 

2001 CE: iPOD

Cupertino, CA

Oct 23: the iPOD, introduced by Apple

*COMMUNICATION: * assorted modalities * language * alphabet * telegraph * telephone * teletype * Fax * satellite * CellPhone * Internet * Web* Google (late 20th century) [iPhone in the early 21st]

 

2002 CE: ZEEK: A JEWISH JOURNAL OF THOUGHT & CULTURE FOUNDED

Jo Ellen Green Kaiser
Jay Michaelson
Bob Goldfarb
Dan Friedman
Bara Sapir
Richard Chess

–are the key players in 2008.

 

2002 CE Hubblation!

March: “Servicing Mission 3B” (Low Earth orbit)

–of Hubble Telescope, launched initially in 1990; but the main mirror was found to be defective once the telescope was in orbit.

The particular Servicing Mission gives the telescope “Ultra Deep Field” capability...revealing (in 2003–2004) images of galaxies billions of light years away...

 

2002 CE: THE UNITED STATES CONFERENCE OF CATHOLIC BISHOPS

The Jewish “historical interest” in the notorious Catholic Church “sexual abuse scandal” would revolve around two axes:

1) Does the comportment of the hierarchy (the Vatican and the Cardinals and the Bishops) who, it would seem, looked aside for decade—if not for centuries—parallel the comportment of the hierarchy towards the Jews over the centuries?

2) Did the rage–filled Catholic schooled victims, numbering perhaps in the tens of thousands over the centuries, take out their rage on the vulnerable local Jews?

2002 CE: THE PROTOCOLS OF THE ELDERS OF ZION REDUX

November: Persian Gulf: Arab Radio and Television of Saudi Arabia airs a 30–part television series: “Horseman Without a Horse”

–a dramatization of the coarse and crude 1903–1905 anti–Semitic Russian forgery–fraud.

 

2002 CE: “ALOHA”

A long way from Brooklyn...

December 2: Linda Lingle sworn–in as Governor of Hawaii. She takes the Oath of Office on a Tanach.

Then, sworn–in for a second term December 2006. Lingle is the second Jewish female governor of a U.S. state. The first was Madeleine M. Kunin, Govenor of Vermont, from 1985 through 1991.

 

2003 CE: COLUMBIA SHUTTLE AFLAME

Feb 1: over Texas and Louisiana

NASA space shuttle Columbia breaks up in flames (over Texas upon reentry to Earth’s atmosphere); all seven crew members perish, including the first Israeli Astronaut, Ilan Ramon.

 

2003 CE: Osam al–Baz

The Egyptian newspaper Al–Ahram published a series of articles by Osam Al–Baz, a senior advisor to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Among other things, Osam Al–Baz explained the origins of the blood libel against the Jews. He said that Arabs and Muslims have never been antisemitic, as a group, but accepted that a few Arab writers and media figures attack Jews “on the basis of the racist fallacies and myths that originated in Europe.” He urged people not to succumb to “myths” such as the blood libel.

 

2003 CE: MEAH SHEARIM

Aug 19: Another (Palestinian) suicide bus–bombing in Jerusalem.

...this one in Meah Shearim, the ultra–Orthodox neighborhood... 18 dead, 130 injured...many, many tears, as per usual.

Educated now from childhood to demonize the Jews, their Hamas leadership having taken a page from another group, many Palestinian 20–somethings will maim and murder without flinching.

 

2004 CE: FACEBOOK FOUNDED!

Feb 4: Now a Palo Alto, CA company, Facebook was founded in Cambridge, MA

–by Mark Zuckerberg while he was a sophomore at Harvard, Facebook is a social networking website. Originally limited to Harvard students, then to the greater Ivy League, then to any university student, then to anyone over age 13, Facebook now has over 100 million active users worldwide.

Within a month of its launch, more than half the student body at Harvard were registered on the Facebook internet site. Three roommates at Harvard – Zuckerberg, Chris Hughes, and Dustin Moskowitz, along with Eduardo Saverin comprised the original founding group of Facebook.

In a nationwide poll, Facebook tied for the second “most popular thing” among college undergrads, after the iPOD, and tied with beer. (Tying with beer on US college campuses is no easy feat]

 

2004 CE: MURDER WEAPON 2004 GIBSON–STYLE

February: Mel Gibson film – The Passion of the Christ…Inflammatory film...layers on incendiary anti–Semitic scenes and texture onto already (historically) problematic vignettes from the Gospels…clearly loaded with toxicity, but hiding behind exaggerated and cherry–picked (probably anecdotal) Gospel vignettes (as is the time practiced gambit), the film was neither reproved nor condemned by the Vatican, notwithstanding strong condemnation, urgings from the Jewish community…

In a separate, but illuminating, incident, on July 28, 2006 at 2:36 AM, Gibson was stopped and arrested on Pacific Palisades Highway in Malibu, CA for DUI (driving under the influence of alcohol). While handcuffed in the car, Gibson made anti–Semitic remarks to the officer, James Mee, who is Jewish. On July 29, both the LA Times and the NY Times confirmed the authenticity of the intense anti–Semitic remarks. (The sordid details available via TMZ.com and/or via google–search)

 

2005 CE: TZIPI LIVNI APPOINTED FOREIGN MINISTER OF ISRAEL

Born July 8, 1958, Tel Aviv.

Livni is the second woman in Israel to hold the title Foreign Minister (after Golda Meir).

In 2007, included in TIME Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World.

Britannica –
“Israeli politician who served as minister of foreign affairs from 2006. She was elected leader of Kadima, the governing party, in September 2008.

Livni’s Polish–born parents Eitan (Benozovich) Livni and Sarah (née Rosenberg) were both active in Irgun Zvai Leumi, a militant Jewish group that fought for the foundation of Israel and was the precursor of the hawkish Herut and Likud parties…

In November 2005 Livni left Likud with Sharon and other party moderates to found Kadima (“Forward”). When Sharon was incapacitated by a stroke in January 2006, Ehud Olmert, then vice prime minister, took over as party leader and acting prime minister. Upon being confirmed as prime minister following a general election in March, he appointed Livni minister of foreign affairs.”

Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1472669/Tzipi–Livni (accessed June 15, 2009)

 

2005 CE: GAZA EXIT

March: Prime Minister Sharon’s Israel withdraws from Gaza Strip; as part of the “package deal,” President George W. Bush gives Israel a “letter” to the effect that the large Jewish population centers on the West Bank, “facts on the ground,” will be accommodated in any political settlement.

