Adar 1, 2448 (1313 BCE)
According to tradition, the ninth biblical plague to strike the Egyptians for their refusal to release the Children of Israel from slavery began – a thick darkness so that “no man saw his fellow, and no man could move from his place” (Exodus 10:23).
Feb. 19, 629
After being assisted by the Jews in Israel to successfully overcome the Persians in return for a promise of amnesty, Byzantine Emperor Heraclius reneged, and hundreds of Jews were massacred, while thousands fled to Egypt, thus ending the rich Jewish life in the Galilee and Judea.
Adar 3,3412 (349 BCE)
The building of the Second Holy Temple on the site of the first in Jerusalem was completed (Ezra 6:15). The rebuilding had begun under King Cyrus when the Persians first conquered the Babylonian Empire in 371 BCE, was interrupted for 18 years, and then resumed under Darius II, the Persian king who is said to have been the son of Queen Esther. The Second Temple would stand for 420 years before being destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE.
A decree was issued requiring Jews in Germany to turn in their gold, silver, diamonds, and precious stones to the state without compensation.
Feb. 22, 1918
Birthday of Al Gross, American pioneer in mobile wireless communication. He invented and patented early versions of the walkie-talkie, Citizens Band radio, the telephone pager, and the cordless phone.
Feb. 23, 1744
Birthday of Mayer Amschel Rothschild, German banker and founder of the Rothschild banking dynasty. Referred to as a “founding father of international finance,” Rothschild was ranked seventh on the 2005 Forbes magazine list of “The Twenty Most Influential Businessmen of All Time.”
Adar 7, 2368 (1393 BCE)
Birth of Moses (Sotah 12b), leader of the Jewish people during the Exodus from Egypt, the receiving of the Torah at Mount Sinai, and the subsequent 40 years of wandering in the desert. He is regarded as the greatest prophet of all time, the lawgiver and teacher par excellence, but also the humblest of men. According to Kiddushin 38a, he died on the same date in 2488 (1273 BCE).
Feb. 25, 1861
Birthday of Meir Dizengoff, one of Tel Aviv’s founding fathers, a central figure in its growth and development, and the city’s first mayor.
Adar 9, 3826 (66 CE)
Traditional date of the first difference of opinion between Shammai and Hillel, the last of the zugot (“pairs”) who led the Jewish people after the Great Assembly. Each school had its mass following, contradictory decisions were handed down (in general, Beit Shammai was stricter than Beit Hillel), and divergent customs were adopted.
Nevertheless, the followers of each school, with a few rare exceptions, continued to treat each other with mutual respect, trust, and affection, and the disagreements were “for the sake of heaven.”
Feb. 27, 1928
Birthday of Ariel Sharon, Israeli general who founded Unit 101, the IDF’s first commando unit; hero of the Six Day War and the Yom Kippur War; defense minister under Menachem Begin; and prime minister of Israel from 2001-2006.
Feb. 28, 1929
Birthday of Frank Gehry (born Goldberg), Canadian-born American architect, whose iconic buildings worldwide have led him to be labeled by many as “the most important architect of our age.”
March 1, 2021
Israel’s High Court of Justice ruled that the government must recognize conversions by the Reform and Masorti (Conservative) movements in Israel for the purposes of citizenship, ending a 15-year legal saga. (In 1988, the High Court had ruled that non-Orthodox conversions performed outside of Israel must be recognized; but it did not extend that recognition to non-Orthodox conversions performed in Israel itself.)
March 2, 1859
Birthday of Shalom Aleichem (Solomon Rabinovitz), writer/playwright born in Ukraine, known as the “Yiddish Mark Twain,” whose stories were made into the musical hit Fiddler on the Roof.
The humor and pathos with which he portrayed the simple lives of the shtetl were unmatched by any other Yiddish writer. Upon his death in 1916, some 200,000 people, many of them immigrants from the shtetl, followed his funeral cortège from Manhattan to his burial site in Queens. “No matter how bad things get, you got to go on living, even if it kills you,” he wrote.
Adar 14: 3405 (356 BCE)
Jews throughout the Persian Empire were victorious in their battles against Haman’s antisemitic mobs seeking to kill them, an event we commemorate today with the Purim holiday. We read the megillah (Scroll of Esther), dress up in costumes, and joyously celebrate how the Jews of Persia narrowly escaped real genocide, thanks to the bravery of Esther and Mordechai.
