This Day, August 20, In Jewish History

August 20 In Jewish History

636: Arab forces defeat the Byzantine Christians at the Battle of Yarmuk. This battle fought only four years after the death of Mohammed opened the road the road to Damascus. After seizing Syria, the Arabs under Khalid bin Walid turned south and took Jerusalem and all of the territory that is now Jordan and Israel. This area had been under control of the Christian Byzantine Empire. The victory at Yarmuk led to the first great wave of Moslem conquest that would sweep across Egypt, North Africa and across the Mediterranean to Spain. Conditions for the Jews improved compared to life under the Byzantines. The Golden Age of Spain was the ultimate high point of this change. But life under Islam was uneven for Jews and they suffered in many different areas depending upon which group of Islamists was in control.

1000: The foundation of the Hungarian state, Hungary is established as a Christian kingdom by Stephen I of Hungary. Archaeological evidence indicates the existence of Jews in Pannonia and Dacia, who came there in the wake of the Roman legions. Jewish historical tradition, however, only mentions the Jews in Hungary from the second half of the 11th century, when Jews from Germany, Bohemia, and Moravia settled there. In 1092, at the council of Szabolcs, the Church prohibited marriages between Jews and Christians, work on Christian festivals, and the purchase of slaves. King Koloman protected the Jews in his territory at the end of the 11th century.

1100: Using the Venetian fleet, Tancred and Daimbert conquer Haifa during the first crusade.
1671: Leopold I revoked the decree he had issued in April expelling the Jews from the portion Hungary controlled by the Habsburgs.

1684: A riotous mob attacked the ghetto of Buda (that's the half of Budapest that is on the right bank of the Danube, which was joined with Pest on the left bank in 1873). During the war between Venice and Turkey, the Jews were accused of praying for the Turks in their attack on Budapest. In actuality, it was the 9th of Av and all the Jews were in the synagogue mourning the destruction of the temple. Soon after, the attack on the Jewish ghetto began. When the gates were opened to allow for an emissary to the duke to leave, the crowd of attackers rushed in. As soon as the authorities heard about the disturbances, an order to forcibly curb them was given. That day of the order became a day of thanksgiving. In gratitude to G-d for being spared serious injury, the Jews celebrated Buda Purim on the 10th of Elul. This date became known as Purim Buda – Buda as in Budapest.

1771: Birthdate of Schonche Rothschild, first child of A.M. Rothschild.

1806: The Assembly of Notables presented their collective response to Napoleon’s questions.

1807: Rothschild writes to his son Nathan in England that he has sold all the English goods sent to him at a considerable profit.

1852: The New York Times reported that "the French counsel is still prosecuting a demand for the satisfaction for the murder of a Roman Catholic priest at Aleppo. It was believed for a long time he was murdered by Jews, but it is now said that the Counsel has evidence that he was murdered by members of the city police for his success in building a Christian church.” The police were Moslems. The Jews were convenient by-standers. During the notorious Damascus Affair, Isaac de Picciotto, was accused of having offered to sell the priest’s blood to Jews living in Aleppo. He was the nephew of Elias de Picciotto, a prominent member of the Aleppo Jewish community and the Austrian counsel. This would be the last involvement of Aleppo with a Blood Libel. In 1875, an Armenian boy went missing and the charge surfaced again. Fortunately, he was found in a nearby village.

1852: It is reported that Lionel de Rothschild is planning to resign from the House of Commons since he has not been permitted to take his seat.

1856: In the "English Celebrities" a column published today, the author provides a description of Benjamin Disraeli which includes the following, "Nor is his faithfulness to his friendships less remarkable than his devoted attention to his old and silly wife...as Disraeli says 'I owe her everything. But some men forget these things. Not so Disraeli...at no party is he to be found without fat, middle-age, gray-haired lady, hanging on his arm. But this domestic love is an essentially Jewish trait."

1875: Birthdate of Shaul Tchernichovsky a Russian-born Hebrew poet considered one of the great Hebrew poets, identified with nature poetry, and as a poet greatly influenced by the culture of ancient Greece.

1893: Sh'chita was banned in Switzerland. (The ban is still in place and the Jewish community gets its meat from several different countries.)

1901: The First Congress of Caucasus Zionists was held in Tbilisi. Rabbi David Baazov led Georgian Zionism during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1903, Baazov attended the Sixth Zionist Congress in Basel.

1903: Herzl arrives in Basel.

1912(7th of Elul, 5672): Walter Goodman, British painter, illustrator and author, passed away.

1915(9th of Elul, 5675): Paul Ehrlich, the man who discovered the treatment for syphilis, passed away. Born in Germany in 1854 Ehrlich gained famed for his work in immunology and chemotherapy. He won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1901. He received numerous honors from the German government. He was 61 at the time of his death.

1919: Birthdate of Walter Bernstein an American screenwriter and film producer who was blacklisted by the Hollywood movie studio bosses in the 1950s.

1920: Israel publishes its first medical journal, "Ha-Refuah."