Israel exits, but the eventual Hamas leadership in Gaza allows (with varying levels of encouragement) various militant groups to fire rockets into the contiguous Israeli population areas, Sderot (2006 and through this publication date); then, as well, much larger Ashkelon (2008).

This rocketry gambit will ultimately lead to Gaza War (Israeli operation “Cast Lead”) in January 2009.

 

2005 CE: LOST TRIBE, COME HOME

March 31: Israel recognizes the B’Nei Menashe people

–of North–East India as one of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel.

Several thousand people involved...(author – I met with two of their leadership—in India in December 2004—as they were ramping–up for potential “recognition”...a very gentle crew impacting the tough Israeli scene…)

 

2005 CE: BERLIN HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL

“Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe”

May 10: Inaugurated

19,000 square meter (4.7 acre) site covered with 2,711 concrete slabs, arranged in a grid pattern on a sloping field....

An attached underground “Place of Information” contains the names of all known Holocaust victims, (obtained from Yad Vashem in Jerusalem) located one block south of the Brandenburg Gate.

The program to conceptualize a memorial in Berlin commenced eleven years prior in April, 1994. Highly contentious saga.

 

2005 CE: BUKHARIAN JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTER

Fall: Rosh Hashonah: Jewish New Year: Forest Hills/Rego Park, Queens, NY: The new Western Hemisphere locus of the Bukharian Jews in Queens opens its first “congress” conclave.

The Bukharian Jews of Central Asia were essentially cut off from the rest of the Jewish world for over 2,000 years, but somehow managed to retain their identity, Jewish heritage, unique traditions and cohesiveness intact for the two millennia.

Worldwide population distribution of the Bukharian is currently as follows:

Total population: approx.	150,000–200,000
Israel	100,000–120,000
United States	50,000–60,000
European Union	5,000–10,000
Uzbekistan	100–1,000
Tajikistan	50–100

 

2005 CE: THOMAS FRIEDMAN RELEASES THE WORLD IS FLAT

–analyzes globalization in the 21^st century

Bethesda, MN: Born in St. Louis park, Minnesota, Thomas Friedman has degrees from Brandeis (B.A. in Mediterranean studies) and Oxford (M. Phil. in Middle Eastern studies).

He is an award–wining American journalist, columnist and author, who has won the Pulitzer Prize three times to date (1983, 1988 and 2002).

Incisive, astute and an excellent writer with an exceptional flair for trends and extrapolations, Friedman is often at the head of the curve.

Has authored–

From Beirut to Jerusalem (1989)
The Lexus and the Olive Tree (1999)
Longitudes and Altitudes (2002)
The World is Flat (2005)
Hot, Flat and Crowded (2008)

 

2005 CE: CHABAD

Chabad–Lubavitch–movement “outposts” break through the 4,000 mark.

...i.e. the number of Chabad outposts (and/or pulpits) worldwide in 70 countries…

One of the largest branches of Hasidic Judaism.

Author’s observation: synthesizes mainstream Orthodox Judaism; classic Hasidism, Lurianic Kabbalah; Litvak scholarship…with an extra (too) heavy dose of Messianism...and historically lagging on women’s prerogatives.

 

2005 CE: 17TH MACCABIAH GAMES

July 11: Ramat Gan, Israel: Seventeenth incarnation of these Jewish Olympics: 7,700 total participants from 55 countries (i.e. Jewish athletes from around the globe, plus some Israeli Arab).

Since 1932, the games have been held roughly every four years except for a hiatus from 1938–1950, “interrupted” by the Nazi emergence in Germany, then the Holocaust and then, the subsequent battle for Israeli independence.

The games were initially conceived by 15 year–old Yosef Yekutieli, an Eretz Israel (Palestine) Russian–born teenager inspired by the 1912 Stockholm Olympic Games. After 6 years of preliminary conceptualizing and 14 years of proactive development by Yekutieli and the Jewish National Fund, the first games were held in 1932 (opened March 28, centered in the Tel Aviv/Ramat Gan area). About four hundred Jewish sportsmen participated.

1932 was significant to the organizers for being the 1800th anniversary of the Bar Kochba revolt (against Rome in c.132 CE).

For trivia experts, in the 2005 games, Brian Roberts, Chairman and CEO of US Corporation Comcast won a gold medal in squash.

The next games are scheduled for July 2009.

 

2005 CE: DEATH THREAT

Oct 27: From Iranian President Ahmadinejad: “Israel should be wiped off the map”

…follows month–long “World without Zionism” state–sponsored nationwide Iranian official protest month (possibly now annualized) leading into Iranian “Jerusalem Day” (i.e. Jerusalem without Israelis Day)…

Same Iranian leader repeatedly denies Holocaust existed and sponsors international “conference” on same….

Iranian posture on these inter–related matters possibly a factor in German government action six months later (April ‘06) re: Holocaust archives…..

Ahmadinejad, in the diabolical tradition of Amalek and Hitler, will mobilize the forces of hate for his political power–ends. Closer now to possession of nuclear weapons

 

2006 CE: DUBAI

Jan 4: Emirate of Dubai, Persian Gulf early 2000s CE.

Multi–faceted 21^st century Techno Pharaoh extraordinaire Sheikh Mohammed son of Rashid Al Maktoum, ascends to the Ruler–ship of Dubai in the UAE (United Arab Emirates), Persian Gulf….

He redefines the contours of modern Arab culture and the limits of “Imagineering” in the early 21st century….

Cutting–edge vision, architecture and policies.

….personally sets up $10 billion dollar Arab world education–fund…Dubai emerges as one of the most harmonious and creative locales on the planet….a credit to the Arab world…and to humanity…

Courageously bucking pressure from the right wing of the Arab and Muslim world, the valiant Sheikh Mohammed sets up a Jewish–friendly and Israeli–simpatico oasis…of global tolerance and mutual respect.

...however, ominously, from Dubai’s neighbor to the north, Iran, just across the Persian Gulf, comes an eerie echo from Nazi Germany…

***

Postscript: However, on February 15, 2009, after years of impeccable dealings, Dubai would surprisingly “disappoint.” Dubai blocks Israeli tennis star Shahar Peer from participating in a WTA (Women’s Tennis Association) meet (presumably in a very tight spot, under severe Arab militant pressure related to the Gaza mini–War of January 3–18 of the prior month). Four days later, after assorted “push–back,” Dubai reverted back to its “ecumenical incarnation,” and gave a visa to Israeli men’s tennis star Andy Ram to participate in an international men’s tennis tournament that same month.

 

2006 CE: VISIT TO AUSCHWITZ: WINFREY AND WIESEL

Oprah Winfrey and Elie Wiesel visit to Auschwitz.

