יום חמישי, י״ז תמוז תשפ״וThursday, July 2, 2026
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Saul Jay Singer serves as Senior Legal Ethics Counsel with the District of Columbia Bar and is a collector of extraordinary original Judaica documents and letters. He welcomes comments at sauljsing@gmail.com. Before commencing his career as a litigator and legal ethicist, he served for fourteen years as an actuary for several ratemaking organizations and insurance companies and as actuary for the National Flood Insurance Program.
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Through his sharp wit, much of Offenbach’s work mocked the establishment, attacked political governance, and satirized societal norms, including parodies of traditional musical forms and specific works by other composers.
Developing substantive analysis of Benjamin’s Judaism and the degree to which he used his influence and position to advocate for his coreligionists is seriously hampered by the fact that he was a very private man who remained intentionally opaque and rarely discussed his role.
Weegee’s notable photographs of Jewish New York that reflect his Jewish sensitivities include subjects such as bagel sellers, street peddlers and garment workers, and I include here four of my personal favorites of his “Jewish genre” work.
The back story on R. Morris Joseph is one of the most fascinating, albeit largely unknown, narratives in the history of British-Jewish clergy.
In Kol Nidre (1918), Reik begins with a recollection of visiting the home of a music-loving friend and having an inexplicably strong reaction to a haunting minor musical passage that sounded very familiar to him but which he could not place.
In this article, I present some of my more “off the beaten path” items that I think might be of interest to readers.
The cornerstone for the Knesset was laid on October 14, 1958, but the building was not formally dedicated until almost eight years later on August 30, 1966.
Fighting for the Confederacy would put him in a position of possibly contributing to the death of his son, Alfred, Jr., who had followed in his footsteps, graduated from West Point, commenced his own army career, and was fighting for the Union.
Anna sought to capture great subtlety and abstraction of Middle Eastern landscapes and the almost primordial views that featured a blazing sun and desert sands; vibrant colors often muted by dusty air; ravines and vegetation manifesting riots of color; and, most of all, rocks, bare hills, and olive trees.
Infuriated by Nazi antisemitism, Sarnoff began regular travel to Washington after Kristallnacht to meet with branches of the armed forces to plan RCA’s integration into the American defense buildup...
Gompers, who had actively encouraged representatives of the Zionist movement to attend the convention with the hope that they would sway their fellow delegates, condemned the majority of the Jewish delegates who voted against the resolution.
Peretz doubted that an ancient tongue could be revived or that an ancient country could be reborn.
Although he rejected their lifestyle, Pissarro never rejected his family, with whom he remained close and, notwithstanding their ordeal, Pissarro’s parents remained fundamentally Jewish and maintained at least some degree of Jewish fidelity and practice.
Intriguingly, the first six notes of God Bless America are identical to a six-note melodic passage from When Mose with His Nose Leads the Band, a 1906 novelty song written by three Irish songwriters about a Jewish musician known as the Jewish Sousa.
There is little evidence of communal Jewish life or rabbinical leadership until the middle of the nineteenth century, when German Jews began a large American emigration to escape Germany’s tyrannical antisemitic laws.
The Jews of Europe, who had their own dreams of a land that they heard of – i.e., Eretz Yisrael, about which their mothers had sung to them in two thousand years of lullabies – were unable to fly “over the rainbow” or go anywhere else.
With the loss of the Alma oil fields – which Egypt has renamed the Shuab Ali fields – Israel’s energy costs in the first year after the agreement increased by about one-third to about $2 billion, even though Israel had adopted policies to reduce oil consumption.
The great visionary of the Jewish State did not bother to provide his children with even the rudiments of Jewish education or a Jewish identity; in fact, he taught them that assimilation, liberalism, and an enlightened education would finally bring an end to antisemitism and Jewish isolation.
The catacombs also include beautiful illustrations of animals, which include birds, peacocks, ducks, and eagles; bulls, sheep and rams; and hens and roosters; as well as flowers and fruit trees, many of which may symbolize paradise.
Notably – and not surprising in Nazi Germany – the reviewer praised Mitchell’s description of the patriarchal character and racial and social hierarchy in the antebellum South.
I present here the official cards of the first seven Congresses accompanied by a brief description of the Congress highlights.
Harding’s Zionism may be rooted in his Baptist faith and his knowledge of the Bible and, over and above his support for a Jewish homeland in Eretz Yisrael, he often expressed positive sentiments about the Jewish faith.