1923: Birthdate Sheldon Bernard Keller, an Emmy-winning comedy writer whose work included “Caesar’s Hour,” one of the jewels of 1950s television. Keller, who was always called Shelly, was born in Chicago. His parents, immigrants from Poland, had built a successful business in Chicago making and selling corsets. Attending the University of Illinois, Mr. Keller teamed up with a fraternity brother, Allan Sherman, to put on comic shows. Mr. Sherman, who went on to create the game show “I’ve Got a Secret,” also become known for his albums of Yiddish-inflected song parodies. World War II interrupted Mr. Keller’s studies. Stationed in the Pacific with the Army Signal Corps, he helped entertain the troops with an Army buddy, Carl Reiner. At war’s end Mr. Keller went dutifully into the family business but soon realized that a life in corsets was not for him. Borrowing $500, he moved to New York to try his hand at television. (Mr. Keller did, however, oblige his parents and Mr. Sherman by appearing as a guest on “I’ve Got a Secret” in the early 1950s. His secret: He was wearing a girdle. The sequel to “Your Show of Shows” and also starring Sid Caesar, “Caesar’s Hour” ran on NBC from 1954 to 1957; Mr. Keller joined the staff about a year after the program started. His fellow writers there included Mel Brooks, Larry Gelbart and Neil Simon. With Hal Goldman and Al Gordon, Mr. Keller received an Emmy in 1966 for the variety show “An Evening With Carol Channing,” broadcast on CBS. With Mr. Gelbart, he wrote the screenplay for “Movie Movie” (1978), a critically praised comic sendup of 1930s Hollywood films. His other work included writing specials for Frank Sinatra, Danny Kaye and Carol Channing, as well as episodes of “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” “M*A*S*H” and other series. In the late 1980s and afterward Mr. Keller, with Howard Albrecht and other writers, published newsletters of jokes, among them “Funny Stuff From the Gags Gang.” Geared toward radio D.J.s, the newsletters were also read by toastmasters, politicians and anyone else who might need a joke at a moment’s notice. A sample: “A veterinarian and a taxidermist went into business together. Their motto: ‘Either Way You Get Your Dog Back.’ ”

1929: As the Arab riots continued a late-night meeting initiated by the Jewish leadership, at which acting high commissioner Harry Luke, Jamal al-Husayni, and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi were present, failed to produce a call for an end to the violence.

1929: Haganah leaders proposed to provide defense for 600 Jews of the Old Yishuv in Hebron, or to help them evacuate. However, the leaders of the Hebron community declined these offers, insisting that they trusted the A'yan (Arab notables) to protect them.

1930: Dr. Jacob Levitsky, a math teacher in Jerusalem, has won Yale’s annual $2000 prize Sterling Fund. Levitsky is a graduate of Tel Aviv High School and the University of Goettingen

1933: Gabriel Terra, President of Uruguay issued a special decree, permitting 500 Jewish families, fleeing from Germany, to enter the country. The Jewish Immigrant Aid Society had petitioned the President on behalf of the country’s Jewish community.

1933: In Montevideo, Vos Hebres (The Hebrew Voice), defended the Jews against attacks which followed permission being given for the immigration of 500 German-Jewish families.

1933: The Jewish National Fund announced that it has reclaimed 300,000 dunams of land (75,000 acres) in the Emek since 1923, and that 10,000 people are settled on it.

1933: The Keren Hayesod (Palestine Foundation Fund) reported that it has collected in the past two years £400,077; of which the United States contributed one-third (£133,545); during the 12 years of its existence, the Fund has raised £4,821,510 of which the United States contributed one-half (£2,409,392).
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1935: The world Zionist leader, Dr. Nahum Sokolow, with almost the first words of his presidential speech tonight shattered reports that the nineteenth biennial Zionist congress would sidestep the situation of German Jews, out of deference to delegates from the Reich, who were among the representatives from forty-three nations.

1938: Hank Greenberg hits three homers, bringing his total to 41 which puts him ahead of Babe Ruth’s record breaking 1927 pace.

1939: General debate in the twenty-first World Zionist Congress had to be suspended today after an announcement at the morning's meeting of a decision by the court of the congress to reduce the number of mandates allotted to the Palestine delegations from 133 to 127.

1940: Leon Trotsky is attacked by an assassin in Mexico City. Trotsky is hiding from Stalin who has ordered Trotsky’s execution. Trotsky will die of his wounds the following day. According to one version of the story, had moved from a fortress like villa to an unguarded homes because of a dispute over a woman.

1941: A low-rent United States Housing' Authority development in East St. Louis, Il, has been named in memory of Samuel Gompers, longtime president of the American Federation of Labor.

1941: For the next 48 hours about 4300 Jews are sent from Paris to Drancy, a transit camp in France. These are the first of 70,000 Jews who will be deported to Drancy and then to extermination camps, primarily Auschwitz-Birkenau

1941(26th of Av, 5701): Several Jews were pulled from their homes in Sabac by the Germans, then brought into the street and shot. The Germans made other Jews come carry the dead bodies through the town, and then hang them from electricity poles. This attacked was the beginning of a series of attacks which lasted for 2 months and resulted in several thousands of Jewish murders.