January 30: Oswiecim, Southern Poland: Oprah Winfrey, US talk–show mega–star host visits the notorious Nazi death camp with Nobel Peace Prize winner Wiesel, in conjunction with her assigning Wiesel’s Holocaust–classic NIGHT as her OPRAH’s book of the month selection. A camera crew accompanied the joint visit, with footage aired nationwide 4 months later (May 24) in North America.

Oprah had keyed–in on the right book and the right ‘messenger’ and the optimal venue (and the right medium, of course). The bizarre and quite–twisted cults of Holocaust deniers worldwide go into depression.

 

2006 CE: BERNANKE

February 1: Washington, DC: Harvard and MIT grad Ben Shalom Bernanke becomes Chairman of the Federal Reserve...

–succeeding Alan Greenspan (chairman for nineteen years 1987 – 2006)...

Bernanke was formerly, Chairman of the U.S. President’s Council of Economic Advisors (the CEA).

Bernanke, grandson of a Baal–Koreh (a Torah reader) and Hebrew teacher in South Carolina

Benanke personally taught his son his Hebrew Bar Mitzvah lessons…

By June 2008 closing date of this volume, Bernanke would find himself with a burgeoning storm in the sub prime mortgage backed securities area coupled with an embryonic burgeoning credit–squeeze crisis, in–tandem potentially threatening the entire (global) financial system.

(We would ultimately be re–appointed his Federal Reserve job by the new president Barak Obama in August, 2009)

 

2006 CE: HALIMI

Febuary: Paris, France, kidnap–torture–murder.

23–year–old Jewish man, cell phone salesman Ilan Halimi, kidnapped, tortured and murdered in anti–Semitic attempted extortion case in Paris…

The president and the premier of France attend the
funeral.

 

2006 CE: GOSPEL OF JUDAS

The Gospel of Judas a second century Gnostic account of Judas, discovered in the 1970s and currently controlled by the National Geographic Society,
is shown on TV .

 

2006 CE: POLITICAL ANTI–SEMITISM

Anti–Semitism continues to infect.

On many college campuses, pro–Palestinian and/or Radical Left groups have morphed anti–Israel stances into a hate–infected, coarse and virulent anti–Zionism.

Apr 3: The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights published its finding that incidents of anti–Semitism were a “serious problem” on college campuses throughout the United States. The commission recommended that the U.S. Departments of Education’s Office for Civil Rights protect [Jewish] college students from anti–Semitism through vigorous enforcement of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and further recommended that Congress clarify that Title VI applies, as well, to discrimination against Jewish students.

[Author’s note: On many US college campuses, Jewish student meetings and organizations still find themselves the objects of quite–severe toxicity.]

 

2006 CE: REAL–LIFE ANGEL

April 19: MERKEL

German Chancellor Angela Merkel opens up German Holocaust archives…

50 million documents…16 miles of shelves…records of 17 million victims.

The Merkel move jiu–jitsu the obsessive Nazi mega–documentation of the Nazis’ multi–year handiwork into a de facto lancing of the “Holocaust Denial” gambit by assorted misfits worldwide… “GAME OVER”—as the former/obsessive/pathological Nazi bureaucracy has essentially enshrined its atrocities for the ages in these morbid archives…

 

2006 CE: ATTEMPTED PAPAL HIJACKING

Attempted expropriation of the six million “Kedoshim” (Martyrs of the Holocaust)

May 29:

From an article by Sergio I. Minerbi, a former Israeli ambassador, currently (Fall 2008) a Visiting Professor of Political Science at the University of Haifa:

“What is at stake here is the Catholic perception of the Shoah—the worst nightmare in Jewish history, during which six million of our people were murdered...In a blatant effort to Christianize the Holocaust, Pope John Paul II [Wojtyla] used the symbol of the “six million” to represent [it as] the number of Polish people allegedly killed during the war.....

John Paul’s successor, Pope Benedict XVI, [Ratzinger, the current pope at time of publication of this book in 2008] repeated his predecessor’s expression [gambit] when he visited Auschwitz on May 28, 2006, [author – the prepared speech was actually on Day #2 of his trip there, May 29, 2006]

[“Six million Poles lost their lives during the Second World War,” a fifth of the [Polish] nation........” –from the formal prepared address by Pope Benedict at the Auschwitz killing grounds.]

author – Note: how the emotionally–laden martyrdom statistic – Six million Jews lost their lives in the Holocaust – is co–opted by Pope Benedict XVI [Ratzinger] into the more– convenient–to–the–Church “Six million Poles lost their lives during WWII....”.

Conveniently expropriating the martyred six million figure. But this address is at Auschwitz, the murder–epicenter of the Jews, is it not? In plain sight. Murdering a memory – at the murder grounds themselves although three days later, back at the Vatican [and now under increasing pressure not to pervert history], he ‘corrected’ his own words, and said that it was six million Jews who were killed in Auschwitz.”

– from a longer article in Ha’aretz,
November 14, 2008 (Tel Aviv, Israel)

Note that not too many networks covering the ‘correction,’ of course. Cute.

But back in Poland, the initial target audience, and in front of the worldwide television audience, the pope had successfully advanced the Vatican’s apparent gambit to fudge history, and to attempt to expropriate the six million figure, and to attempt to transform it into a Polish Catholic martyrdom of sorts. That would be interesting news to the Jewish Death Camp victims in their graves. But, of course, now the Polish Bishops and Priests have their ‘thematic talking point’ for decades to come (centuries to come?) with the stamped seal of approval by the pope himself, straight from the killing grounds of the Auschwitz Death Camp. Ground Zero of the Jewish Martyrdom. The Vatican ‘history spin–machine’ ramping–up now in full throttle.

Having set the stage over the centuries for the Nazi murder of millions of Jews at Auschwitz, then having betrayed these same Jews during the Nazi terror–murder campaign against them, the Vatican in the person of Pope Benedict XVI, would on October 29, 2006 now attempt to outright rob them of their Jewish identity altogether. Not “Holocaust Denial”; rather, “Holocaust Expropriation.”
(see www.BenedictDVD.com)

 

2006 CE: AMAR ON–THE–PROWL

–off–key: rabbinic

May: Israeli Sephardic Chief Rabbi (since 2003) Shlomo Amar continues highly politicized right–wing antics, undermining non–Haredi rabbinics and conversions. Hopefully, we can have an A–Team Sephardic rabbinic replacing Amar, sooner rather than later.

