B"H Yom Yom

From Day by Day in Jewish History
by Rabbi Abraham P. Bloch z"l

Courtesy of Pomeranz Bookseller and Ktav Publ.

Clarification: The name of the book from which the historical information in this column comes is Day by Day in Jewish History. The name of this column in Torah Tidbits is B(aruch) H(aShem) Yom Yom. although many of the items included are tragic, saying B"H is still appropriate because of the principle: K'SHEIM SHE'M'VORCHIM AL HATOV... just as one makes a bracha for good things, so too does one make a bracha for bad things.

To illustrate that the contents of this column are not just dry facts, let me share with you part of an email message I received:

Dear Phil,

Last week's TT affected my family in a most unusual way, and I thought you should hear how.

My father's mother fled Minsk in the early '20s and came to Israel, eventually settling in Australia. She came from a frum, Zionist family... After World War II, she learned that only her brother had survived. My grandmother's sisters all remained in Minsk, where they perished with their families. Last week on Tish'a b'Av, my father was reading TT and read that the Jews of Minsk were murdered on 14 Av. We hadn't known the date of their deaths... So on Wednesday night we lit Yahrzeit candles. It was a sobering and meaningful event for us all. My sister was born on 14 Av, and I am named after two of those great aunts who perished.

The uncle who survived made Aliya in '79 and resumed a dati way of life after 60 years of hiding his Yiddishkeit...

...I feel that this week our family has come full circle. We can pay our respects to our relatives on the day of their death...

Thank you so much for the information, SM

Menachem Av

[14] Jews of Minsk murdered by the Nazis, 1942. [Some live on.]

[21] Yahrzeit of Rabbi Hayyim Soloveichik of Brisk, 1918. Hitler assumed powers of head-of-state and commander-in-chief of the army, 1934, becoming complete and absolute dictator. Jews of Austria were ordered by the Nazis to take the names of Israel and Sarah as their first names. First train of deportees from Belgium to Auschwitz 1942. 24 Yiddish writers executed in Russia 1952, terminating Yiddish culture there. 

[22] A violent earthquake rocks E. Yisrael; Acre is totally destroyed, 501. Rabbi Mordechai b. Hillel (known as The Mordechai), wife and 5 children perished in the Rindfleisch massacres, 1298. 16 Jews burned by the Inquisition in Toledo, 1488. 

[23] Pogrom, Zhitomir, Russia, 1905.

[24] Hellenic Code was replaced by Jewish Law in post-Chanuka Eretz Yisrael - observed as a festival way back. Chmielnicki, murderer of 300,000 Jews, died, 1675. Jewish agricultural colony est. in New Jersey, 1891. The failure of this and other similar ventures indicated that Jews were not interested in land to which they had no historic or religious ties.

[25] Louis X invited Jews who had been expelled from France to return, 1315. Yahrzeit of Rabbi Yeshayahu Menachem b. Yitzchak of Cracow, originator of the Heter Iska, 1599. The Amsterdam hideout of Anne Frank was discovered by the Nazis, 1944.

[26] Aliya by followers of the Vilna Gaon, 1809. Turkish government renounced its sovereignty over Palestine in favor of the British, 1920. Anti-Jewish riots in Bransk, Poland, 1938. 10,000 Jews sent from Borislav ghetto to Belsen extermination camp, 1942, in the first mass deportation of Jews to the gas chambers.

[27] S.A. Bierfield was lynched by the K.K.K. in Tennessee - first such incident involving a Jew.

[28] Moshe Rabeinu came down from Har Sinai after 40 days and nights following the Golden Calf and before ascending on Rosh Chodesh Elul until Yom Kippur. Last meeting of the Council of Four Countries (called by Poles the Jewish Parliament), 1762. The council functioned for over 180 years. Yahrzeit of the NETZIV, Rabbi Naphtali Zvi Yehuda Berlin, 1893.

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