March 4, 1949
The first permanent government of Israel, headed by David Ben-Gurion, assumed office.
March 5, 1902
The Mizrachi Religious Zionist organization was founded in Vilna under the auspices of Rabbi Isaac Jacob Reines, one of the leading Torah scholars of Lithuania, countering Orthodox rabbinic opposition to Zionism.
March 6, 1430
On the day that the Church and the government decreed that all the Jews of Rome must either convert or face death, an earthquake shook the city, and many of the archbishops and priests who conceived the decree were killed. Following the earthquake, Pope Martin V annulled the decree.
March 7, 1917
Birthday of Harry Tabor, Israeli physicist who was instrumental in developing the solar water heater that 95%of Israeli households currently use, which became the standard for solar water heating worldwide.
Adar 19, 5693 (1933)
Yahrzeit of Rabbi Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld, author and the beloved leader of the “Old Yishuv” in Jerusalem during the first part of the 20th century, at a time when the community was reestablishing itself after many centuries of exile. He was a man of courage, scholarship, kindness, integrity, and piety, and was instrumental in establishing schools and orphanages.
March 9, 1959
The Barbie doll, created by Ruth and Elliot Handler (co-presidents of the Mattel Toy Company) and named after their daughter, made its debut at the American International Toy Fair. More than a billion Barbies have been sold since then.
March 10, 1951
In Iraq, a law was passed freezing the assets of all Jews who had left the country and not returned. An estimated $200 million (equivalent to over $2 billion in 2020) worth of property belonging to more than 123,000 Jews who had been forced to flee from Iraq during 1948-1951 was taken over by the state and never returned.
March 11, 1948
The Jerusalem headquarters of the Jewish Agency was bombed by Arab terrorists, killing 13 civilians and wounding many others.
March 12, 1938
The German army invaded and annexed Austria (known as the Anschluss), violating the strict military restrictions of the Treaty of Versailles. Not one European government made a move to stop Hitler who, without interference, felt free to embark upon the next step in his scheme to conquer all of Europe.
March 13, 1656
Dutch colonial administrator Peter Stuyvesant denied the Jews of New Amsterdam (later named New York) the right to erect a synagogue, calling them “the deceitful race, hateful enemies, and blasphemers of the name of Christ.”
March 14, 1879
Birthday of Albert Einstein, the greatest theoretical physicist of the 20th century, one of history’s most brilliant and original scientists, and Time Magazine’s Person of the Century. He postulated particles of light called photons, a concept that inspired the quantum theory and earned him the 1921 Nobel Prize for Physics.
He discovered the Theory of Relativity and formulated the equation E=MC2, which pioneered the atomic age.
In 1939, when he learned that Germany was working on an atomic bomb, he spearheaded the Manhattan Project. After WW II however, he headed a committee of scientists urging a ban on nuclear bombs. Esteemed for his wit, modesty, and integrity, in 1952 he was offered the presidency of Israel as successor to Chaim Weizmann, but he declined.
March 15, 1860
Birthday of Waldemar Mordechai Haffkine, Russian-born bacteriologist who developed the first effective vaccine against cholera (inoculating himself first!) and the serum therapy against the plague, in the process saving countless lives. The Haffkine Institute in Bombay, which he headed, is still one of the leading infectious disease clinics in India.
Adar 27, 3174 (587 BCE)
King Tzidkiyahu (Zedekiah), the last king of the royal house of David to reign in the Holy Land, died in Babylonia. He had ruled for 11 years, rebelled against King Nebuchadnezzar, was captured, and languished in the royal dungeon in Babylonia until Nebuchadnezzar’s son and successor freed him. Tzidkiyahu died shortly thereafter.
March 17, 1992
Terrorists detonated a car bomb outside the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, killing 29 people and wounding 250. Among the victims were children, clergy from a church across the road, and passersby. Iran was responsible for the attack but was never held accountable.
March 18, 1817
Czar Alexander I of Russia declared the blood libel to be false (the infamous accusation that Jews murdered Christian children to use their blood in the baking of matzah for Passover, for which thousands of Jews were massacred through the centuries).
The above is a highly abridged monthly version of Dust & Stars – Today in Jewish History. For the complete newsletter:
dustandstars.substack.com/subscribe