 

2006 CE: SHALIT

June 25: Israeli Corporal Gilad Shalit abducted just north of the Gaza border inside Israel by Palestinian militants...precursor to the Second Lebanon War a.k.a. the 2006 Lebanon War, a 33 day conflict, waged behind Lebanese civilian shields by Hezbollah, while it fired rockets (4,000) at civilian population centers in northern Israel...Druze and Arab–Israeli towns hit, as well.

 

2006 CE: STANTON GIVES Y.U. $100 MILLION DOLLAR GIFT

Fall ‘06: NY: Ronald P. Stanton, 78, Chairman of Transammonia Corporation, pledged $100 million dollars to Yeshiva University to set up the “Legacy Fund,” an investment fund that provides seed money for university projects. Stanton has served on the Y.U. Board for 30 years.

 

2006 CE: YALE INITIATIVE

September 19: New Haven, CT: Yale University founds the Yale Initiative for Interdisciplinary Study of Anti–Semitism

–a major university–based center for study of the subject, citing the “need to understand the current manifestation of this disease.”

 

2007 CE: ISRAEL HAYOM FIRST PUBLISHED

Tel Aviv: July 30: translation: “Israel Today,” the name and style are a variation on USA Today.

A free Hebrew daily newspaper, it currently has the second largest circulation, albeit unpaid, in Israel after Yediot Ahronot. It is owned by the American Las Vegas hotel and casino mogul, Sheldon Adelson.

 

2007 CE: TORAH SCROLLS RETURNED TO UKRANIAN JEWISH COMMUNITIES

The Federation of Jewish Communities of the CIS –
“LUGANSK, Ukraine – An important event has occurred in the life of the Jewish community of Lugansk – the repatriation of four historic Torah scrolls, presented to the community by the Security Service of Ukraine. All four were used by Jews of Ukraine at the outset of the 20th century, one of which is of Sephardic origin and is considered to be particularly valuable. Such scrolls are critically needed for Jewish communities undergoing revitalization, since they suffer from a remarkable dearth of holy texts for religious services.

The transfer of the Torah scrolls took place following the recent signing of a decree by Ukraine President Victor Yuschenko, instructing state archives to return the Torah scrolls they hold back to Jewish communities. While archival authorities have not yet reacted to this, the Security Service of Ukraine in Lugansk has taken initiative to follow through.

“The presentation of these scrolls is evidence that Jewish life in our region, as all of Ukraine, has reached a new level. We see the state’s relationship with ethnic and religious minorities changing right before our eyes – for the better. All Lugansk Jews are grateful to the Security Service of Ukraine [for this action],” commented Aaron Vselyubskiy, the Chairman of the Jewish community of Lugansk.

This is great cause for celebration for local Jews. Now it is possible for Soifers to carry out work necessary to restore these scrolls for use in the celebration of Jewish life in this east Ukrainian region. “We are convinced that this is just the first step in [returning Jewish religious property]. We hope that shortly through the President’s decree, even the smallest of Jewish communities will be able to receive Torah scrolls – this would allow for the revival of traditional worship that is otherwise not possible due to the lack of Torah scrolls,” emphasized Aaron Vselyubskiy.

The Jewish community of Lugansk is a leading member of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Ukraine.”

The Federation of Jewish Communities of the CIS Online, http://www.fjc.ru/communities/news.asp?AID=603407&cid=85007&NewsType=80052 (accessed July 26, 2009).

 

2007 CE: JOHANNESBURG JEWS MARK 120 YEARS

City of Johannesburg Online –
“Jews first settled in Johannesburg 120 years ago, a year after the town was proclaimed…

Over its history, Johannesburg has had 94 mayors; 22 of them were Jewish. The city’s first Jewish mayor was Harry Graumann, in office from 1909 to 1910…That [Jewish] community numbers 50,000 these days; the total number of Jews in the country is 80,000. Over the past 30 years there has been steady emigration, as with other groups – 30 years ago there were 120,000 Jews in South Africa.

“Johannesburg soon established itself as the largest Jewish centre in southern Africa,” says Kahn [the national director of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBOD)].

…by 1890 there were three main congregations in the town: the Witwaterstand Old Hebrew Congregation, the Johannesburg Hebrew Congregation, and the Orthodox Hebrew Congregation. A large segment of the first Jewish immigrants were traders, craftmen and small time entrepreneurs…

Jews were instrumental in establishing the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. And they have played a role in several top corporations: Premier Milling, Tiger Oats, OK Bazaars, Liberty Life and South African Breweries…Jew have also been prominent in the anti–apartheid movement – Helen Suzman is the most well known.

Building synagogues
Before 1889, Jewish services were held in the Rand Club, the town’s largest venue at the time, big enough to accommodate the 500 worshippers…

The Great Park Synagogue was opened in Oaklands in 2000, with the seats, chandeliers, carved wooden notice boards, and bimah (pulpit) from the Great Synagogue. It is a small scale replica of the original.”

The Official website of the City of Johannesburg, http://www.joburg.org.za/content/view/1902/203/ (accessed June 7, 2009)

 

2007 CE: PERES ELECTED PRESIDENT OF ISRAEL

June 13: Jerusalem: Shimon Peres, born in Vishneva, Poland in 1923, elected to the presidency. Original name Szymon Perski.

Peres will elevate the presidency, and the presidency will elevate Peres.

Britannica –
“…served as prime minister of Israel (1984–86 and 1995–96) and leader of the Israel Labour Party (1977–92, 1995–97, and 2003–05). In 1993, in his role as Israeli foreign minister, Peres helped negotiate a peace accord with Yasir Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), for which they, along with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1994.

Peres immigrated with his family to Palestine in 1934. In 1947 he joined the Haganah movement, a Zionist military organization, under the direction of David Ben–Gurion, who soon became his political mentor. When Israel achieved independence in May 1948, Prime Minister Ben–Gurion appointed Peres, then only 24 years old, head of Israel’s navy. In 1952 he was appointed deputy director–general of the Ministry of Defense, and he later served as director–general (1953–59) and deputy defense minister (1959–65), during which service he stepped up state weapons production, initiated a nuclear research program, and established overseas military alliances, most notably with France. Peres resigned in 1965 to join Ben–Gurion in founding a new party, Rafi, in opposition to the succeeding prime minister, Levi Eshkol.

In 1977 Peres became head of the Labour Party and, as such, was twice defeated (1977, 1981) by Menachem Begin of the Likud party as a candidate for prime minister before winning access to the post after the indecisive elections of 1984…

In 2003 Peres resumed the chair of the Labour Party but was unexpectedly defeated in the party’s leadership election in November 2005. A few weeks later he left the Labour Party to join the centrist party Kadima. In 2007 Peres was elected president of Israel, a largely ceremonial post. His memoir, Battling for Peace, was published in 1995.”