1942 The ZOB (Jewish Fighting Organization) attempts to assassinate Joseph Szerynski, commander of the Jewish police in the Warsaw Ghetto. Later in the day, other ZOB members set fire to several Warsaw warehouses.

1942(6th of Elul, 5702): The Jewish community from Falenica, Poland, is liquidated at the Treblinka death camp.

1942: For the next four days, nineteen thousand Jews of Kielce, Poland, are deported to the Treblinka death camp.

1942: For the next four days gas/disinfectant expert Kurt Gerstein observes gas executions at the Treblinka, one day after witnessing similar deaths at Belzec.

1943(18th of Av, 5703): Three thousand Jews are executed during a revolt at Glebokie, Belorussia.

1944: The United States Army Air Force bombs Auschwitz III (oil and rubber plant), three miles from Auschwitz I (main camp) and five miles from Birkenau, the Auschwitz death camp. 127 bombers escorted by 100 fighters (who face only 19 German planes) drop more than 1300 500-pound bombs. Only one bomber is shot down. This puts the lie to the claim that allied airpower could not have knocked out the rails leading to the death camps or to the crematorium. This had been the plea of many Jewish leaders. The facts of the matter are that allied leaders were not willing to risk planes or men to save Jews. On the morning of August 20, 1944, a group 127 US B-17 bombers, called Flying Fortresses, approached Auschwitz. They were escorted by 100 P-51 Mustang fighter planes. Most of the Mustangs were piloted by Tuskegee Airmen of the 332nd Fighter Group. The attacking force dropped more than 1,000 500-pound bombs on German oil factories less than five miles from the gas chambers. Despite German anti-aircraft fire and a squadron of German fighter planes, none of the Mustangs was hit and only one of the US planes was shot down. All of the units reported successfully hitting their targets. On the ground below, Jewish slave laborers, including 15 year-old Elie Wiesel, cheered the bombing. In his best-selling memoir, Night, Wiesel described their reaction: "We were not afraid. And yet, if a bomb had fallen on the blocks [the prisoners' barracks], it alone would have claimed hundreds of victims on the spot. But we were no longer afraid of death; at any rate, not of that death. Every bomb that exploded filled us with joy and gave us new confidence in life. The raid lasted over an hour. If it could only have lasted ten times ten hours!" But it did not. Even though there were additional US bombing raids on German industrial sites in the Auschwitz region in the weeks and month to follow, the gas chambers and crematoria were never targeted. The Roosevelt administration knew about the mass murder going on in Auschwitz, and even possessed diagrams of the camp that were prepared by two escapees. But when Jewish organizations asked the Roosevelt administration to order the bombing of the camp and the railways leading to it, the requests were rejected. US officials claimed such raids were "impracticable" because they would require "considerable diversion" of planes needed for the war effort. But the Tuskegee veterans know that claim was false. They were right there in the skies above Auschwitz. No "diversion" was necessary to drop a few bombs on the mass-murder machinery or the railways leading into the camp. Sadly, those orders were never given. The decision to refrain from bombing Auschwitz was part of a broader policy by the Roosevelt administration to refrain from taking action to rescue Jews from the Nazis or provide havens for them. The US did not want to deal with the burden of caring for large numbers of refugees. And its ally, Great Britain, would not open the doors to Palestine to the Jews, for fear of angering Arab opinion. The result was that the Allies failed to confront one of history's most compelling moral challenges.

