March 21, 2016 The Jewish Agency secretly brings 17 Yemeni Jews to Israel, completing an effort in recent years that snuck roughly 200 Jews from Yemen to Israel amid Yemen’s civil war. “From Operation Magic…
Handler moves to Israel in 1948, taking a leadership role in Hapoel Ha-Mizrahi. In 2006, at the age of ninety, he makes Aliyah to Israel for a second time.
Acclaimed jazz artist John Zorn hosts the first annual Israeli Jazz Festival at “The Stone,” his New York City venue.
The leader of the Jewish community in Yemen and nine others immigrate to Israel to escape terrorist threats.
Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg, a leading scholar and Jewish communal and religious leader, passes away from heart failure at the age of 84.
January 27, 2006 The first U.N.-recognized International Holocaust Remembrance Day is held on the 61st anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. The goal of the commemoration is to educate the nations of the world and…
Rabbi Zerach Warhaftig, a founder of Israel’s National Religious Party and signatory of Israel’s Declaration of Independence, passes away in Jerusalem at the age of 96.
The Board of Governors of the American Jewish Committee adopts a new Policy Statement on Israel-Diaspora Relations.
May 25, 1991 Operation Solomon flies more than 14,000 Ethiopian Jews to Israel in 36 hours using 34 airplanes, including a Boeing 747 that sets a record with 1,087 passengers. The operation brings almost twice…
November 5, 1990 Israeli politician Rabbi Meir Kahane, 58, is fatally shot by Egyptian-American El Sayyid Nosair in a Manhattan hotel where Kahane is addressing a crowd of mostly Orthodox Jews. Kahane was elected to…
Jonathan Pollard, accused of spying for Israel, is sentenced to life in prison for espionage. He is later released in 2015.
World-famous Soviet refusenik Anatoly Shcharansky is released after eight years in a Siberian labor camp and flies to his new life as Natan Sharansky in Israel.
Members of the Palestinian Liberation Front hijack the cruise ship Achille Lauro off the coast of Egypt. The ship had departed from Genoa, Italy on October 3rd with 748 passengers on board for an 11-day cruise with planned stops in Naples, Alexandria, Port Said, and Ashdod, Israel.
The President, seeking reconciliation with Europe, angers Jewish leaders in the US and Israel with his planned visit to a Nazi military cemetery.
In 1984, there were approximately 20,000 Jews in Morocco. Both Israelis and Arabs were suspicious of the May 13-14 Conference on the Jewish Communities of Morocco which was held in Rabat.
The First International Conference and Festival of Jewish Theater opens in Tel Aviv. The festival coincides with the beginning of the first war in Lebanon and is almost canceled because many Israeli participants were called up for reserve duty.
Following a show trial lasting only twenty minutes, Habib Elghanian was executed by firing squad.
February 14, 1978 President Jimmy Carter announces a plan to sell advanced fighter jets to Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Coming three months after Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s visit to Israel, the proposal draws swift…
Rose Luria Halprin, who served twice as the national president of Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America, passes away at the age of 83 in New York.
June 15, 1970 A dozen Soviet dissidents are arrested at Leningrad’s Smolnoye Airport just before boarding a 12-seat Antonov AN-2 aircraft for an attempt to fly to freedom. Also arrested are four conspirators in the…
December 26, 1968 El Al Flight 253 from Tel Aviv to New York is about to take off after a layover in Athens when two men posing as passengers approach the Boeing 707. One draws…
A packed audience fills the amphitheater on Mount Scopus to celebrate the end of the June 1967 War and to mark the cultural unification of Jerusalem.
May 5, 1959 Some 2,500 people, including Israeli Interior Minister Israel Bar-Yehuda and Polish Ambassador Antoni Bida, gather at Kibbutz Lohamei HaGetaot in the western Galilee for a commemoration of the first Yom HaShoah (Holocaust…
World-famous scientist and Zionist Albert Einstein dies at Princeton Hospital.