Encyclopaedia Britannica Online. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/451349/Shimon–Peres (accessed June 15, 2009)

 

2007 CE: WCC: WORLD COUNCIL OF CHURCHES

June 18–20: Amman, Jordan: The WCC establishes Palestine Israel Ecumenical Forum. Hijacked by a pro–Palestinian leadership, with no love lost for Israel or the Jews, the World Council of Churches will “play.” Incorporating most Eastern Orthodox Churches, among other Christian denominations, the WCC will repeatedly undermine the Israeli position, as regards to Jerusalem, in particular. Hiding under the cloak of humanitarianism, but essentially rabidly anti–Israel, the organization’s Kobia leadership will repeatedly “play with fire.”

 

2007 CE: ADL ANTI–DEFAMATION LEAGUE ANTI–SEMITISM SURVEY

Anti–Defamation League Online –

Hispanics
The survey found that anti–Semitic propensities among Hispanics, the most significant and fastest growing segment of the American population, are influenced by origin of birth. There continues to be an extraordinary gap between those born in the United States and those born abroad, though somewhat less than in 2005. The survey revealed that 29% of foreign–born Hispanics hold hardcore anti–Semitic beliefs (down from 35%), while 15% of Hispanics born in the U.S. fall into the same category (down from 19%).

“We are heartened to see progress in the Hispanic community,” said Mr. Foxman,* “and the outreach and collaboration with various segments of the Hispanic community throughout the country that we began after the initial findings have borne some results and we are committed to stepping up that effort.”

Mr. Foxman added, “We understand that religious background has always played a role in determining one’s beliefs about Jews. We believe that the strong anti–Semitic views held by one of the fastest growing segments in America is no doubt a reflection of what is being learned about Jews in the schools, churches and communities of Latin American countries, which is anti–Semitism at its most basic.”

African–Americans
The number of African–Americans with strong anti–Semitic beliefs continued to remain high and stable since 1992. The 2007 survey found that 32% of African–Americans hold strong anti–Semitic beliefs, more than three times more than the 10% for whites. In 1992 it was 37%; 1998–34%; 2002–35%, 2005–36%.

“We continue to remain troubled and somewhat at a loss to understand why African–Americans consistently have such strong anti–Semitic propensities,” said Mr. Foxman.

Education and Gender
Education – The more educated a person is, the
less likely he or she is to hold anti–Semitic views: 21% of those with a high school degree or less hold strong anti–Semitic views, compared to 10% of college graduates and 8% of those who hold post–graduate degrees.

* Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director
Anti–Defamation League official website, http://www.adl.org/PresRele/ASUS_12/5159_12.htm (accessed August 4, 2009)

 

2007 CE: MUKASEY JUSTICE

November 9: Michael Mukasey sworn–in as U.S. Attorney General (the 81st)... A graduate of Modern Orthodox RAMAZ (hi–voltage) Manhattan Jewish prep school (1959) and then of Columbia College and Columbia Law…

The second Jewish U.S. Attorney General... Ed Levi, former University of Chicago president, served under President Ford in the 1970s... Note that Judah P. Benjamin was the Attorney General of the Confederacy...

 

2007 CE: ANNAPOLIS SUMMIT

November 27: Maryland: Israel–Palestinian (Fatah) aligned wing summit meeting hosted by George W. Bush… Annapolis, Maryland (USA)… negotiations and mini–accords continue apace…target set for accord by end of December 2008...but ongoing Qassams from Gaza hitting the Israeli near–border town of Sderot, as well as larger (120,000 population) Ashkelon dampen the momentum and Israeli “enthusiasm.”

 

2007 CE: OSTEEN

Mega–Televangelist Joel Osteen, emphasizing the power of love and a positive attitude, does just that ...Good Guy... His widely–broadcast Lakewood (Texas) Church services are viewed in over 100 countries...often with meaningful, positive Jewish iconography...

 

2007 CE: KOUCHNER

Bernard Kouchner becomes Foreign Minister of France.

A doctor by training and author of several books, he was the co–founder of Doctors without Borders and, later, of Médicins du Monde...

His grandparents: French Jews, killed after being deported to Auschwitz from Vichy, France...

 

Early 2008 CE: GEORGIAN JEWISH CENTER FOUNDED

–for Jewish émigrés from Georgia, FSU

–in Forest Hills, Queens, NY

 

2008 CE: MOSSAD OPERATION: MUGHNIYAH

February 12, 10:45 PM: Damascus, Syria: Hezbollah #2 man, Mughniyah, assassinated (presumably) by MOSSAD in car–bomb blast…Imad Mughniyah was on both the Israeli and American MOST WANTED Lists, for, among other crimes, respectively, his involvement in the 1992 terror–bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires… and for his role in the 1993 terror–bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut.

 

2008 CE: HOLLYWOOD PRIESTESS “MOVERS & SHAKERS”

Covering this current decade

Descendants of the matriarch Sarah:

Gail Berrman	president, Paramount Studios
Nina Jacobson	president, Buena Vista Motion Pictures Group
Shirley Lansing	president, Paramount
Amy Pascal	co–chairman, SONY Pictures
Stacey Snyder	chairman, Universal Pictures, DreamWorks
Dawn Steel	president, Columbia Pictures
Nancy Tellem	president, CBS Paramount
Paula Weinstein	president, United Artists / Motion Picture Division
Laura Ziskin	president, Twentieth Century Fox
Nora Ephron	American film director, producer & screenwriter
Melissa Gilbert	president, Screen Actor’s Guild

 

2008 CE: TALK SHOW HOSTS EXTRAORDINAIRE

– 3 Brooklyn; 1 Philadelphia

Larry King, Leon Charney, Dennis Prager, Michael Medved

KING: Born Lawrence Harvey Ziegler in 1933, Larry King Live commenced on CNN in 1985.

Born and bred in Brooklyn, the iconic King has done over 40,000 interviews—and counting.

CHARNEY: of the Leon Charney Report.

A graduate of Yeshiva University (‘61) and Brooklyn Law School (‘64), Charney is as well a quite–respected diplomat, Forbes 400 real estate mogul, philanthropist, author and cantor. Otherwise he has not achieved much....

PRAGER: Nationally syndicated talk–show host. His flagship station is KRLA out of California.