1952(28th of Av, 5712): Yitzhak Sadeh, the founder of the Palmach and a hero of the War of Independence passed away at the age of 62. While a name unknown to most non-Israelis. Yitzhak Sadeh was a brave man who played a key role in the founding of the state of Israel. He was the commander for the Palmach units, a soldier, a writer, an educator, and was one of the founders of Tshal. He originally lived in Russia, but he moved to Israel later in his life. Yitzhak was born in Lubin, Poland in 1890. He began his military career, by fighting for the Russian army in World War One. Later, he was honored for his bravery in the war. During 1917, 1918, and 1919, Yitzhak Sadeh, with the help of Joseph Trumpeldor, established the foundation of “Ha- Halutz”. “Ha- Halutz”, in 1920, made an aliyah to the land of Israel. He moved as soon as he heard of his friend, Joseph Trumpeldor’s death. When Yitzhak arrived in Israel, he became one of the founders of the “Gdud-Ha-Avoda”. In 1929, Sadeh joined the Hagganah. He was made commander in the Hagganah, in Jerusalem, shortly after he joined. During the 1929 riots, he took part in defending the city of Haifa. When the 1936 riots started, Sadeh established the “Nodedt” in Jerusalem. This organization was the one that confronted the enemy in their villages and in the army bases. Yitzhak introduced a policy for defending settlements by going out to attack the Arab bands, instead of staying behind the fences of their settlements to await the raids. In the summer of 1937, Sadeh founded the “Fosh”. He also commanded the kibbutz of Hanitah. One of the things that Yitzhak Sadeh is most famous for is founding the Palmach. He served as chief commander for the Palmach until 1945. During 1945, he was appointed to be Hagganah’s Chief of General staff. He was also in charge of planning operations against the British forces. Yitzhak planned many operations involving bringing Jewish immigrants to the Promised Land, Israel. In the beginning of the Independence War in 1948, Yitzhak Sadeh commanded the defense of the kibbutz, Mishmar Ha-Emek. Kibbutz Mishmar Ha-Emek was attacked by Syrian forces, which were trying to divide the country into two parts. After this, Sadeh was promoted to the job of “Aluf”. When he was promoted, he was able to establish the first armored brigade in the IDF. The Israeli Defense Forces, later, led critical battles for the state of Israel. After the War of Independence, Yitzhak participated in the operation, “Khorev”. Also, the Palmach was disconnected. Sadeh left the military services in 1949. After retiring from the army, he wrote many books, essays, and even plays. He would write with the pen name, Y. Noded. Sadeh promoted a lot of sports. He was the wrestling champion of St. Petersburg and featured in wrestling performances. He thought of sports being an important part of life and it held important cultural and educational value. He created Hapoel’s slogan, “Alafim and not Alufim”. They wanted many people to take part in sports. Thousands of sports figures and soldiers, to this day, take part in the Run around Mount Tavor, in honor of Yitzhak Sadeh. Yitzhak Sadeh died in Tel-Aviv in August 1952, and was buried in Kibbutz Givat Brenner. He was a very brave man. Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak and kibbutz Mashabey Sadeh were named after Yitzhak Sadeh

1952: Work started on a number of concrete dams, expected to hold back the rainwater accumulating in the Negev wadis during the winter. This was part of the Zionist dream to make the Negev green.

1952: Birthdate of American singer-song write Doug Fieger.
1960: Larry Sherry pitches the Dodgers past the Cards for his 12th win of the season

1964: President Lyndon Johnson signed an anti-poverty bill that would commit almost one billion dollars to the “War on Poverty.” The measure had the support of numerous Jewish political leaders and Jewish voters. This was an era when Jewish voters were drawn to politicians who supported a society that sought to care for the “widow, the orphan and the stranger in your midst.”

1971: FBI begins covert investigation of journalist Daniel Schorr. Schorr would become a member of Richard Nixon’s infamous enemies list. Earlier in his career, Schoor had been thrown out of the Soviet Union for his news broadcasts. This makes him one of the few people to be declared an enemy by both the Soviet Communists and right-wing American Anti-Communists.

1977: Despite the initial rejection by both Israel and Jordan, US officials were still hopeful that their idea of establishing a joint Israeli-Jordanian temporary trusteeship over the West Bank could yet get off the ground.

1977: The French government appeared to be reconciled to a new period of chilly relations after Israel rejected its contention that the three new settlements in administered areas hampered peace prospects.

1977: The US Central Intelligence Agency told Congressional investigators that enriched uranium, designed to build atomic bombs, was mysteriously diverted from the privately owned American plant to Israel in the middle 1960s

1980: The UN Security Council condemns (14-0, US abstains) Israeli declaration that all of Jerusalem is its capital. The UN Security Council never said or did anything about the illegal occupation of the eastern section of Jerusalem by Jordan that lasted for almost twenty years. During that same time, the UN was equally silent when it came to the fact that Jews were not allowed to enter the Old City or that the Jordanians had systematically dismembered the physical remains of the ancient Jewish Quarter. This lack of equivalent concern is but one of a long list of reasons by why many Israelis and as well as others have lost respect for the United Nations.

1982: During the Lebanese Civil War a multinational force lands in Beirut to oversee the PLO withdrawal from Lebanon. The Lebanese Civil War was conflict between Christian and Moslem Arabs. It was part of centuries old struggle for power that flared up periodically. The PLO had come to Lebanon after having been thrown out of Jordan where it had attempted to overthrow the government. The PLO was a destabilizing force in Lebanon as its fighters took the side of the Moslems and tried to use Lebanon as a base for terrorist attacks against Israel. The PLO had to go because of its role in destroying the social fabric of Lebanon which had been an oasis of Western progress and civility in among the violent Arab dictatorships of the Middle East.

1985: Israel ships 96 TOWs to Iran on behalf of the US. The TOW missiles were shipped as part of an arms deal that became known as Iran Contra.

1985: The New York Times features a review (see below) of Jerusalem: Rebirth of a City by Martin Gilbert, a first rate book by a first rate author and historian. There is no such thing as “a bad” Martin Gilbert book since the works of this author range from very good to great.