The Rebbe always emphasized that the Land of Israel is the heart of the world and the channel through which all Divine blessings flow.
A century of Jewish children have grown up picturing Abraham as depicted by this beloved and monumental work without ever knowing the identity of the artist.
Rabbi Blau's decades-long campaign for the modesty of Jewish woman evokes comparisons to the Taliban and the Mullahs in Iran, as he established dress codes and “modesty patrols” to brutally enforce them, beginning in charedi communities and later expanding into other neighborhoods.
The Potter books, which have sold more than 500 million copies worldwide and have become the best-selling book series in history, have been translated into at least 80 languages, including Hebrew.
Ben Gurion used the broad public demand in Israel for a retaliatory action against Egypt to launch a February 28, 1955, attack on Gaza in which 39 Egyptians were killed and Israel suffered no casualties.
Although Haffkine personally donated funds to purchase land in Eretz Yisrael, he was not a political Zionist who considered a Jewish state as necessary for Jewish survival...
The success of the Chidon Ha-Tanach launched other Bible contests, including a competition sponsored by the IDF (Israel Defense Force), and numerous local and regional quizzes, usually also held on Yom Haatzmaut, reflecting the broad popularity of learning Torah even among secular Israelis.
Violators of the law could receive a six-month jail term. According to Superintendent Kennedy, the “masquerade or fancy dress ball or entertainment” exception apparently did not apply to Jews dressing up for Purim.
It was on one of Carroll’s many boating trips with Alice and her sisters on July 4, 1862, that he originated the framework of the stories and, at Alice’s enthusiastic urging, decided to write the stories...
After conducting a years-long investigation, the team concluded that Arnold van den Bergh (1886-1950), a prominent Jewish businessman, a founder of the Jewish Council in Holland, and a notary for a German art dealer selling stolen Jewish art to Hermann Goering, was the most likely quisling.
The story evolves during several sessions when an adult Artie comes to visit his cantankerous and eccentric elderly father, who is ill, in a bad second marriage, and still mourning the loss of Anja a decade earlier.
When Stein showed Fiddler to Mostel, he was starring in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and he initially turned it down, but when he later heard a more complete version of the show, he enthusiastically signed on.
I am fighting antisemitism because it defiles our Christianity.
As it turns out, this was a particularly fortuitous time for the Jews who, because they were dancing with their Torah scrolls when the fire reached their synagogues, were able to save most of them.
Whoever hid the scrolls did an incredible job, as they were not discovered for 2,000 years and, in fact, they could well have remained hidden but for a fortuitous accident in 1947 when a goat wandered into a hollow.
Less known is that Andersen had deep affection for the Jewish people; that he was very familiar with Jewish tradition and culture... and that he maintained very close relationships with Jews and with the Jewish community.
The Feldman Letter was similarly not intended as a true historical account but rather as a call to rouse the American Jewish community from its lethargy in the form of an updated version of the kinah.
The children were initially welcomed by the Iranian public, but it grew hostile to the Jewish refugees, particularly after rising bread costs led to mass demonstrations in Iran.
Though not prohibited, circumcision became highly regulated, and circumcision laws were passed with the stated purpose of promoting health and sanitation to conform with “German sensibilities,” but which were actually calculated to make performing a bris more difficult.
After the massacre had run its course, the police commenced gathering the injured Jews, who were brought to the police station but left on the basement floor to fend for themselves.
In New York, he became the “go to” chazzan for the Jewish community’s philanthropic events, but his most legendary performance may have been his May 1917 appearance at the Hippodrome Theater to raise funds for Jews suffering in Europe during World War I.
Notwithstanding Barker’s claim that he is not “anti-Jew,” his misrepresentations, including particularly his falsifications of Jewish history, underscore his flagrant anti-Semitism.
As Deputy Prime Minister Yigal Alon announced, We are back at Gush Etzion not as conquerors, but because this is part of our forefathers’ land.
Perhaps his greatest moment as a Zionist leader was when, as chairman of the American section of the Jewish Agency, he was chosen to present the case for an independent Jewish state before the United Nations Assembly on May 8, 1947.
He used his photographs to increase awareness in America and the western world of Nazi persecution and Hitler’s extermination plans for the Jewish people.
Lenard fought hard to ensure that Einstein, the “pure-blooded Jew,” would not win a Nobel Prize; in fact, the decision by the Nobel Committee not to award any physics prize in 1921 was due, at least in part, to anti-Semitic pressure brought to bear by Lenard.