Attended Rambam Yeshiva elementary school, Yeshiva of Flatbush High School and then Brooklyn College (‘70). Prager collaborated with noted author Joseph Telushkin on Nine Questions People Ask about Judaism.

MEDVED: American radio program host, as well as (conservative) political commentator, film critic, and author.

The Michael Medved Show airs nationwide—with more than 4 million listeners weekly—through the Salem Radio Network.

Medved founded the Pacific Jewish Center in the 1970s, a synagogue in Venice, California, where he then served as president for fifteen years. A baal teshuva (returnee to traditional Judaism), Medved was born into a Jewish family in Philadelphia. He grew up in San Diego where his scientist father worked for the defense contractor Convair and later for NASA. He is a graduate of both Yale College and Yale Law School.

 

2008 CE: CZAR PUTIN AND THE JEWS

Preeminent Russian power–player and currently Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, will assiduously protect Jewish human and political rights in the FSU (Former Soviet Union) as well as the power prerogatives of the not inconsequential group of contemporary Jewish Russian financial oligarchs.

 

2008 CE: HOMO LAPTOPICUS SPECIES EMERGES

Advanced species able to tap–into the entire universe with one (sometimes two) clicks.

Able to secure pretty much everything needed via super–super thinner than thin magic box.

(Except possibly sometimes love).

 

2008 CE: SHANGHAI, CHINA

(63 years after WWII)

April: Shuttered physically and by Communist law since WWII, Shanghai’s main and only synagogue, Ohel Moshe, allowed to reopen for its first wedding in 60 years.

The Ohana family of Shanghai holds its daughter’s wedding – under carved sign in the shul sanctuary untouched since the 1940s:

“Dah Lifnei Mi Atah Omed”

“(Mortal) Be aware and alert before Whom you stand”

Apparently, post–wedding, the [Torah Scroll] ark was sealed again (as best as I could ascertain by physical inspection December 2008).

The entire first floor has essentially been transformed into a photo exhibit hall featuring the “safe harbor” granted the Jews in Shanghai, first by the Japanese, and then by the Chinese, who re–conquered it. Note that the exhibit radically downplays the Japanese role in the saga.

 

2008 CE: SDEROT

April: Israeli town one mile north of the Gaza border…remains under intermittent but increasing ad–hoc Palestinian terrorist rocket fire (from northern Gaza)…now in 7th year under fire.

The embattled civilian town emerges as a litmus test for Israeli civilian fortitude under sustained rocket fire, (having now reached the seven–year mark), and starts attracting ever increasing international political, moral and financial support.

Evangelical Christian and Jewish groups in the USA commence massive funding to overhaul Sderot—with concrete protective walls and roofs.

Sderot will morph into a concrete fort.....structure by structure.

“Sderot will not fall”

 

2008 CE: JEWISH–AMERICAN PRESIDENTS / LEADING NORTH AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES

May: Among the Jewish thinkers and universities are:
Richard Charles Levin
(Yale University)
Lawrence Summers
(Harvard University)
James Freedman
(Dartmouth College)
Harold Shapiro
(Princeton University)
Isaac Stein
(Stanford University)
Lawrence Bacow
(Tufts University)
Jeffrey Lehman
(Cornell University)
Judith Rodin
(University of Pennsylvania)

 

2008 CE: SPORTS CLUBS

May: Among the sports clubs Jewish–owned are:
Miami Heat, 65%
(Ted Arison family of Tel Aviv, Israel)
New England Patriots (Robert Kraft)
Philadelphia Eagles (Jeffrey Lurie)
Cleveland Browns (Al Lerner)
New York Giants (the Mara & Tisch families)
Atlanta Falcons (Arthur Blank)
Philadelphia Flyers, owned by Comcast
(Brian L. Roberts)

 

2008 CE: SILICON VALLEY UPDATE / DNA CODE OF THE PROGRAM CODERS

May: Among the Jewish–born luminaries:
Sergey Brin and Larry Page
(co–Founders and CEOs of GOOGLE)
Steve Wozniak (co–founder of Apple)
Larry Ellison (co–founder and CEO of Oracle)
Paul Allen and Steve Ballmer
(respectively, the co–Founder and CEO of Microsoft)
Michael Dell (Founder and CEO of Dell Computer)
Andrew Grove (co–Founder of INTEL)
Mark Goldston (Chairman, CEO and President of
United Online, NetZero and JUNO)

 

2008 CE: MEDIA MAVENS

May: Among the communications firms with Jewish–born luminaries:
Capital Cities/ABC/Disney
(Robert Iger, President and CEO)
Viacom/CBS
(Sumner Redstone, CEO and major stockholder)
The New York Times
(Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Chairman and Publisher)
The Washington Post
(Katherine Graham Mayer family)
U.S. News and World Report
(Mortimer Zuckerman, CEO and major stockholder)
CanWest: Canada’s second largest media conglomerate
(the Jewish Asper family, Founder)
The NFL Network
(Stephen Bornstein, former head of ESPN and
President of ABC)
News Corporation, Australia
(Rupert Murdoch, Chairman and Managing Director)
[News Corporation worldwide holdings include:
in the USA: The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post, DirecTV, Fox Channel, and MySpace.com; in
England: The Sun, The Times]

 

2008 CE: SURVIVOR AT 87

May: Riverdale, NY: Bernard Adler, rounded–up by the Nazis at age 19 in Nagydobos, Hungary, Passover 1940, gazes over the Hudson River. Bernard Adler, near death 55 pounds at the time 1945 survivor of Ebanese – Mathaussen work–to–death Concentration Camp, is now 87. Now a resident of the Reingold Pavilion at Riverdale Hebrew Home in Riverdale, Adler converses in English, his fifth language (after Hungarian, Hebrew, Yiddish and German). With a 1947–8 “tour–of–duty” in Israel’s War of Independence under his belt, tailor by trade Adler in his ninth decade, now relaxes a little, and provides free tailoring via his portable sewing machine to fellow–residents and employees of the Hebrew Home. With his Holocaust–survivor wife Irene at his side in the same state of the art quasi–independent nursing–pavilion, and with two sons Arnon and Judah and his seven grandchildren primarily in the New York region, Qi–master Bernard Adler, buddy of the Northeast region liberator–veterans of the US Third Army, now prepares for his final journey.

