Nisan 1, 2449 (1312 BCE)
The erection of the Tabernacle was completed (Exodus 40:17; Numbers Rabbah 13); Moses completed the consecration rites of Aaron and his sons, and Aharon performed the first sacrificial rites in the Tabernacle. However, two of Aaron’s sons, Nadav and Avihu, died after entering the Holy of Holies unauthorized (Leviticus chapters 9-10).
March 20, 1917
The Russian Provisional Government granted equality to all Russian Jews (who at the time made up about 50% of the total world Jewish population!), abolishing the Pale of Settlement and more than 140 anti-Jewish statutes. On the other hand, the Russian Revolution led to over 2,000 pogroms, tens of thousands of Jews murdered, and hundreds of thousands made homeless.
March 21
Birthdays of Erich Mendelsohn (1887), international style architect; Yigael Yadin (1917), IDF chief of staff; Peter Brook (1925), theater and film director; and Walter Gilbert (1932), Nobel Prize laureate in chemistry.
March 22
Birthdays of Marcel Marceau (1923), French mime; Stephen Sondheim (1930), Oscar/Tony/Grammy/Pulitzer Prize/Presidential Medal of Freedom winning composer; William Shatner (1931), Star Trek’s Capt. Kirk; and Burton Richter (1931), Nobel Prize laureate in physics.
March 23, 1915
The Zion Mule Corps was formed. This unit of the British Army, organized by Ze’ev Jabotinsky and Yosef Trumpeldor, was made up mostly of Jews driven out of pre-state Israel by the Turks. The forerunner of the Jewish Legion, it was the first Jewish military unit attached to a regular army in the modern era.
March 24, 1921
Rabbi Abraham Yitzhak Kook and Rabbi Yaakov Meir were elected the first two chief rabbis of pre-state Israel.
March 25, 1934: Birthday of Gloria Steinem, pioneering leader of the women’s liberation movement, co-founder of Ms. magazine, and recipient of the US Presidential Medal of Freedom.
March 26, 1979
At a historic White House ceremony, a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt was signed by Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat, ending a 30-year state of war, and establishing normal (albeit chilly) relations between them.
Nisan 9, 5729 (1969)
Yahrzeit of Reb Aryeh Levin, “Father of the Prisoners.” Ordained by rabbis Chaim Berlin and Shmuel Salant, he devoted himself to volunteer work at the leper hospital and the prison in Jerusalem, considering those jailed by the British his special mission. Reb Aryeh consistently refused all honors, choosing to live in near poverty in the Mishkenot Sha’ananim neighborhood of Jerusalem.
Nisan 10, 2487 (1274 BCE)
Miriam the prophetess (sister of Moses and Aaron) passed away at the age of 126. According to sources, the mobile well, which supplied water to the Jews in the desert in her honor, dried up (Seder Olam 10).
March 29, 2002
In direct response to the Park Hotel massacre in Netanya, the IDF launched Operation Defensive Shield, the largest military operation in Judea and Samaria since the Six Day War. The main objectives were achieved: to strike Palestinian terrorist infrastructures and put an end to the wave of the Second Intifada terrorist attacks against Israeli citizens. The operation ended on April 17.
March 30, 1218
King Henry III of England enacted the Yellow Badge Edict, which required every Jew over the age of seven to wear above the heart a piece of yellow cloth in the shape of the Tablets of the Law.
Nisan 13, 3403 (357 BCE)
Haman published a decree that was dispatched to all 127 countries of the Persian Empire “to destroy, kill, and annihilate all Jews, from young to old, infants and women, on a single day” (Book of Esther 3:12). On the same day, Queen Esther ordered a three-day fast – even though it was the first two days of Passover – for all the Jews of Shushan to pray for the success of her mission to go before the king and plead for her people (Esther 4:16).
Nisan 14, 2448 (1312 BCE)
Paschal lambs were sacrificed by the Jews in Egypt to be eaten later that night at the first ever Passover Seder (Exodus 12:28), and the lambs’ blood was then sprinkled on their doorposts as a sign that God will “pass over” their homes when inflicting the final plague upon the Egyptians. This was an act of great courage, as sheep were worshiped as idols in Egyptian society, and the Jews were technically still subject to Egyptian slavery. When the Holy Temple stood in Jerusalem, the Passover lamb would be offered and eaten by every Jewish family that made the pilgrimage. Today, the rite is commemorated by the shank bone placed on the Seder plate; and the afikoman, a portion of matzah, is eaten in its stead at the end of the Seder meal.
Nisan 15: 2018 BCE
Covenant between God and Abraham (Genesis 15:13-18); 2048: birth of Isaac (Genesis 21:1-6); 2204: Jacob wrestled with an angel (Genesis 32:25-29); 2447: Moses and the Burning Bush (Exodus 3:2); 2448: Plague of the Firstborn and the Exodus from Egypt (Exodus 12:29).
