Elul 1, 2448 (1312 BCE): Moses ascended Mount Sinai for the third time and remained there for 40 days, during which time he obtained God’s wholehearted forgiveness for the people of Israel. He then came down on the 10th of Tishrei (Yom Kippur) with the second Tablets of the Law (Exodus 33:11). Ever since, the month of Elul serves as the “month of Divine mercy and forgiveness.”
Aug. 15, 2005: The Gaza Disengagement began with 14,000 IDF soldiers and police officers forcibly evicting more than 8,500 Jewish residents who chose to remain in their homes in 25 towns. The government’s hopes that the Disengagement would open “new opportunities” in relations with the Palestinians were bitterly disappointed. The vacated settlements were used to launch terrorist attacks against Israel, including unremitting rocket fire on the nearby Israeli town of Sderot, and eventually led to Oct. 7.
Elul 3, 5695 (1935): Yahrzeit of Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak Kook, Talmudic scholar, philosopher, prolific author, first chief rabbi of the Ashkenazi community of pre-state Israel, and the founding father of the “religious Zionist” movement. He developed warm relations with the secular pioneers who were building Israel and maintained that the modern return to Zion was “the beginning of the redemption, and the harbinger of the coming of the Messiah.”
“It is forbidden for religious behavior to compromise a personal, natural, moral sensibility. If it does, our fear of heaven is no longer pure… and we have certainly been mistaken in our faith.”
Aug. 17: Birthdays of Samuel Goldwyn (1879), movie producer and one of the founders of Hollywood; Mikhail Botvinnik (1911), world chess champion (1948-1957, 1958-1960, 1961-1963) and developer of chess computers; and Sean Penn (1960, Jewish father), American actor, director, screenwriter, and producer, who has won two best actor Academy Awards for his roles in Mystic River (2003) and Milk (2008).
Aug. 18, 1790: In response to a letter from the Jewish community of Rhode Island, president George Washington responded: “The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind… a policy worthy of imitation… For happily the Government of the United States, gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance… May the Children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the goodwill of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid…” Washington’s letter is still housed in the Touro Synagogue in Newport, RI.
Aug. 19, 1845: Birthday of Baron Edmond de Rothschild, head of the French branch of the famed banking family. He was known as the “Father of the Yishuv” due to his financing almost single-handedly the pre-state agricultural villages of Rishon Lezion, Zichron Ya’acov, Gedera, Rosh Pina, and 30 others. He also established Israel’s wine industry when he helped Russian Jews flee pogroms in the 1880s and plant vineyards in Israel.
More famous birthdays, a massacre in Hebron
Aug. 20, 1940: Leon Trotsky (Lev Bronstein), Russian Communist revolutionary and theorist and the founder and first leader of the Red Army, who organized the armed uprising against the tsar, placing the Communists in power, was assassinated, most likely on orders from Joseph Stalin.
Aug. 21, 1973: Birthday of Sergey Brin, American computer scientist, co-founder of Google, and one of the richest men in America.
Aug. 22, 1654: Jacob Barsimson, the first Jew known to settle in North America, arrived in New Amsterdam from Holland.
Aug. 23: Birthdays of Nobel Prize laureates in Economics, Kenneth Arrow (1921), “for his pioneering contributions to general economic equilibrium theory and welfare theory,” and Robert Solow (1924), for his work on the theory of economic growth.
Aug. 24, 1929: In Hebron, 67 Jewish men, women, and children were slaughtered, and scores were wounded, raped, and maimed by their Arab neighbors, who rioted for three days amid cries of “slaughter the Jews.” Jewish homes were pillaged, synagogues were desecrated, a Jewish hospital, which had provided treatment for Arabs, was attacked and ransacked, and the ancient Jewish community of Hebron, which had lived in relative peace for hundreds of years, was not revived until it was recaptured in the 1967 Six Day War.
Aug. 25, 1933: The “Transfer Agreement” was signed between representatives of the World Zionist Organization and the German government, in which German goods were purchased and exported to pre-state Israel and sold there, and the proceeds were used by new immigrants from Germany to start their lives. Between 1933 and 1941, over 20,000 German Jews transferred more than $30 million using this mechanism.
Aug. 26, 1906: Birthday of Albert Sabin (Abram Saperstejn), developer of the “live” form of the polio vaccine, which does not require refrigeration and can be taken on a sugar cube. This development eliminated the need for needles and sterilization facilities, thereby making worldwide immunization possible. Sabin refused to patent his vaccine or profit from it, so that the low price would guarantee a more extensive spread of the treatment. He also developed vaccines for encephalitis and dengue fever.
