This week in Jewish history: UN votes in favor of Israel, first kibbutz founded

Nov. 29, 1947:

The United Nations voted 33 to 13 with 10 abstentions in favor of the establishment of the State of Israel as the national homeland for the Jewish people. 

The day after the UN vote, the Israeli War of Independence began as Arabs attacked a bus near Lod, killing five of its passengers, and also attacked the Jewish commercial quarter near the Old City of Jerusalem.

Nov. 30, 1215:

Pope “Innocent” III decreed that “Jews and Muslims shall wear a special dress [a badge] to enable them to be distinguished from Christians so that no Christian shall come to marry them ignorant of who they are.”

Dec. 1, 1909:

The first kibbutz, Degania Alef, was founded at the southern tip of the Sea of Galilee by members of the Bilu movement. Rachel the Poetess; “prophet of labor” A.D. Gordon; and paramilitary commander Joseph Trumpeldor worked at Degania Alef. 

The second child born on the kibbutz was Israeli general and politician Moshe Dayan.

Dec. 2, 1906:

Birth of Peter Goldmark, the Jewish Hungarian-American engineer who developed the first commercial color television system, which used a rotating three-color disk. 

He also developed the 33 1/3 LP phonograph that greatly increased the playing time of records, and a scanning system used by the Lunar Orbiter spacecraft in 1966 to transmit photographs to the Earth from the moon.

Kislev 2, 5723 (1962):

Yahrzeit of Rabbi Aaron Kotler, prominent Talmudist, Orthodox leader, and founder of Beit Midrash Govoha of Lakewood, New Jersey, which has since grown into the largest institution of its kind in America, with over 5,000 advanced-level students. 

Rabbi Kotler led various efforts to rescue Jews from the Holocaust, such as persuading US Treasury secretary Henry Morgenthau to risk his political career in order to help save Jews.

Dec. 4, 1961:

The World Council of Churches called upon its 198 member denominations, which collectively represent over 500 million people worldwide in more than 110 countries, to “resist every form of antisemitism.”

Dec. 5, 1897:

Birth of Gershom Scholem, leading contemporary scholar of Kabbalah and Jewish mysticism, who discovered many previously unknown manuscripts, and published hundreds of articles and dozens of books. 

The above is a highly abridged weekly version of Dust & Stars. To receive the complete newsletter every day with all the events and remarkable Jews who have changed the world: https://dustandstars.substack.com/subscribe