April 3, 1909
Birthday of Stanisław Ulam, Polish-American mathematician and nuclear physicist who participated in the Manhattan Project; originated the Teller-Ulam design, which became the basis of all thermonuclear weapons; discovered the concept of cellular automaton; suggested nuclear pulse propulsion; and invented the Monte Carlo method of computation, which as computers have developed, has become the standard approach to many previously unsolvable problems.
April 4, 1909
HaShomer was founded, the first Jewish self-defense organization to protect Jewish settlements in pre-state Israel. It was eventually absorbed into the Hagana.
Nisan 18, 5753 (1993)
Yahrzeit of Rabbi Yosef Dov Soloveichik, scion of the illustrious Volozhin-Brisk rabbinic dynasty, who became the rosh yeshiva of Yeshiva University. Over the course of five decades, he ordained more than 2,000 rabbis. Known as The Rav, he was a great thinker who authored many books on Jewish thought and law, such as The Lonely Man of Faith, a classic work synthesizing Kantian existentialism and Jewish theology.
April 6, 1920
Birthday of Edmond Fischer, American biochemist who was the 1992 Nobel Prize laureate in physiology or medicine for describing how reversible phosphorylation works as a switch to activate proteins and regulate various cellular processes in the body.
April 7, 2011
The Iron Dome mobile missile defense system completed its first successful operational interception against a short-range missile launched from the Gaza Strip. In the subsequent 10 years, it intercepted more than 2,500 enemy rockets, with an 85%-90% success rate.
Nisan 21, 2448 (1312 BCE)
Seven days after the Exodus from Egypt, the Children of Israel found themselves trapped between the Red Sea in front of them and the Egyptian army and cavalry pursuing them from behind. Nachshon ben Aminadav, the leader of the tribe of Yehuda, in a literal leap of faith, jumped into the water, at which point the sea miraculously split and the Jewish people walked through on dry land. The sea then closed back, drowning Pharaoh and his troops, after which Moses and the people of Israel sang the “Song at the Sea” (Exodus 14:22; Sotah 12b). Until today, the last day of Passover is a holiday commemorating the splitting of the sea.
April 9, 1895
Birthday of Eduardo Propper de Callejón, Spanish diplomat remembered for facilitating the escape of tens of thousands of Jews from occupied France during WW II. In 2007, he was officially recognized as a Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem.
Nisan 23, 3832 (72 CE)
After holding out against the Roman legions for six years during the Jewish war against Rome, the 960 Zealot defenders of Masada, a natural rock fortress fortified by Herod, knowing that the next day the walls would be breached, took their own lives rather than be sold into slavery. Masada became a symbol for the new State of Israel with the oath “Masada shall not fall again.”
April 11, 1945
US forces liberated the Buchenwald concentration camp with its remaining 21,000 inmates. Some 56,545 men, women, and children were murdered there by vicious medical experiments, summary executions, torture, beatings, starvation, and inhumane work conditions.
April 12, 1884
Birthday of Otto Meyerhof, who was awarded the 1923 Nobel Prize “for discovering the fixed relationship between the consumption of oxygen and the metabolism of lactic acid in the muscle (the Pasteur-Meyerhof effect).”
April 13, 1948: A convoy of 78 people, mostly doctors and nurses bringing medical supplies and personnel to Hadassah hospital on Mount Scopus, Jerusalem, whose declared mission was to extend a “hand to all, without regard for race, religion, or ethnic origin,” were ambushed and murdered by Arabs. British troops stationed close by refused to “interfere.”
Nisan 27
Designated as Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day by a resolution of the Knesset on April 12, 1951, in commemoration of the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis, and the fighters of the ghettos. In Israel, places of entertainment are closed by law, TV stations air Holocaust documentaries, and low-key songs are played on the radio. Flags are flown at half-mast, and a state memorial ceremony is held at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial, in the presence of the Israeli prime minister, president, and survivors and their families. For one minute in the morning, a siren sounds throughout Israel and daily life stops, allowing people personal time for remembering and prayer.
Nisan 28, 2488 (1273 BCE)
After circling the walls of Jericho one time each day for the previous six days, Joshua and his army marched around Jericho seven times, accompanied by the Holy Ark. After blowing the shofar, the walls miraculously crashed and sank, leaving the city open and unprotected. Jericho was easily conquered, becoming the first fortified Canaanite city to fall to the Children of Israel in their conquest of the Promised Land (Joshua 6).
April 16, 1869
Joseph Rivlin, one of the leaders of the Jewish community in Jerusalem, laid the cornerstone of the first private home to be erected outside the walls of Jerusalem (in Nahalat Shiva), marking the beginning of the modern Yishuv.
April 17, 1924
Samuel Goldwyn and Louis Mayer founded MGM Studios in Culver City, California.
The above is a highly abridged monthly version of Dust & Stars – Today in Jewish History. For the complete newsletter: dustandstars.substack.com/subscribe