No city in the world can have captured more imaginations and stirred more hearts over the centuries than Jerusalem. No city, in the 19th century, was more liable to provoke comments on the dismal contrast between past and present, between the image and the reality. A stream of visitors recorded their impressions of the prevailing torpor, the poverty, the filth, the squalid squabbles between different races and religious communities. In 1838, the year Martin Gilbert chooses to open his chronicle of Jerusalem's reviving fortunes, the American biblical scholar Edward Robinson, one of the earliest archeologists to work in the city, lamented - with good reason - that ''the glory of Jerusalem has indeed departed.'' From its ''ancient high estate'' it had declined into ''the neglected capital of a petty Turkish province,'' with a population of fewer than 16,000 (5,000 Muslim Arabs, 3,000 Christian Arabs, 6,000 Jews, a Turkish garrison, a small colony of European traders and missionaries). At the end of the century, which is where Mr. Gilbert closes his account, guidebooks were still stressing the stagnation and decay, and most travelers were still recording their disappointment or distaste. Theodor Herzl, visiting the city for the first time in 1898, wrote in his diary that ''when I remember thee in days to come, O Jerusalem, it will not be with delight.'' He wished that it were possible to tear down everything except the sacred sites and begin all over again. Yet for over half a century important changes had in fact been taking place in the city, changes that were gradually to draw it back into the mainstream of history. While Mr. Gilbert bases much of his survey on the rich range of literature in which visitors recorded their impressions, his central theme is the slow transformation that was already in progress, but which most visitors underestimated or failed to appreciate. In some ways 1839 would have made a more appropriate starting point. In that year a British vice consul took up residence - the only foreign diplomat in the city, though before long the appointment prompted other powers to show the flag. Russian and French consulates were established in 1841; an Anglican bishopric was created the same year; in due course Germans, Austrians and Italians made their presence felt, the Germans in particular. An American consul was appointed in 1857 and promptly found himself embroiled in a dispute with the local Turkish commander, who refused to arrange a 21-gun salute on the Fourth of July on the grounds that such honors ought to be reserved for monarchies, not mere republics. (The consul eventually carried the day.) The diplomatic campaigns were generally accompanied by an increase in missionary work, which inevitably became a fresh cause of dissension in a city already riven by conflicts - often violent ones - not only between Christian, Moslem and Jew but between a multitude of subgroups and separate denominations. The religious life of the city was both colorful and intense, but it all too often reminds you of Jonathan Swift's remark that we have just enough religion to make us hate, but not to love one another. Of the major religious groupings, it was the Jews who recorded the largest gain in numbers during the period Mr. Gilbert covers. By 1896 Jerusalem had a population of 45,000, of whom 28,000 were Jewish and the rest divided almost equally between Moslems and Christians. Although Sephardi immigrants from many different parts of the world, including Yemen and Bukhara, had settled in the city, the Ashkenazim, who had been in a minority 60 years earlier, now predominated. Most Ashkenazim came from Eastern Europe, most of them were still rigidly orthodox, and heavily dependent on charity from Jews living abroad. But since the days of Sir Moses Montefiore (who had paid his first visit to Palestine in 1827) there had been attempts to introduce social and educational reforms, and by the 1880's change - though it met with bitter resistance - was increasingly in the air. The Alliance Israelite Universelle of Paris played a particularly important part in sponsoring secular education and technical training. Meanwhile modern institutions and inventions had belatedly taken root in the city. The first printing press was established in 1840, the first hotel in 1843, the first bank in 1848. An overland telegraph was opened in 1865 (an Arab who threw his spear at it was sentenced to death for damaging Ottoman property and hanged from one of the posts). In 1892, the railroad finally made its appearance: a narrow-gauge, single-track line that wound its way up from Jaffa. By normal 19th-century standards, none of this progress was exactly spectacular, and contemporaries can surely be forgiven for emphasizing the unchanging, even the apparently moribund aspects of Jerusalem. It is only in retrospect that it is easy to discern in fairly modest developments the shape of major achievements and far-reaching conflicts to come. At the very end of the century, however, two interconnected events should have made it clear, even without the benefit of hindsight that history wasn't standing still. In 1898 Kaiser Wilhelm II visited Jerusalem, riding into the city through a triumphal arch on a black charger, in full ceremonial uniform. Theodor Herzl was there at the same time; he had come specially to meet him. A new and uncertain future was at hand. Mr. Gilbert has written a lively book, full of excellent quotations -roundly outspoken and often eloquent in the 19th-century manner - and providing glimpses of figures as diverse as Herman Melville and the future Emperor Maximilian of Mexico, along with many curious minor characters. It is also a handsome book, decked out with a large number of striking photographs 1988: In Chicago, The pastor of a black church told members of a Jewish congregation Friday night that the common backgrounds of the two groups should be remembered as the two communities reach toward common ground. "We forgot our histories," the Rev. George Riddick, executive vice president of Operation PUSH, told members of Congregation Kol Ami in the first-of-its-kind pulpit exchange.

1991(9th of Elul, 5751): Lenore Strunsky Gershwin widow of Ira Gershwin passed away. She was 90 years old at the time of her death.

1993: After rounds of secret negotiations in Norway, the Oslo Peace Accords were signed. A more public signing ceremony would take place in Washington in September of 1993.