 

2008 CE: PHOTO–OP SPECIALIST: ERIC GREENBERG

June: Greenberg, Director of InterFaith Policy of the ADL, (Anti–Defamation League of B’Nai Brith) specialist in glossy Photo–Ops with Vatican officials and clerics for his desk and for PRESS RELEASE. Stonewalls repeatedly when asked to delineate specifically if/how ADL reviewing Catholic textbooks globally 40+ years after Nostre Aetate. The anecdotal information is that “old Catholic textbooks,” quite toxic and defamatory to the Jews, are still widely in–use in Catholic schools and churches across Latin America, Eastern Europe and across the Former Soviet Union, among other regions, 40+ years after the famous Vatican pronouncement.

 

2008 CE: McCAIN AND OBAMA POISED

June 3: Sen. Barack Obama (of Illinois) secures enough delegates to clinch the Democratic Party nomination for President of the United States. He will face Republican Sen. John McCain (of Arizona) in the national election scheduled for Nov. 4.

As of June 3, Obama holds a slight (5–7 point) edge in the national polls. His key election lieutenant is David Axelrod.

 

2008 CE: MELLENCAMP RETURNS

June 10: Release of “My Sweet Love,” a featured single from John Mellencamp’s forthcoming new “electric folk rock” album, “Life, Death, Love and Freedom.” Listen.

 

2008 CE: HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL CELEBRATES ITS CENTENNIAL YEAR

June: Cambridge, MASS: HBS (Harvard Business School) tour guides usher the alumni through its iconic main building, Baker Library.

The building, “the physical and intellectual heart of the campus” according to HBS—is named in honor of the founding financier (to the tune of $5,000,000 in 1908) of HBS, New York banker George F. Baker. Baker Library is to HBS, as the White House and the Washington Monument combined, are to Washington, DC.

But tour participants are in for a surprise—as the Baker building has morphed. The north facing entrance/facade and the north facing half of the structure is still Baker Library; but, the south facing entrance/facade and the south facing half of the structure is now the Bloomberg Center (courtesy of HBS grad, Michael Bloomberg, founder of Bloomberg LLC, and Mayor of NY.) Presumably, for perhaps $50,000,000+, from Bloomberg George Baker’s ghost yields half his building – at least if you also happen to be the Mayor of New York and a legendary Info–Tech entrepreneur.

In any event, to add nice symmetry here, while 100 years ago Baker Library was designed by McKim, Mead and White, the pillar of the WASP architectural establishment, Bloomberg Hall was designed by A.M. Stern, Architects, the firm holding the equivalent rarefied niche in the American Jewish architectural pantheon. Presumably Bloomberg wanted to ‘make his statement’ on several levels.

Bloomberg Hall, in turn, faces the newly built Interdenominational Chapel, designed by Canadian Jewish architect Moshe Safdie.

Visitors are ushered, as well, through the new Schwartz Art Collection, funded by Gerald Schwartz, HBS ‘70, a leading Canadian businessman and civic leader.

Considering that HBS had a de facto Jewish quota, well into the 1970s......

 

2008 CE: CONDUCTORS PERLMAN, ZUKERMAN, BARENBOIM PLY–THEIR–TRADE

a.k.a. “the kosher nostre”

Westchester, NY: Tel Aviv–born Itzhak Perlman, noted violin virtuoso and conductor, has served as Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the Westchester Philharmonic since November 2007.

Ottawa, Canada: Tel Aviv–born Pinchas Zukerman, noted Israeli violinist, violist and conductor has served as Music Director of the Ottawa National Arts Center Orchestra since April 1998.

Berlin, Germany: Argentinean–born Daniel Barenboim, noted pianist and conductor, has served as Music Director of the Berlin State Opera since 1992.

 

2008 CE: THE JEWS OF INDIA

June: The origins of India’s Jews remain uncertain, but according to some accounts, they may have come as emissaries from the court of King Solomon (950 BCE, 3,000 years ago). They established communities and lived peacefully with Hindus, Jains, Buddhists and, later, Muslims. The absence of anti–Semitism throughout this history has been a source of pride in India.

“This is one of the few countries where Jews never faced discrimination and persecution,” said Ezekiel Isaac Malekar, a leader of the Jewish community in New Delhi.

Jews played a prominent role in several coastal cities, but nowhere more so than in Mumbai (Bombay). Jewish merchants from Iraq, Syria and other Middle Eastern countries arrived in the late eighteenth century in what was then British Bombay and quickly established themselves as leading businesspersons, opening textile mills and international trading companies.

Only about 200 of these so–called Baghdadi Jews remain in Mumbai, with the rest having immigrated to Israel, Britain and the United States. But their legacy endures: synagogues, libraries and schools, many of which serve Jews and non–Jews. They also financed the construction of several city landmarks, including the Flora Fountain and the Sassoon docks.

Today, most of Mumbai’s Jews have roots in a group known as the Bene Israel community, which claims to be descended from seven Jewish families who were shipwrecked on India’s shore while fleeing persecution in the Galilee during the second century B.C. Over the centuries, they adopted Indian language, dress and cuisine. Since India became independent, these Jews have often played influential roles in Indian society, including in government and Bollywood.

The multi–century continuum of peaceful Jewish residence in India will be shattered before year’s end. During Thanksgiving Weekend 2008 to follow in November, the Chabad House (Nariman House) in Mumbai will be one of the targets of a multi–pronged terrorist attack in Mumbai. The Chabad Rabbi and his wife, plus two mashgicachs in Nariman House for Mincha (Jewish evening prayer) plus two additional Jewish individuals inside at the time, will all be murdered within 24 hours of the initial assault. Moshe, the bloodied 2–year–old son of the rabbi and his wife, will be scooped–up by the nanny/cook as the assault unfolds, and rescued from the bloodbath.

 

2008 CE: POPE BENEDICT TO BRING BACK ANCIENT LATIN MASS

–calling for the conversion of the Jews (and others) to Christianity.

The Latin mass had been abolished by Pope John in the Nostre Aetate period.

Clearly, a retrenchment by the Vatican from the pre–Benedict status quo ante.

The Auschwitz peak murders (1942) are now 66 years ago...

As the Vatican keenly knows, the overwhelming majority of the surviving Jewish inmates are now dead or dying...... so, now only 20 years to go for the Vatican, when there will probably be less than 100 living witness–survivors....

A source of tension between Jews and the Vatican has been Pope Benedict’s decision to bring back the ancient Latin mass which calls for the Jews to recognize Jesus. Following worldwide Jewish protests and the announcement by Italy’s Jewish community that they were severing ties with the Vatican, a representative of the pope said the verse in question was a “wish,” and not a “call” on Catholics to try to convert the Jews.

Respectfully, it is a clear–cut “call” (on Catholics to try to convert the Jews).

