September 8, 1908 Orthodox theologian and ardent Zionist Eliezer Berkovits is born in Nagyvarad, Transylvania. Berkovits studies the Talmud at yeshivot, and in 1934 he is ordained as a rabbi at the Hildesheimer Rabbinical Seminary,…
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the most widely distributed anti-Semitic publication in history, is first published in Znamya, a Russian newspaper.
Held a few weeks before the Second Zionist Congress was set to convene in Basle, Switzerland, 160 Russian Zionists from ninety-three cities and towns in Russia meet secretly in Warsaw, Poland.
“Der Judenstaat” (The Jewish State), subtitled, “An Attempt at a Modern Solution to the Jewish Question,” by Theodor Herzl is first published in Vienna. 500 copies are originally printed and distributed.
Delegates convene in Katowice (presently southern Poland) for the first gathering of the Hovevei Zion (Lovers of Zion) movement.
September 11, 1881 Yosef Haim Brenner, the leading Israeli literary figure of the early 20th century, is born in Novi Mlini, Ukraine. He grows up receiving a Jewish education and joins the Bund, a Jewish…
Czar Alexander II, the leader of Russia, is assassinated in St. Petersburg when a bomb is thrown into his carriage.
Jews in all of Germany were finally given emancipation when the North German Confederation Constitution was extended to Bavaria.
Raised in a traditional Jewish household, early Zionist activist Leo Motzkin is born in present-day Brovary, Ukraine.
Scholar and writer Michah Joseph Berdichevski is best known for his Hebrew writings, which included his lengthy debate with Ahad Ha’am about the nature of Hebrew literature, as well as his extensive recording of Jewish folklore.
Pope Pius IX writes to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Leopold II, to protest the Grand Duke’s decision to grant levels of emancipation to Jews in the Grand Duchy.
September 6, 1840 The nine surviving Damascus Jews accused of killing a Franciscan Capuchin friar and his servant to harvest the blood are freed by order of Muhammad Ali, the Ottoman pasha who controls an…
The tensions between the local Shiite population and Jews erupt in the northeast Iranian city of Mashhad.
Chaim Nahman Bialik, famed Zionist poet, is born in the village of Radi, near Zhitomir in Volhynia (Northwest Ukraine).
Sephardi Jews living in France are granted equal rights and given French citizenship by the National Assembly.
Following the French Revolution and the August 26, 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man, the issue of Jewish rights is debated in the French National Assembly for three days with no conclusion.
Berlin’s Jewish community reorganizes with a new constitution, the Aeltesten Reglement.
Ottoman Sultan Murad III orders an investigation into the number of synagogues in Safed.
Ottoman Sultan Murad III issues a firman (royal decree) ordering that 1,000 Jews from Safed be sent to live in Famagusta, Cyprus.
A riot breaks out against the conversos or marranos–Jews who had publicly converted to Christianity but continued to practice Judaism behind closed doors.
Austrian Archduke Albert V ordered that all his Jewish subjects were to be imprisoned and their possessions confiscated following libelous accusations against an influential member of Viennese Jewish community.
Following decades of exploitation and persecution that included heavy taxation and attempts at forced conversion, King Edward I of England issues an expulsion order for the Jews of England.
In 1244, the Duke issues a charter extending rights to Jews. His goal is to build the region’s economy. The charter encourages Jewish money-lending and Jewish migration to an outlying area. It also guarantees Jewish safety.