2000: The New York Times book section featured reviews of Touching Peace: From the Oslo Accord to a Final Agreement by Yossi Beilin, Cruel Banquet: The Life and Loves of Frida Strindberg by Monica Strauss and Dream Stuff, a collection of nine short stories by David Malouf, the Australian author with the Lebanese Christian father and the Sephardic Jewish mother.

2001(1st of Elul, 5761): Rosh Chodesh Elul

2002: The Jerusalem Post reported that the Hebrew University archeologist Dr. Eila Mazar's 120-page The Complete Guide to the Temple Mount Excavations has just been translated into English. The new comprehensive guide describes thesite's 3,000 years of history. Chronologically color-coded and divided into sections with a pull-out map at the end, the guide is replete with pictures of the original excavations of the site between 1968 and 1978; depictions of how the site may have looked at the time it housed the two ancient Jewish Temples, as well as modern photos of the site. The guide is meant to offer the visitor a "simple, accurate, and up-to-date synopsis" of the immense 30-dunam (7.5 acre) site in a user-friendly manner, explains Mazar. "For years we have waited for this comprehensive guide... [which] is a masterful piece of work that allows the general audience a closer look at the past the Temple Mount in all of its original glory," former Jerusalem mayor Teddy Kollek writes in a forward. The guide, which is on sale in both English and Hebrew at the new archeological garden near the Western Wall, is not yet available outside Israel, as Mazar is still looking for an American distributor for her latest work. A third-generation archeologist and the granddaughter of famed archeologist Professor Binyamin Mazar, who headed the Temple Mount excavations between 1968-1978, Eilat Mazar, was part of the City of David excavation team from 1981-1985. She later led excavations at the Ophel archeological park in the Old City on behalf of the Hebrew University's Institute of Archeology. Recently, Mazar has been one of the most outspoken and vociferous members of the non-partisan Committee Against the Destruction of Antiquities on the Temple Mount, which has decried the lack of archeological supervision at the site for two years. Fearing renewed Palestinian violence, police have barred non-Muslims, including archeologists, from entering the Mount since then-opposition leader Ariel Sharon's controversial visit to the site in September 2000. Since then the site has been entirely without archeological supervision. Th23 months since that time is the longest period the site has been closed to non-Muslims since the unification of Jerusalem in 1967."The joy of seeing the guide out in both Hebrew and English, with all the information about remnants and antiquities that have been found at the Temple Mount, only reinforces the frustration over the fact that the Mount has been closed off to non-Muslim visitors for over two years," Mazar said.

2004: A Walking tour today styled ''Emma Lazarus and the Jewish Heritage of Washington Square'' passes the former home of Emma Lazarus, the Triangle Shirt Waist Factory and the Hanging Elm of Washington Square Park.

2005(14th of Av, 5765): Abraham S. Goldstein, an influential scholar of criminal law and former dean of the Yale Law School, died of a heart attack at his home in Woodbridge, Connecticut. Goldstein taught at the Law School for almost 50 years and was, at the time of his death, Sterling Professor Emeritus of Law and Professorial Lecturer in Law. He was 80.

2005: The evacuation of settlers and their supporters from Gaza halted because of the Shabbat. The evacuations which are part of a bold move by Prime Minister Sharon to bring peace to the region while improving the geo-political position of Israel is slated to end on Tuesday.
2006: The Sunday New York Times book section includes a review of I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman by Nora Ephron.

2006: The Chicago Tribune reported that Clara Ambrus-Baire, a woman whose family shielded Jews in Budapest had received a “Righteous Among the Nations Award.” The award is presented to people who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust. It is the highest honor bestowed on non-Jews by Israel, with 21,310 recipients as of January 2006. Ambrus-Baer was 19 when the Germans invaded Budapest in 1944. Her family turned its home into a haven for Jews hiding from the Nazis. "I never expected this," said Ambrus-Baer, 81 and living in Buffalo. "I didn't want to get praised for what I did. I took it for normal that somebody saves people's lives."

2007: “The Facebook Effect” is Newsweek Magazine’s cover story. The story describes how 23 year old “Mark Zuckerberg has already changed the way millions of us connect. How he’s facing a challenge; how to turn an online obsession into a fixture of he digital age” If the pundits and prophets are correct, Zuckerberg will join the likes of Einstein and Freud as one who has brought a sea change in the course of Western, if not world, Civilization.

