This month in Jewish history: Revelation, thrill of victory, agony of defeat

Bowing to Arab pressure, Britain’s Ramsay McDonald government issued the infamous White Paper, limiting Jewish immigration to 15,000 per year for the next five years, thus ensuring a permanent Jewish minority. This sealed off the final escape route for European Jewry, dooming them to certain death. Even after WW II, British foreign secretary Ernest Bevin was determined to enforce the White Paper, even though hundreds of thousands of Jewish Holocaust survivors were awaiting entry into Palestine.

Operation Ezra and Nehemiah commenced, bringing 120,000 Jews fleeing Iraq to Israel in one year.

A patent was granted to Levi Strauss, who manufactured cloth, and Jacob Davis, a tailor who gave Strauss the idea of putting copper rivets in work clothes to hold the material together, thus creating the first blue jeans.

Portuguese conversos were permitted to settle in Brazil.

Yahrzeit of the prophet Hoshea ben Beeri (Hosea), the first of the 12 Minor Prophets, active for 60 years during the period of the Northern Kingdom’s decline and fall in the 8th century BCE, whose prophecies are rich in poetic language and images from nature. The book that bears Hosea’s name was a dramatic call to repentance for the growing idolatry being practiced there. His own marriage to an unfaithful wife portrayed the breakdown in the relationship between God and His people Israel, yet held out the possibility of reconciliation.

Birthday of Bob Dylan (Robert Zimmerman), poet, folk, rock icon, and one of the most influential musicians of the last 65 years. He has written and recorded hundreds of songs – many that defined a generation – and was the first musician to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, in 2016.

Shalom Schwarzbard, an organizer of Jewish self-defense, assassinated Ukrainian leader Symon Vasyliovych Petliura, whose followers were responsible for 493 pogroms, in which 50,000 Jews were murdered.

The historic Hurva and 33 other synagogues in Jerusalem’s Jewish Quarter were reduced to rubble by troops from Jordan’s Arab Legion during Israel’s War of Independence. The newly rebuilt Hurva synagogue was dedicated on March 15, 2010.

Sultan Mohammed II, the conqueror of Constantinople, granted equal rights to Jews and other non-Muslim subjects of the Ottoman Empire. This policy allowed for one of the principal havens for Jewish refugees after the expulsion from Spain in 1492.

Birthdays of Mel Blanc (1908), the voice of Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, and many others; and Benny Goodman (1909), popular clarinet player dubbed the “King of Swing,” who was the first white bandleader to employ Black musicians (1935).

In Baghdad, the Muslim residents under pro-Axis Rashid Ali carried out a savage pogrom against the Jewish community known as al-Farhud, murdering 145 Jews and wounding 2,500 during two days of rioting, looting, raping, and arson. British troops stationed outside the city did not intervene.

An Israeli attack on Egyptian positions in Ashdod forced Egypt to change its military strategy and marked the turning point in the war.

Yahrzeit of Rabban Gamliel II, successor to Rabbi Yohanan Ben Zakai as the president of the Sanhedrin and leader of the Jewish community in the Land of Israel after the war against Rome. He helped establish a new spiritual and cultural leadership, designing the foundation for Jewish survival in the Diaspora after the destruction of the Temple and the loss of Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel.

Sylvan Goldman introduced his invention of the folding shopping cart in the Humpty Dumpty supermarket chain in Oklahoma City, which he owned. His shopping carts became extremely popular, and Goldman became a multimillionaire by collecting a royalty on every folding shopping cart sold in America.

Israel bombed and destroyed the Iraqi nuclear reactor in Baghdad. Both the United States and the leaders of the Israeli opposition condemned prime minister Menachem Begin for this act; but after Operation Desert Storm, the State Department belatedly praised his actions, admitting it had saved countless lives.

Nineteen years after Jordan took control of Judea and Samaria, desecrating Jewish cemeteries (including the almost total destruction of the Mount of Olives, which had been in continuous use for more than 2,000 years!) and destroying 58 synagogues in the process, Israeli forces liberated the holy city of Hebron.

Joseph Tykociner, a Polish engineer, publicly demonstrated for the first time a motion picture with a soundtrack optically recorded directly onto the film – in other words, the world’s first “talkie.”

6,000 Jews of Niemirów, Poland, perished in the Chmielnicki massacres. The anniversary of this day was set aside by Polish Jewry as a day of fasting and mourning. In the 10 years of the Cossack uprising, over 700 Jewish communities, mostly in Ukraine, were destroyed, and as many as 500,000 Jews were murdered.

Col. David (Mickey) Marcus, the American war hero who came to Israel at the beginning of 1948 to serve as military adviser to David Ben-Gurion during the War of Independence, was mistakenly killed by a Jewish sentry at Abu Ghosh six hours before the first ceasefire was to go into effect. Ben-Gurion named him an aluf (major-general), thus making him the first general of a Jewish army in close to 2,000 years, saying: “He was the best man we had.”

Anne Frank received a diary for her 13th birthday and made her first entry. On July 7, Anne, her sister, and her parents went into hiding in Amsterdam. Helped by sympathetic Dutch friends, they lived in secret for 25 excruciating months until they were deported to Bergen-Belsen, where Anne died from typhus shortly before the concentration camp was liberated. Anne’s last entry is dated August 1, 1944. Since her diary’s first edition (published in 1947), it has appeared in more than 50 languages and sold more than 30 million copies. Through her diary, Anne became the symbol of Jewish children who perished in the Holocaust and was named one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century by Time magazine.

Birthday of Karl Landsteiner, Austrian immunologist and pathologist who received the 1930 Nobel Prize in Medicine for his discovery of the major blood groups and the development of the ABO typing system, helping to make blood transfusions a routine medical practice.