May 31, 1936 National Religious Party politician Zevulun Hammer is born in Haifa. Hammer participates in the Zionist youth group Bnei Akiva and serves in the Israel Defense Forces’ Armored Corps with the Nahal program,…
80,000 mourners, approximately a quarter of the Jewish population in Palestine, line the streets of Jerusalem for the funeral of Rav Abraham Isaac Kook. He passed away the day before from cancer.
The Jerusalem YMCA, still operational today, is opened by General Edmund Allenby in front of an overflow crowd.
Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, one of modern Judaism’s most influential composers and spiritual leaders, is born in Berlin.
Yehuda Amital, the founder of Yeshivat Har Etzion, is born as Yehuda Klein in Oradea, Romania, where he receives a religious education.
November 8, 1923 Rabbi Yisrael Meir Friedman Ben-Shalom, a sixth-generation descendant of Rebbe Yisrael of Rizin, is born in Bohush, Romania, to a Hasidic and Zionist family. Friedman Ben-Shalom joins Hashomer Hatzair, the secular Zionist…
September 23, 1920 Ovadia Yosef, a Sephardi rabbi, politician and community leader, is born in Baghdad. He moves from Iraq to Jerusalem at age 4 with his family. While studying at Porat Yosef Yeshiva, he…
Rabbi Mordechai M. Kaplan, publishes “A Program for the Reconstruction of Judaism” in the Menorah Journal. His ideology eventually leads to the creation of a fourth American Jewish denomination, the Reconstructionist movement.
A Muslim pilgrimage festival erupts into violence against Jews in Jerusalem, leaving nine dead and hundreds wounded.
March 20, 1917 Yigael Yadin, a general known for his archaeological work, is born in Jerusalem. His father is an archaeologist, and his mother is a women’s rights activist. Yadin joins the Haganah when he…
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 Orthodox movement created the Orthodox Union, and adopted a constitution and by-laws at their meeting at Congregation Shearith Israel, the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue in New York.
Gershom Scholem, the pre-eminent scholar of Jewish mysticism, is born in Berlin. He immigrates to the Land of Israel in 1923.
November 7, 1878 Rabbi Avraham Yeshayahu Karelitz, who becomes one of the 20th century’s leading Talmud scholars, is born in Kosava, Russia, now part of Belarus, to the head of the local rabbinical court, Rabbi…
September 7, 1865 The first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Palestine, Rabbi Abraham Isaac HaCohen Kook, known for promoting religious Zionism and for writing “Orot” and other religious books, is born in Griva, Latvia. In 1884,…
Thirty-one rabbis meet in Frankfurt am Main for a two-week assembly. The assembly ultimately decides that while Jewish law allows prayer in any language, it is necessary to recite certain prayers – including the Barechu and Shema – in Hebrew.
Shabbetai Zevi was born on August 1, 1626 in Smyrna (Izmir), Turkey. A gifted scholar, he showed signs of mental instability early in his life, causing unpredictable mood swings from extreme depression to euphoria.
Baruch Spinoza’s ideas about Judaism are rejected by the Amsterdam Jewish community, eventually leading to his excommunication. He goes on to become one of the most important philosophers of the Jewish Enlightenment, which seeks to reconcile the world of Jewish faith with secular, empirical reality.
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.
