MarCheshvan

[1 MarCheshvan]

• Biblical plague of Dever.
• The seventh and last of the Crusades ended, 1270.
• Rabbi Yehuda HaChasid arrived in Jerusalem, 1700. He died 3 days later. A shul was built on land he had purchased for that purpose, and was named for him. The Arabs burned the shul in 1720. It was rebuilt in 1837 and destroyed by the Arabs again in 1948. Today it is known as the Hurva.

[2 MarCheshvan]

• Purim Mo’ed Katan celebrated by Jews in Persia who escaped forced conversions.
• Pogrom in Odessa took 300 Jewish lives, 1905.
• Mir Yeshiva was forced to close its doors after 124 years, 1939. Today, B”H, it is alive and well in Jerusalem.
• Nazis executed 10,000 Vilna Jews, 1941.

[3 MarCheshvan]

• King Cyrus of Persia formally occupied Babylon, 579 b.c.e.
• Last of 16,000 Jews of England expelled by King Edward I left, 1290.
• Germany occupied Kharkov – 20,000 Jews fall into Nazi hands, 1941.

[4 MarCheshvan]

• Rambam reached Jerusalem, 1165, six months after his arrival in Eretz Yisrael. He and his family celebrated the date as a private holiday.
• Rumanian soldiers massacre 26,000 Jews of Odessa, ’41.
• Nazis liquidate Riga ghetto, 1943.
• Torquemada was appointed Inquisitor-General of Spain, 1483.
• Purim Edom by the Algerian Jewish Community celebrating their escape from capture by the Spanish army, 1541.
• Yahrzeit of Rabbi Yehuda HaChasid, leader of a large Ashkenazi aliya, 1700 – 3 days after his arrival. (The “Hurva” was originally the shul named for him.)
• Austria’s Jews were forbidden to have the first names of Christian saints, 1834.

[5 MarCheshvan]

• Jews of Landau, Germany, ordered to wear yellow badge, 1468 (notice that the yellow badge was not invented by the Nazis).
• Yahrzeit of Rabbi Tzvi Hirsch Kalischer, 1874.
• Yahrzeit of Rabbi Avraham Rice, 1845, one of the Orthodox leaders of the Baltimore Jewish community and founder of one of the first Hebrew schools in the U.S., 1869.
• Hebrew became one of the official languages of the courts in E. Yisrael under the British Mandate, 1920.

[6 MarCheshvan]

• King of Siciliy forbids decorating the outside of Shuls, 1366. (King Frederick III probably thought of himself as being kind to the Jews for allowing them to have a shul in the first place.)
• 100 Jews of Florence, Italy deported to extermination camps, 1943.
• First census in Israel counts 712,000 Jews, 1948.

[7 MarCheshvan]

• 10,000 Jews of Kovno ghetto taken for execution, 1941.
• Jewish children under the age of 12 were taken from the Shavl, Lithuania and executed, 1943.
• First Jews arrived at the sight of Petach Tikvah to prepare the ground for a new settlement, 1878.
• Yahrzeit of Rabbi Meir Shapira, organizer of Daf Yomi, 1933.

[8 MarCheshvan]

• Yahrzeit of Rabbeinu Yona (Gerondi), 1263.
• Oldest shul in America dedicated (Surinam), 1685.
• The Rabbi Yehuda HaChasid shul was set afire, 1720. (the shul was repaired and used until 1947 when the Jordanians destroyed it again. Today we know its sight and remains as the Hurva.)
• 10,000 Jewish lives were lost to Nazi mass executions of Kovno’s Jewish community, 1941.

[9 MarCheshvan]

• Yahrzeit of the Rosh (Rabbeinu Asher), 1327.
• Earthquake with hundreds of fatalities in Tzfat, 1759.

[10 MarCheshvan]

• Gad’s birthday.
• Sultan of Turkey forbids ritual charges against Jews, 1840.
• Jews of Sweden allowed to acquire land, 1860.
• Weizmann Institute, Rechovot dedicated, 1949.

[11 MarCheshvan]

• Yahrzeit of Metushelach.
• Birthdate of Binyomin.
• Yahrzeit of Rachel Imeinu.
• 180 Jews Killed in Munich Germany, 1285 (how come we don’t learn from history?).

