Shvat 9, 5728 (1968):
Yahrzeit of Rabbi Eliezer Silver of Cincinnati, who, as head of the Union of Orthodox Rabbis, raised millions of dollars which were used to produce false documents and pay off smugglers, directly saving at least 10,000 Jews from the Holocaust.
In October 1943, Silver organized a rally of 200 rabbis in Washington, prompting US president Franklin D. Roosevelt to form the War Refugee Board, which rescued tens of thousands more from Hitler’s “Final Solution.” After the war, Silver traveled to DP camps to help Holocaust survivors start a new life.
Feb. 8, 1878:
Birthday of Martin Buber, Austrian-Israeli philosopher, writer, and Jewish thinker whose work I and Thou influenced both the secular and religious world of ideas. “A person cannot approach the divine by reaching beyond the human. To become human is what this individual person has been created for.”
Feb. 9, 1925:
The Technion-Israel Institute of Technology opened in Haifa, becoming Israel’s first modern university. In 1998, the Technion became only the fifth university in the world to successfully design, build, and launch its own satellite. In 2004, two Technion professors received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their research on protein breakdown in cells. Today, Technion graduates comprise the majority of Israeli-educated scientists and engineers.
Feb. 10, 1890:
Birthday of Boris Pasternak, a Russian novelist whose most famous novel, Doctor Zhivago, was published abroad in 1957 after it was banned in the Soviet Union. He won the 1958 Nobel Prize for Literature but was forced to decline the award by the Soviet government. In 1988, president Mikhail Gorbachev finally allowed the “great novel of the Revolution” to be published, and in 1989 Pasternak’s son accepted the Nobel Prize on his father’s behalf.
Feb. 11, 1986:
Natan Sharansky, first known as a prisoner of Zion and human rights activist, whose imprisonment for nine years on false charges became the focus of an international campaign against the Soviet Union, was finally released as part of a prisoner exchange.
He was reunited in Israel with his wife, Avital, who had led the struggle for his freedom. In Israel, he co-founded the Yisrael BaAliyah political party, based on representing Russian immigrant interests; served as trade and industry minister, interior minister, housing and construction minister, and chairman of The Jewish Agency for Israel; and was the 2020 Genesis Prize laureate.
Feb. 12, 1473:
First massacre of anusim (Jews forced to convert to Christianity) – in Cordoba, Spain. Although the Spanish Inquisition and the auto-da-fé (public trial and punishment) were inflicted on anyone accused of heresy, for over 300 years the main victims were Jews. The number of Jews murdered in Spain alone is estimated at 39,912, many of whom were burned alive.
Shvat 15:
Tu Bishvat (New Year of the Trees), which falls this year on February 13. We mark the day by eating fruit from the Seven Species for which the Land of Israel is praised – wheat, barley, grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives, and dates (Deuteronomy 8:8). We also remember that “Man is a tree of the field” (Deuteronomy 20:19) and reflect on our place in the natural world.
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