2007: In an article favorably evaluating the performance of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, The New York Times included the following. “But to understand Mr. Bernanke’s worldview, one must go back to his hometown, Dillon, S.C., which sits athwart Interstate 95 about halfway between North Jersey and South Florida. Dillon is known as the home of South of the Border, the Tijuana-themed tourist stop and a Mecca of American roadside kitsch. Mr. Bernanke, 53, grew up in Dillon in the 1950s and ’60s, the son of the local pharmacist and a member of one of the few Jewish families in the largely agricultural region. He says his home was the only kosher household in a 50-mile radius. His mother had meat delivered from a butcher in Charlotte, N.C., where his parents live now. Being a member of a minority taught him about discrimination and prejudice. “There was more than one request to see my horns,” he said years later. He also watched the struggles of small farmers, who drove mule-drawn carts down the main street of town and had trouble paying their bills even in good years. His father granted credit for purchases at the drugstore, keeping records on small cards he kept in a drawer. Many of the debts were never repaid. As Mr. Bernanke grew older, the textile mills that had supported the area closed and moved overseas in search of cheap labor. Mr. Bernanke worked construction jobs and waited on tables at South of the Border during the summer while an undergraduate at Harvard University. “I was impressed by these experiences,” Mr. Bernanke said last fall at a ceremony in his honor on the steps of the neoclassical courthouse in Dillon, “and I think they were an important reason I went into economics, which a great economist once called the study of people in the ordinary business of life.”

2007: A database with millions of documents from more than 50 concentration camps and prisons - which include books recording Jewish deaths, transportation lists and medical reports - was handed over to Yad Vashem Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Authority and Washington's Holocaust Memorial Museum. "These documents reflect the most despicable operations of the Nazi era and constitute an essential part of our archive," said International Tracing Service (ITS) director Reto Meister during the official handover at the Washington museum.

2008: After a disappointing run for Israel in the Beijing Olympics, windsurfer Shahar Zubari finally gave Israelis a reason to cheer. Zubari won the bronze medal at today's Neil Pryde finals, Israel's first medal at the 2008 games, after arriving in second place in the final race.

2008: The New York Times included a review of The Grift by Debra Ginsberg.

2008: About 50 rabbis in charge of supervising the kosher slaughter and processing of meat at the Agriprocessors Inc. plant in Postville walked off the job today to protest recent pay cuts. The rabbis reportedly took the action because of a decrease in pay since a May 12 immigration raid, the largest in U.S. history. Agriprocessors spokesman Menachem Lubinsky downplayed the incident, saying the walkout lasted only 30 minutes. But Lubinsky said the issue of decreased pay, as well as increased time between work performed and payment, has been an issue for the rabbis since the raid. “The rabbis were complaining that they didn’t have as much time for overtime and additional shifts,” Lubinsky said.

2008: A former Agriprocessors Inc. supervisor pleaded guilty today to helping his employer hire illegal immigrants. Juan Carlos Guerrero-Espinoza, 35, a former upper-level supervisor at the kosher meatpacking plant in Postville, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Cedar Rapids to conspiracy to hire and aiding and abetting the hiring of illegal immigrants. Guerrero-Espinoza admitted in court to hiring more than 10 workers, knowing that they were illegal immigrants. He allegedly told employees he supervised May 7 that they would be fired and immediately rehired by Agriprocessors, and that he knew they were undocumented immigrants. Guerrero-Espinoza could be sentenced up to five years in prison on each charge. Pete Deegan, assistant U.S. Attorney for Northern District, said the plea agreement asks for a four- or five-year sentence and two more years than the court would otherwise impose because of dismissed and uncharged criminal conduct. Guerrero-Espinoza has pleaded not guilty to two other charges of aiding and abetting another person in knowingly possessing, obtaining, accepting and receiving a resident alien card, knowing the card was unlawfully obtained and knowingly aiding and abetting the transfer, possession and use of, without lawful authority, a resident alien card assigned to another person. Another former supervisor, Martin De La Rosa-Loera, 43, was charged last month with one count of aiding and abetting. He has pleaded not guilty. Their trials are set for Septemer 15.