 

2008 CE: THE PROTESTANT MOVEMENT STATUS

Protestant general “families” groupings.
(Note: some of these groups do not consider themselves as part of the Protestant movement, but are generally viewed as such by the public at large).

 

2008 CE: TRIFECTA POSSIBLE

June: With the Israeli political landscape in flux, the possibility emerged that by the Fall, the heads of each of the three Israeli branches of government would be headed by women.

LEGISLATIVE:	Speaker of the House: Dalia Itzik (since May, 2006)
JUDICIAL:	President of the Supreme Court: Dorit Beinisch (since 2006)
EXECUTIVE:	Foreign Minister: Tzipi Livni (Fall 2008)

and “in the spirit of keeping it between us”...

If any of them want some local stock information,
FINANCIAL MARKET: CEO of the Tel Aviv Stock
Exchange: (Ms.) Ester Levanon (since June, 2006)

And if they want some local banking info,
BANKING: CEO, Bank Leumi, Israel: (Ms.) Galia Maor (since 1995)

OK, so they’re talented

 

2008 CE: NOBEL LADIES TO–DATE

Jewish (or partially–Jewish, when noted):

Gerty Cori	Czech–born American biochemist
Gertrude Elion	American biochemist and pharmacologist, Zovirax
Nadine Gordimer	South–African writer
Elfriede Jelinek	Austrian writer (Jewish father)
Rita Levi–Montalcini	Italian–born American neurologist
Betty Williams	Ireland–born British peace activist (Jewish maternal grandfather)
Rosalyn Yalow	American medical physicist

 

2008 CE: “DOT.COM GIRLS”

Jewish, female super–achievers in this segment have included:

Safra Catz	Israeli–born American president of Oracle
Judith Estrin	CTO of Cisco Systems
Sheryl Sandberg	COO of Facebook

 

2008 CE: “CALIFORNIA GIRLS”

Both US Senators from California, Diane Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, are Jewish and female and in their current office since the same year, 1992.

Diane Feinstein, Democrat (b. 1933).

She was previously Mayor of San Francisco, and has served as chairperson of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee.

Born in San Francisco, Feinstein is a graduate of Stanford University (History).

Barbara Levy Boxer, Democrat (b. 1940).

She has served as chairperson of the Senate Environment and Pubic Works Committee.

Born–and–bred in Brooklyn, Boxer is a graduate of Brooklyn College (Economics).

 

2008 CE: TZURIT BERNSON WINS INTERNATIONAL BIBLE CONTEST

 

2008 CE: FRAMING THE VATICAN ISSUE

Having sown the seeds of hatred against the Jews for 2000 years, the Vatican has now spent the last 60 years slip sliding away from any moral culpability…from confronting the reality of the consequences of its actions from “coming clean” with its own people on the matter...

and, last but not least,

from actually fully and truly expunging the cancerous hatred and demonizations and denigrating stereotypes from its from its texts and passion sagas – ‘holy’ and otherwise, around the world.

In short, the Vatican has never truly ‘come clean.’

June: The Vatican has framed the issue vis à vis ‘the Jews’ as one of ‘potential “reconciliation” and of modalities of potential “dialogue.”

As we say in the theology trade, these are false idols.

For 17–20 centuries, the Vatican (and its predecessor incarnations) has been the prime enabler of virulent anti–Semitic persecution of the Jews.

The appropriate contemporary framing of the issue as regards ‘the Jews,’ is whether the contemporary Vatican not just apologizes for the moral atrocities it has committed against the Jews, which it has, but whether the Vatican intends to truly comes clean., and will clean up the toxicity to the Jews embedded In its key texts, liturgy and passion sagas

If self–appointed Jewish reconciliators for the martyred millions of Jewish victims rush to congratulate the Vatican on a stand–alone action, respectfully, the congratulatory–fest does no justice to the memories of the murdered, nor does it advance ultimate potential true reconciliation.

Ultimately, individuals as well as entities define themselves by their concrete actions, not by their posturing or by their spin.

 

2008 CE: GROSS US NATIONAL DEBT AT 70% OF GDP

(Includes Social Security debt)

Now, as comparison,

	$ DEBT in trillions	as % of GDP
2008	8.68	65.7
2000	5.63	58.0
1990	3.21	55.9
1980	0.91	33.3 < 68 year low %
1970	0.38	37.6
1960	0.29	56.1
1950	0.26	94.1
(1946	0.27	121.2) < 68 year peak %
1940	0.04	52.4

The above total deficits incorporated the following annual additions to the US public debt

year	$ increases to US deficit in trillions	as % of GDP
2008	1.02	7.4
2007	.46	3.4
2006	.54	4.1
2005	.52	4.3
2004	.61	5.3
2003	.59	5.5
2002	.41	3.9
2001	.14	1.4

By the end of 2008, the largest foreign holders of US debt were the People’s Republic of China (PRC) 24.1 %, and Japan (20.7%). The next largest foreign government holder was Brazil at 4.4%.

Israel actually held $16.9 trillion of US debt, or 55/100 of 1 percent of US gross national debt. Egypt held almost precisely the same amount.

 

2008 CE: THE VATICAN BEATIFICATION RIDDLE

June: So, as articulated prior, the riddle as regards the Vatican beatification endeavors is as follows?

Why would the Vatican press for the beatification of Pius XII [Pacelli], to the Jews the poster boy of callous indifference, who maneuvers at all costs not to jeopardize Vatican temporal interests, and not first press for the beatification of his predecessor, Pius XI [Ratti] a valorous and universally acclaimed scholar and heroic statesman, who actually frontally challenged the pre–war Nazis and their racist ideology?

Why would the Vatican skip over–
a bona fide heroic figure?
a practical idealist?
an individual who exemplified all that the Church
might have been?

 

2008 CE: SUMMA METAPHYSICA

June: released by J Levine / MILLENNIUM publishers in NY. Expounding its signature themes of “Quest for Potential” ...and “Extraordinariation.”

 

2008 CE: THIRD COMMONWEALTH AT “60 PLUS 3000” YEARS

June: State of Israel celebrates Independence Day #60

Resolute, talented, tenacious, dynamic, prosperous, proud.

Powerful – yet vulnerable.

Adroit at war; tenacious at peace dealing.

No shortage of “challenges” including sundry mortal threats.

The State of Israel maneuvers on multiple–fronts in
its multi–decade endeavor to nail down a viable
sustainable peace...

 

 

cont’d

——————————

Nous sommes revenus

——————————

====================================

The ANGELS APPROACH…

…They inexorably approach…

====================================

*** ONWARD ! ***

 

end/beginning

 

END OF TIMELINE