Convened in Carlsbad, Czechoslovakia, the Thirteenth Zionist Congress discusses details of the Palestine Mandate and particularly the prerogatives of the Palestine Zionist Executive (PZE) that guide Jewish immigration and settlement in Palestine.
The only politician in Israeli history to hold the positions of both President and Prime Minister, Shimon Peres is born in Belorussia to Yitzchak and Sara Perski.
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…
Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, considered the “father of modern Hebrew,” dies from tuberculosis at the age of 64 in Jerusalem. Thirty thousand mourners attend his funeral on the Mount of Olives.
January 23, 1922 Tuviah Samuel Friedman, a Nazi-hunter known as “the Merciless One,” is born in Radom, Poland. Friedman survives several concentration camps during the Holocaust, which kills his parents and two siblings. As a…
Nahalal, the first moshav ha’ovdim (workers settlement), is founded in the northwest Jezreel Valley, about halfway between Haifa and Afula.
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…
In Salonica, the Conference of Greek Zionists adopts a resolution declaring that Jewish education in the Alliance Israelite Universelle Schools does not meet with Jewish national views and aspirations. They call for a new syllabus.
December 24, 1920 The World Zionist Congress in London launches Keren Hayesod (Hebrew for the Foundation Fund, now known in English as the United Israel Appeal) to raise money for the Zionist movement and fulfill…
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.
Following the San Remo conference in April 1920, a treaty is signed between the Allies and the Ottoman Empire in the town of Sevres, France, officially breaking up the Ottoman Empire.
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.
Bella Abzug is born in the Bronx, New York to an Orthodox Jewish immigrant family from Russia. Elected in 1970, she serves three terms in Congress and is the first Jewish woman to be elected to the House of Representatives.
WIZO is founded in London by Rebecca Sieff, Vera Weizmann, and Edith Eder. Women from Palestine, England, Germany, Poland, The Netherlands, Russia, and South Africa are present at the inaugural conference.
British Prime Minister David Lloyd George asks Herbert Samuel to become the first High Commissioner of Palestine.
March 1, 1920 A Shi’ite Arab militia, accompanied by local Bedouins, attacks the Jewish agricultural settlement of Tel Hai, which has served as a border outpost in the Upper Galilee between British-controlled Palestine and French-controlled…
During the Paris Peace Conference, one of the major initiatives undertaken by the Allies is recognition of minority rights in European states. While addressing the rights of minorities in general, the Polish Treaty specifically mentions Jewish cultural and civil liberties.
A delegation of the Zionist Organization, led by Chaim Weizmann, presents the case for a Jewish homeland in Palestine to the Paris Peace Conference after World War I.
Born in Lawrence, Massachusetts to Ukrainian-Jewish parents, Leonard Bernstein is one of the most prolific composers and conductors in American history.
Although its support of the Balfour Declaration was tepid, the AJC did recognize that a Jewish homeland could provide safety for Jews still suffering oppression in other lands.
In seeking official government endorsement for the Zionist cause from a great power, the leadership of the Zionist Organization successfully obtains support from the British government in 1917 by way of the Balfour Declaration.
Sarah Aaronsohn, a Nili intelligence operative, dies four days after shooting herself in an effort to avoid further torture and interrogation by Turkish authorities.
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…
A secret treaty is negotiated to divide the former Ottoman territories between Britain and France.