2008: The decision by Perth Magistrate Barbara Lane today to allow the extradition of Karoly (Charles) Zentai to Hungary to stand trial for the murder of Jewish teenager Peter Balazs in Budapest on November 8, 1944, paves the way for an unprecedented, historic victory for Holocaust justice in Australia. Assuming, as expected, that Zentai's appeals against the decision will be rejected, all that will be missing will be the signature of Home Affairs Minister Bob Debus for Australia to succeed for the first time ever in taking successful legal action against a Holocaust perpetrator living in the country. This long and difficult process began 22 years ago when the Australian government initiated the Menzies Review to investigate allegations that numerous East European Nazi collaborators had gained entry to the country posing as innocent refugees from Communism. The Review confirmed these claims and recommended that legal action be taken against these criminals. In 1989 parliament passed an amendment allowing the prosecution of Holocaust perpetrators in Australian courts. But for variety of reasons, all three prosecutions mounted by Australia's "Special Investigations Unit" failed and the prosecution effort for all practical purposes was shut down on June 30, 1992. This was particularly unfortunate since the prospects of successes at this point had become much better due to the breakup of the Soviet Union and the greater access to witnesses and documents regarding the crimes committed by the suspects living in Australia, all of whom hailed from Eastern Europe. But the initial outlay of A$19 million for the operations of the unit and its initial failures evoked considerable political opposition and led to its premature closure. Since that fateful decision, Australia has had two concrete opportunities to act against Nazi war criminals residing in the country. In both cases, the initiative came from the country in which the suspect committed his crimes. The first was that of Konrad Kalejs, who served as an officer in the infamous Arajs Kommando, a Latvian murder squad that killed at least 30,000 Jews in Latvia alone. (It was later sent to Belarus to assist in the murder of Jews there.) At the end of World War II Kalejs moved to Denmark, and he emigrated to Australia in 1950, where he initially served as an immigration screening officer. He later moved to the United States, Canada and Great Britain, all of which expelled him when his wartime activities in the Arajs Kommando were revealed, only to return to Australia each time. When Latvia finally was convinced to ask for his extradition, which was approved in an Australian court, it appeared that justice would be achieved. But Kalejs died in Melbourne in 2001 before he could be extradited, one of many Nazi killers who escaped to Australia who were able to elude justice. That leaves the case of Karoly Zentai who was discovered in late 2004 living in Perth, after evidence of his crimes was sent to the Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem by the brother of his victim. Zentai served in a unit of the Hungarian army that was active in hunts for Jews in Budapest in the fall of 1944 (when the fascist Arrow Cross came to power) and played a major role in the murder of 18 year old Peter Balazs whom he caught without the requisite yellow star on a streetcar in Budapest on November 8, 1944. (He and Zentai grew up in the suburb of Budafolk, so the latter knew that the former was Jewish.) Shortly after I submitted the evidence of Zentai's crimes to prosecutors in Budapest, Hungary asked for his extradition to stand trial. But Zentai has been able until today to postpone his extradition via a variety of legal maneuvers that had absolutely nothing to do with his case. Now that Magistrate Lane has ruled that the extradition can proceed, the final moment of truth has arrived, not only for Zentai but also for Australia.

2009: Rosh Chodesh Elul (First Day)

2009: The final of a 3 part series of security briefings for leaders of Jewish institutions in Northern Virginia sponsored by ADL, JCRC & the Jewish Federation Learn featuring presentations y Local Police District Commanders, FBI Senior Personnel, and national Jewish security experts about the latest threats to Jewish communal security and how to be prepared takes place at Congregation Ahavat Israel (Fairfax Chabad) in Fairfax, VA.

2009: In a video-taped message to be screened today at a rally to be held at Rabbi Reuven Elbaz's Or Hachaim Yeshiva in Jerusalem, Shas mentor Rabbi Ovadia Yosef lashes out at the Supreme Court for rejecting former minister Shlomo Benizri's appeal to shorten his four-year prison sentence for corruption charges. In the taped message which can be described as somewhere between inflammatory and incendiary, the rabbi declares, "The courts are twisted and the judges don't believe in anything. They are apostates."

2009: Today the High Court of Justice rejected a petition accusing the Company for Location and Restitution of Holocaust Victims Assets of breaking the law by allocating funds to organizations that were not solely dedicated to the welfare of Holocaust survivors. The petition was filed in 2008 by The Fund on Behalf of Holocaust Victims in Israel, which was established in 1991 by the umbrella organization of survivors groups. The petitioners accused the company, in 2008, of taking NIS 25 million in funds it had collected from the assets of Holocaust victims whose heirs could not be found, and allocating this money to nine organizations, most of which did not help only survivors. The recipient groups included a non-profit organization for dental care, the Latet philanthropic organization, Eshel, which provides elderly care, Law in the Service of the Elderly, and Meir Panim. The petitioners, represented by attorney Daphna Holtz-Lechner, said that the Holocaust Victims Assets Law (Restitution to Heirs and Endowment for Purposes of Assistance and Commemoration) 2006, on whose basis the company was established, stated that the group must either return the assets it retrieves to the rightful heirs or, in case it can find no heirs, distribute the funds to victims or organizations that serve the victims. However, a panel of three justices - including Miriam Naor, Edna Arbel and Yoram Danziger - ruled that organizations that provided assistance to Holocaust survivors were eligible for the funding even if they served others as well. "Article 4(a)(4) of the law does not state that the company is authorized to support only those institutions and bodies whose sole aim is to assist Holocaust survivors, and therefore it may support other organizations whose declared and principle aims are not necessarily to help Holocaust survivors," wrote Danziger. Beyond the actual wording of the law, he continued, its aim, as made clear in the explanation of the law, "is to support the Holocaust survivors and help them in every possible way." Since the organizations which received funding in 2008 do indeed help survivors, they meet the criteria of the law. In essence, the petition has become irrelevant since it was filed because the Company for Location and Restitution of Holocaust Victims Assets announced it would distribute money in 2009 directly to the survivors themselves. The spokesman for The Fund on Behalf of Holocaust Victims in Israel could not be reached for comment by press time.

2010: "A Film Unfinished" Directed by Yael Harsonski is scheduled to premier at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema in New York City.

Created, Compiled and Edited by Mitchell A. Levin, Cedar Rapids, IA melech3@mchsi.com

Source: http://thisdayinjewishhistory.blogspot.com/2010/08/this-day-august-20-in-jewish-history.html