[12 MarCheshvan]

• Yahrzeit of Yitzchak Rabin, 1995.
• “And He said, What have you done! Your brothers blood cries out to Me from the ground.” (B’reishit 4:10). The Pasuk tells us that the land itself had become contaminated as a result of the abomination it witnessed – one brother killing another. The Torah extends the query of AYEKA, to ask all mankind, in all times: “What have you done? Have you not learned the lesson of the terrible act and its tragic consequences – an eternal curse shattering the peace between Man and Earth!” May we learn the lesson, mending SIN’AT CHINAM with AHAVAT CHINAM.
• Rindfleisch massacres claim 200 Jewish lives, 1298.
• The U.N. declares that “Zionism is Racism”, 1975.

[13 MarCheshvan]

• Jews of England imprisoned by King John, 1210.
• First Siddur printed in America, 1760.
• Anne Frank deported from Auschwitz to Belsen, where she died 5 months later, 1944.

[14 MarCheshvan]

• Jews of Prague miraculously escaped destruction during a particular battle of the Thirty Years War, 1619.
• Final British gov’t. approval for Balfour Declaration, 1917.
• Norway’s Jewish males deported to Auschwitz, 1942.

[15 MarCheshvan]

• Yahrzeit of Matityahu b. Yochanan Kohen Gadol, 166 B.C.E.
• Hebrew date of Kristallnacht 1938.
• Census in Warsaw listed 359,827 Jews, 1939.

[16 MarCheshvan]

• 15,000 Jews massacred in Rowno, Poland, 1941.
• “Magic Carpet” Aliya of Yemenite Jews began, 1949.

[17 MarCheshvan]

• Beginning of the Mabul (according to R. Eliezer).
• Chmielnicki’s forces massacred 12,000 Jews, 1648.

[18 MarCheshvan]

• Hermann Goering announced plans for Madagascar as a home for European Jewry, 1938.
• 16,000 killed in Pinsk, 1942.

[19 MarCheshvan]

• Earliest known Yiddish letter from America (Barnard Gratz to his brother Michael in London), 1785. (Widespread use of Yiddish in America began in 1880 with the large influx of Russian Jews fleeing pogroms.
• U.S. census of 1940 counted 1,750,000 Yiddish speaking Jews.)

[20 MarCheshvan]

• Restricted rights for Austrian Jews, 1396. Chana Senesh executed, 1944.

[21 MarCheshvan]

• Jews barred from German schools, 1938. Chaim Weizmann died, 1952.

[22 MarCheshvan]

• Jewish physicians barred from treating Christians, Sicily, 1296.
• Yahrzeit of the Tosfot Yom Tov, 1616.
• Proposal to establish independent Jewish homeland in Israel, 1818 (by an English missionary to Czar of Russia – go figure).
• Deportation of Budapest Jews began, 1944 (late?).

[23 MarCheshvan]

• Stones of the Mizbei’ach defiled by the Greeks were removed from the Beit Hamikdash area – holiday established to mark date, 164B.C.E.
• Italian anti-Semitic code published, 1938.

[24 MarCheshvan]

• Yarzheit of Baron Edmund de Rothschild, 1934.
• Patria, ship with illegal immigrants, sank in Haifa port, 200 lost, 1940.

[25 MarCheshvan]

• Mobs attack Jews of Cracow, 1407.

[26 MarCheshvan]

• First Jewish wedding in Argentina, 1860. (Spain had barred Jews from Argentina. 7 years after the Spanish regime was overthrown, all restrictions were removed.)
• Nazis execute 12,000 Minsk Jews, 1942.

[27 MarCheshvan]

• No’ach & Co. left the Ark after the Flood.
• Rafa and Mitla Pass fall into Israeli hands, Sinai Campaign, 1956.

[28 MarCheshvan]

• Anti-Jewish riots in Bucharest, Rumania cost many Jewish lives, 1593.
• Jewish population of Israel reached 1,000,000 – 1949.

[29 MarCheshvan]

• Jews permitted to live in Alexandria, 641, with the Arab capture of Egypt. (The Jewish community there was already 1000 years old by that time.)
• Israel captured Khan Yunis, concluding the occupation of the Gaza Strip, 1956.

[30 MarCheshvan]

• American forces take New York back from the British, 1783.
• The Jews who had fled the British were able to return.