September 20, 1931 Actress Haya Harareet, best known as Judah Ben-Hur’s love interest Esther in the 1959 remake of “Ben-Hur,” is born Haya Neuberg in Haifa to Polish immigrants who arrived in Mandatory Palestine when…
The 1929 Palestine and Near East Exhibition was the last of four smaller exhibitions which would eventually become (in 1932) the Levant Fair or Orient Fair (Yerid Hamizrach).
November 29, 1928 Shulamit Aloni, the lawyer and politician who founds the Meretz party, is born in Tel Aviv. From a young age, Aloni is involved with politics and is relentless in working to bring…
July 26, 1928 Netiva Ben Yehuda, a Palmach member, early Israeli feminist, acclaimed writer and media personality, is born in Tel Aviv to a father from Lithuania and a mother from Ukraine. She has two…
Maccabi Tel Aviv and Hapoel Tel Aviv hold their first soccer derby, a 3-0 Maccabi win.
August 24, 1926 Playwright and translator Nissim Aloni is born Nissim Levi to poor Bulgarian Jewish parents in Florentin, a low-income neighborhood in the south of Tel Aviv that becomes an inspiration for his work….
The Hebrew University officially opens in Jerusalem on Mount Scopus with Zionist and British leaders joined by representatives from universities across the world.
Yehuda Amital, the founder of Yeshivat Har Etzion, is born as Yehuda Klein in Oradea, Romania, where he receives a religious education.
A pioneer in Israeli film, Lia Van Leer is born Lia Greenberg in Beltsy, Romania (today Moldova).
April 24, 1924 Hapoel Haifa is established during Passover in a meeting led by Yehoshua Sherpstein and Yair Aharony at a house in Haifa’s Hadar neighborhood. The organization creates several branches related to sports and…
November 22, 1923 Hannele Meierzak, who as Hanna Maron becomes known as “the first lady of Israeli theater,” is born in Berlin. As a child, she appears in many plays and films, including an uncredited…
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 10, 1923 Journalist and peace activist Uri Avnery is born Helmut Ostermann in Beckum, Germany. After Adolf Hitler’s ascent to power in 1933, Uri’s father, an upper-class Zionist, moves the family to Haifa, then…
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.
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…
Zelda Schneurson Mishkovsky (known simply as “Zelda”), one of the most widely acclaimed and beloved Israeli poets, is born in Russia.
Arthur Ruppin, head of the Palestine Office of the World Zionist Organization, purchases the estate of Sir John Gray Hill on Mount Scopus in Jerusalem for the purpose of building a university.
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.
