July 28, 1923 Mordechai Golinkin’s production of Giuseppe Verdi’s “La Traviata” marks the beginning of opera in Mandatory Palestine. Because Palestine has no opera house, the performance is in a movie theater. Golinkin, who wrote…
Retired Israeli Supreme Court Justice Shoshana Netanyahu, the second woman to serve on Israel’s highest court, is born in the free city of Danzig (Gdnask, Poland).
Yosef Haim Brenner, a pioneer of Modern Hebrew Literature, is murdered by an Arab gang during the 1921 Jaffa Riots.
March 17, 1921 Meir Amit, a career soldier who builds the Mossad into an internationally renowned intelligence agency, is born Meir Slutzky on the shores of the Sea of Galilee in Tiberias. He attends agricultural…
The first Hebrew language medical journal in Palestine, “HaRufuah,” is published quarterly by the Jewish Medical Association of Palestine. The journal is still published monthly by the Israel Medical Association and distributed to all its members free of charge.
September 18, 1918 Champion swimmer Judith Deutsch is born in Vienna, Austria. Most Austrian athletic clubs ban her because she is Jewish, so she begins swimming with a Jewish club, Hakoah Vienna. Between 1933 and…
Born in Lawrence, Massachusetts to Ukrainian-Jewish parents, Leonard Bernstein is one of the most prolific composers and conductors in American history.
Zelda Schneurson Mishkovsky (known simply as “Zelda”), one of the most widely acclaimed and beloved Israeli poets, is born in Russia.
At the urging of Berl Katznelson, a proposal is passed among Zionist leadership creating the Kupat Holim Clalit (General Sick Fund), a still present healthcare organization in Israel.
May 29, 1911 Poet Leah Goldberg is born in Königsberg, Prussia, now Kaliningrad, Russia. Raised mostly in Kovno, Lithuania, Goldberg begins writing poetry in Hebrew and Russian around age 12. She studies at the Universities…
August 14, 1910 Natan Alterman, a poet, journalist, translator, author and playwright, is born in Warsaw. He moves to Tel Aviv with his family in 1925. He studies agriculture in France and briefly works at…
February 16, 1910 Miriam Roth, whose Hebrew writing elevates children’s literature in Israel, is born in the Slovakian region of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. She attends various Jewish schools, including one run by her father, and…
Sixty-six families gathered on the sand dunes outside of Jaffa and selected lots for property in a new neighborhood called Ahuzat Bayit (“Homestead”) that became the first modern Jewish city, Tel Aviv.
May 3, 1906 Stage actor Meir Margalit, a winner of the Israel Prize in 1964, is born in Ostroleka, Poland, then part of the Russian Empire. Margalit begins acting in local plays at age 13….
The first forty students, all women, enroll in the newly established Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts in Jerusalem.
December 31, 1898 Eliyahu Dobkin, a signer of the Israeli Declaration of Independence and the founder of the Israel Museum, is born in Bobruysk, Belarus. Dobkin is raised in a religious Zionist family. His father,…
Painter Nachum Gutman is born in a part of Russia that is now Moldova.
Gershom Scholem, the pre-eminent scholar of Jewish mysticism, is born in Berlin. He immigrates to the Land of Israel in 1923.
May 24, 1895 Marcel Janco, a founder of the Dada movement and a major influence on modern Israeli art, is born into a wealthy family outside the Jewish quarter of Bucharest, Romania. Trained at the…
Reuven Rubin (born Rubin Zelicovici), one of Israel’s most acclaimed painters, is born in Galatz, Romania. Rubin’s family was both very poor and religious.
September 15, 1891 Austrian-Israeli writer Moshe Yaacov Ben-Gavriel is born Eugen Hoeflich in Vienna, Austria. He begins writing at a young age in German, particularly in the expressionist style. He serves as an officer in…
September 1, 1891 Yosef Zaritsky, one of Israel’s most renowned painters, is born near Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine. Zaritsky studies at the Academy of Art in Kyiv and lives in Moscow before making aliyah…
August 22, 1891 Sculptor Jacques Lipchitz, whose final work, “The Tree of Life,” stands outside Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus in Jerusalem, is born Chaim Jacob Lipchitz in Lithuania. Though his father wants him to…
July 29, 1891 Bernhard Zondek, the obstetrician-gynecologist who creates one of the first reliable pregnancy tests, is born in Wronke, Germany, now in Poland. Zondek moves to Berlin for his medical studies and earns his…
