Mayer Amschel Rothschild (Bauer), whom Forbes magazine has called “a founding father of international finance,” was born in the Jewish ghetto of Frankfurt, Germany on this date in 1744. His father had a business trading goods and currency; the family home, above his shop “at the sign of the red shield” (zum roten Schild, from [… Read More »

by Jules Chametzky In 1957, living in Cambridge, Massachusetts while working at Boston University, I took a summer course in Greek at Harvard, so that I could use the Widener Library the rest of the year and finish my dissertation. Next door to my class an eminent Classics professor named Cedric Whitman was teaching. That [… Read More »

Gerald Stern, who has been described as “a post-nuclear, multicultural [Walt] Whitman for the millennium — the U.S.’s one and only truly global poet” (Kate Daniels), was born in Pittsburgh on this date in 1925. He was already 50 when his poetry first received critical acclaim, and his many awards since then include a 1998 [… Read More »

Gershom Scholem, the first professor of Jewish mysticism at the Hebrew University, died in Jerusalem at age 84 on this date in 1982. Scholem pioneered the contemporary study of kabbalah and other sources and streams of Jewish mysticism while remaining a committed Jewish secularist throughout his life. He is best known for Major Trends in [… Read More »

John Allen Hendrix, a 16-year-old high school student, played his first public gig with an unnamed band in the basement of Temple De Hirsch, a Reform synagogue in Seattle, Washington, on this date in 1959. Hendrix was actually auditioning for the band, and his wild playing and show-off style (dropping to his knees, sticking out [… Read More »

Adrienne Cooper (September 1, 1946 –December 25, 2011), a vibrant performer and scholar of Yiddish song and Yiddish culture who was a member of our magazine’s Editorial Board, was memorialized on January 1st of this year at Ansche Chesed in New York. The following excerpts from her memorial service were captured by Helen Engelhardt on [… Read More »

Eugene Eisenmann, a Harvard-trained attorney who retired from law at 51 to become one of the world’s leading ornithologists, was born in Panama on this date in 1906. In 1957, Eisenmann became a research associate at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, a position he held until his death in 1981. He [… Read More »

The Chicago Seven Trial ended on this date in 1970 with acquittals for Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, David Dellinger, Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, John Froines, and Lee Weiner on charges of conspiracy. Five of them were convicted of crossing state lines with the intent to incite a riot and were each fined $5,000 and sentenced [… Read More »

“I’m for a Palestinian state, because that is the way to life. All other roads lead to death.” These words were spoken by Amos Oz to a gathering of 800, organized by the Israeli Playwrights Association at the Tsavta Theater in Tel Aviv on this date in 1988. Twelve leading Israeli writers spoke or read [… Read More »

What do you recall having learned about the experience of Jewish prisoners in the concentration camps, other than horrific tales of suffering and unnatural death, along with defeated heroic efforts at revolt? What have you learned about high-risk, Read More »

On this date in 1943, the following 3/4-page ad appeared in the New York Times: FOR SALE TO HUMANITY 70,000 JEWS GUARANTEED HUMAN BEINGS AT $50 APIECE “Roumania is tired of killing Jews,” said the text, written and signed by Ben Hecht. “It has killed one hundred thousand of them in two years. Roumania will [… Read More »

Richard Feynman, who shared the Nobel Prize in physics in 1965 and was one of the world’s great popularizers of science, died on this date in 1988. Born in Far Rockaway, New York, he did not speak until he was three but proved to be a math prodigy. He attended MIT as an undergraduate and [… Read More »

Theodor Herzl’s argument for political Zionism, Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State), subtitled “Proposal of a modern solution for the Jewish question,” was published in German on this date in 1896. (To read the whole text in English, click here.) The pamphlet was an immediate sensation. Read More »

My father’s generation of Jewish immigrants was incredibly creative and practical in adding to our glorious Yiddish language. Everybody in those days, of course, lived in apartment houses. And the lady whose apartment adjoined yours was to be referred to as your nexdoorikeh. The man who lived above your apartment was, of course, your upstairsnik. Read More »

Fran Lee (Lederman), whose consumer advocacy led to New York’s “pooper-scooper” law in 1978, died in Jerusalem at age 99 on this date in 2010. As a radio and television personality from the 1940s to the 1990s (appearing on the Tonight Show, Steve Allen Show, etc. as Mrs. Fix-It, Mrs. Consumer, or Granny Franny), she [… Read More »

Watching the 2011 Academy Awards last January, I was mildly astonished when the finale turned out to be a rendition of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” by a chorus of kids from P.S. 22 in Staten Island. I marveled that a song written some seventy-two years ago (it’s as old as I am!) continues to serve [… Read More »

Judy Blume, who redefined the terms of acceptable discourse in children’s literature on her way to selling eighty million copies of her books and seeing them translated into thirty-one languages, was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey on this date in 1938. Her best-known works include Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, which deals with [… Read More »

Tina Louise (Blacker), who played ‘Ginger,’ the sexy shipwrecked actress on television’s Gilligan’s Island, was born in New York on this date in 1934. Her mother was a fashion model; her father, a candy-store owner; her stepfather, a wealthy doctor. Tina Louise’s early pursuit of a serious acting career was perpetually beset by modeling and [… Read More »

Fanya Kaplan, a member of the Socialist Revolutionary party in Russia who attempted to assassinate Vladimir Ilyich Lenin on August 30, 1918, was born in the Ukraine on this date in 1890. Kaplan spent eleven years of her short life imprisoned in Siberian labor camps because of her revolutionary activity. Released after the Kerensky revolution [… Read More »

Newt Gingrich has persisted in calling President Obama the “food stamp” president, despite the fact that more people went on food stamps during Bush II’s presidency than during the Obama presidency. What I find interesting is how many people, both conservative and progressive, assume that the statement is inherently racist. Read More »