Aug. 27, 1945: The 1,310 surviving Jewish refugees fleeing Europe who were forcibly transferred to Mauritius by the British government were allowed into Israel.
Aug. 28, 1903: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a fabricated antisemitic text purporting to describe a Jewish plot for global domination, was first published in serialized form in Zmaya, a St. Petersburg daily newspaper. Despite having been exposed as fraudulent, it has been translated into multiple languages and disseminated internationally. Henry Ford funded the printing of 500,000 copies that were distributed throughout the United States in the 1920s. Described as “probably the most influential work of antisemitism ever written,” to this day it remains widely available in numerous languages, in print and on the Internet, and continues to be presented by neo-fascist, fundamentalist groups as genuine.
Aug. 29, 1897: The World Zionist Organization was founded at the first World Zionist Congress, which opened in Basel, Switzerland, with 200 delegates from 16 countries. Theodor Herzl, who financed it himself, noted in his diary: “At Basel I founded the Jewish State.”
Aug. 30, 1897: Hermann Schapira, a Lithuanian rabbi and mathematician, presented his idea at the World Zionist Congress for what would become the Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund (including the ubiquitous blue box for collection), to purchase and cultivate land in pre-state Israel. Debated for years, the KKL-JNF was established only at the 5th Zionist Congress after a push from Herzl to make it happen.
Elul 18, 5494 (1734): After many years as a member of a society of “hidden tzaddikim,” living under the guise of an ignorant clay-digger, Rabbi Yisrael Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hassidism, was instructed by his masters to reveal himself on his 36th birthday and begin to publicly disseminate his teachings, emphasizing the importance of joy and simple faith. Initially, his teachings encountered fierce opposition from the established leadership of the Jewish community, but by the time he passed away at age 62 on Shavuot of 1760, the movement he founded had spread significantly.
Sept. 1, 1967: In response to the Israeli offer to return the Sinai to Egypt and the Golan Heights to Syria after the Six Day War, the Arab League meeting in Khartoum, Sudan, issued its infamous three nos: “No to peace, no to recognition, no to negotiations.”
Sept. 2, 1796: Holland granted equality to its 50,000 Jews.
Sept. 3, 1905: Birthday of Nechama Leibowitz, Bible scholar, beloved teacher, and author of popular study guides to the weekly Torah portion. She was awarded the Israel Prize in 1957 for her pioneering literary approach to the Bible and for furthering its understanding and appreciation.
Sept. 4: Birthdays of Darius Milhaud (1892), French conductor, teacher, and one of the most prolific composers of the 20th century, and David Broza (1955), Israeli folk-rock singer and songwriter who has been successful on the international rock circuit.
The Munich Olympics, Israeli history milestones
Sept. 5, 1972: At the Olympic Village in Munich, eight Arab terrorists from the Black September Organization kidnapped and held Israeli athletes for ransom. During a botched attempt by German police to free them, 11 were murdered.
Elul 24, 5693 (1933): Yahrzeit of Rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan, revered author of over 30 works on Jewish ethics and laws, including Chafetz Chaim (“He who desires life”) and Mishna Berurah, founder of the Yeshiva of Radin, Talmudist, and moralist. Earning his living as a teacher and shopkeeper, he consistently refused a rabbinical post.
Sept. 7, 1827: Tsar Nicholas I issued a decree in Russia to draft Jewish boys at the age of 12, place them in schools for military education until age 18, and then obligate them to another 25 years of military service. Most of the 50,000 “cantonists” never returned to the families they had left at age 12.
Sept. 8, 1949: The Knesset passed Israel’s draft law, making it obligatory for every Jewish youth in Israel to serve in the military forces.
Sept. 9, 1940: An Italian air raid on Tel Aviv killed 117 and wounded 150.
Sept. 10, 1952: Israel signed an agreement to accept reparation payments from West Germany for losses caused by the Nazis, over the objections of Menachem Begin, who was concerned that they could be perceived as somehow “absolving” Nazis of their heinous crimes.
Sept. 11, 1923: The Daf Yomi, a seven-year cycle of studying a page of Talmud a day, was initiated by Rabbi Meir Shapira of Lublin on Rosh Hashanah. Today, tens of thousands of Jews study the “daily daf” all over the world.
The above is a highly abridged monthly version of Dust & Stars – Today in Jewish History. To receive the complete newsletter highlighting seminal events in this most unlikely story and the remarkable Jews who have changed the world: dustandstars.substack.com/subscribe