The effect of the boycott was particularly profound in the United States, where German imports were reduced by nearly 25 percent, and in Eretz Yisrael, where most doctors refused to prescribe German medicines, resulting in great losses to German pharmaceutical companies.
In contrast with the broad scrutiny brought to bear by the critics on Jung’s apparent anti-Semitism, little attention has been given to his preoccupation with Kabbalah in general and with his Jewish mystical visions in particular.
In a remarkably disingenuous move reeking of anti-Semitism, the prosecution argued that the family’s desire to dispose of the “evidence” as soon as possible evidenced their awareness of Philippe’s guilt.
In the book, Ferber recounts her own personal experiences with anti-Semitism and movingly expresses her horror at the rise of Nazism, and she actively promoted the purchase of war bonds during WWII.
During his 30-year career as a Foreign Service Officer, he had mostly specialized in Asia but he became instrumental in 1968 in halting the escalation of American involvement in Vietnam.
Bella's text, accompanied by her husband’s chapter-by-chapter 36 pen and ink drawings, conveys their mutual tenderness and love for the Jewish holidays.
The most prevalent anti-Semitic 9-11 conspiracy theory at the time was that 4,000 Israelis received advance warning not to report for work at the World Trade Center on September 11.
Unquestionably one of the greatest and most important Jewish leaders of the 20th century, Zev Jabotinsky (1880-1940) is best known for founding the Jewish Legion and for founding and heading three nationalist and militant organizations.
Deeply concerned with the safety of his workers, Strauss innovated safety standards, including the use of movable safety netting beneath the construction site, which is credited with saving 19 lives.
Although Wolffsohn’s proposed flag did not constitute a substantive departure from the Rishon L’Tzion flag that had been flown more than a decade earlier, the Encyclopedia Judaica maintains that he was unaware of the earlier flags.
One of the most indelible images of Stern's love of Israel will always be when, while giving a concert in Jerusalem during the Persian Gulf War (1991), the alarm sounded for an Iraqi Scud missile attack. While audience members donned gas masks, an unmasked and undeterred Stern announced, “missiles or no missiles, I cannot stop playing,” and he continued to play a Mozart solo.
The Boston Globe reported that by the end of November 1967, “more than 400,000 members of the Jewish faith are estimated to have observed the commandment to wear Phylacteries – tefillin in Hebrew – at the city’s Western Wall, formerly known as the ‘Wailing’ Wall.”
As we are seeing with our own eyes, there is a direct correlation between disempowering and defunding the police and increased violent crime.
The purpose of the Menorah Movement, which originated at Harvard University in 1906, was to win for the field of Jewish history and culture its rightful place at Harvard...
Before their final installation at Hadassah, the windows were on view at the Louvre during the summer of 1961 and at the Museum of Modern Art in New York at the end of the year, where an all-time record of 175,000 visitors came to see it during the seven weeks it was on display.
Schatz had always thought of Bezalel in almost religious terms as a present-day Third Temple, a source of mystical, divine, spiritual and artistic power that would inspire a renewed national identity among the Jewish people in both Eretz Yisrael and the Diaspora.
The chief military rabbi, who is appointed by Israel’s Chief of Staff and is the highest religious authority in the IDF, is not subordinate to the Chief Rabbinate.
Other performers have resisted enormous pressure from BDS and its supporters, and this is the story of three of them.
A year after winning gold in Paris, Abrahams broke his leg while attempting to improve on his English long jump record, which lasted for over 30 years, thus ending his athletic career.
Operation Magic Carpet proved to be not only an emotional experience for the rescued Taimanim, many of whom kissed the ground upon their arrival in Eretz Yisrael, but for the Alaska Airlines staff as well.
Kersten’s intervention with Himmler to save Jews is historical fact for which he should be recognized and honored, but he turned out to also be a Holocaust fraudster...
While making clear that the sun will always retain its supremacy, G-d makes a series of gestures designed to placate the moon, which the moon rejects.
The most interesting change, however, may be Hammerstein’s total removal of anti-Semitism, an important theme in Liliom, from Carousel.
When the 1936 Games of the XI Olympiad were held in August 1936, the Nazis had already commenced construction of labor camps, political prisons, and concentration camps, including Sachsenhausen, located a mere 22 miles north of the Olympic stadium in Berlin.
Significant discontent was generated regarding the dominant presence of the Histadrut’s red/socialist flags rather than the traditional blue and white Jewish flag with the Magen David.
Rubinger says that he shot his photos with tears streaming down his cheeks and watched as hardened paratroopers all around him wept.
It was quite remarkable. Lotz was not only invited to tour top-secret bases near the Suez Canal, but he was also granted access to airports where the Egyptians stationed their MIG fighter aircraft, where he took close range photographs of the pilots posing proudly near their planes.
At the time of the quartet’s composition, Beethoven had become interested in the music of George Handel’s Saul (1738), which led him to study early Hebrew music.
The historic vote was followed with unmatched excitement by Jews around the world, and news of the vote brought tens of thousands of people out onto the streets to dance and celebrate the great moment.
Correspondence between two famous personalities are particularly valued by collectors, particularly when it establishes a heretofore unknown connection between the individuals involved.
Szyk’s sui generis work is notable for its rejection of contemporary avant garde artistic styles in favor of medieval painting, particularly as expressed in illuminated renaissance manuscripts.
The military governor of Jerusalem decided to allocate the scant matzah supplies to the city’s civilians, but Rav Goren could not stand the very idea that the first Jewish soldiers to fight for Jerusalem in two millennia would be forced to eat chametz on Pesach.
Pursuant to another corporate legend, when Berlitz was forced to take a leave of absence due to exhaustion, he put Joly in charge of the language classes only to discover to his chagrin that his trusted assistant did not speak a word of English.
Ben-Gurion was very cold – many argue, with some justification, that he was actually extremely opposed – to Torah-true Judaism.
Seuss’s wartime cartoons denounced American discrimination against Jews and called attention to the early stages of the Holocaust.
The national interest in chess grew even greater when over a million Russians, for whom chess was the national pastime, made aliyah when the Iron Curtain opened in the 1990s.
Unlike carnivals in other countries, which were known for their licentiousness and violence, the Adloyadas were characterized by proper behavior.
Even after the El Al Shabbat law was passed, Lod Airport (later Ben-Gurion Airport) continued operations, and charedim and religious groups were concerned that Jewish workers were being forced to work at the airport on Shabbat.
After a lengthy trial, the ship was ordered returned to its owner, and it sailed back to Italy. In an act of revenge, the Irgun blew up the British radar station on Mount Carmel.
He steered refugees to interviewers, found hiding places, delivered messages, and made deals with Marseille gangsters, but perhaps his most interesting contribution was marrying six different Jewish refugees so they could obtain American visas.
In a move contrary to his own political interests – he hoped to win the 1940 Republican presidential nomination, and most Republicans were anti-immigration – Hoover fought hard for increasing American immigration quotas for Jewish refugees.
Bet-Zuri and Hakim did use their trial as a means to draw international attention to British atrocities and malfeasance in Eretz Yisrael and to advocate for the justice of a Jewish state...
Israel’s birth in the ashes of the Holocaust was still uppermost in the minds of most Israelis and, although the phrase “never again” had not yet been coined, that idea was central to the Israeli ethos.
Rembrandt’s close relationships with the Jews of Amsterdam and his enduring pro-Jewish legacy caused no small problem for the Third Reich, particularly Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels.
The site was – and remains – one of incomparable beauty and includes heart-stopping views of Bethlehem, the Judean Desert, the Jordan Valley, the Dead Sea, and the Mountains of Jordan.
After speaking at the Chovevei Tzion conference in Odessa (1891), R. Mohilever went on to lead a group tour of Eretz Yisrael and, upon his return, he published an open letter in which he urged Jews to work toward the settlement of the land.
George’s embrace of his German-Jewish origins is particularly ironic – and foreboding – taking place as it does during years that will soon see the birth of Nazi Germany and the looming Holocaust.
He began to more closely follow the history of Israel and its achievements as an adult and, after many visits to Israel, which he calls “a magical place,” he now appreciates the challenges facing the country.
The aim of World Agudat Yisrael became to strengthen Orthodox institutions independent of the Zionist movement and Mizrachi.
After going into hiding at a village near the Swiss border, Werth wrote 33 Jours (33 Days), a searing memoir of his feelings during 33 days of terror before finally finding refuge.
As a result of his meeting with Roosevelt, the president issued an executive order on January 22, 1944 which created the United States War Refugee Board (WRB), the first major American attempt to address the extermination of European Jews.
Few people know that one of his first projects upon making aliyah was printing the first Hebrew daily wall calendar (1885).
June 26, 2026 
