This week in Jewish history: Jordan & Jerusalem, Tel Aviv & Egypt

Dec. 13, 1797: 

Birthday of Heinrich Heine, author of the Book of Songs, poems frequently set to music, which by the middle of the 19th century were popularly considered to be “old folk songs of the German people.” 

Despite his being baptized in 1825 (which he regretted for the rest of his life), his great popularity and obvious facility with the German language enraged many antisemites. 

“Wherever they burn books, they will also, in the end, burn human beings,” he said.

Dec. 14, 1981: 

The Knesset voted to annex and extend Israeli law to the Golan Heights.

Dec. 15, 1947:

The Arab Legion of Jordan surrounded Jerusalem and isolated its 100,000 Jews from the rest of pre-state Israel. By March 1948, the city was under full siege, and in May Jordan invaded and occupied east Jerusalem, dividing the city for the first time in its history and driving thousands of Jews into exile. 

Arabs proceeded to destroy all 58 synagogues in the Jewish Quarter and used Jewish gravestones from the Mount of Olives to build roads and latrines. 

The Western Wall would be off limits to Jews (in spite of the ceasefire agreement granting freedom of access to holy places) until Israel’s victory in the 1967 Six Day War. 

Kislev 15, 3981 (220 CE): 

Yahrzeit of Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi (the “Prince”). Known for his wealth and humility, he was the leader of the Jewish people during the period following the destruction of the Second Temple. 

With persecutions and exile threatening to break down the chain of transmission, Rabbi Yehuda decided to gather, record, edit, and organize the statements of the earlier sages, setting the Oral Law down in writing for the first time, in the form of the Mishna. 

“I learned much from my teachers, more from my colleagues, but most of all I learned from my students,” he said.

Dec. 17, 1914: 

Jews of Tel Aviv were expelled to Egypt by the Turkish authorities. Three years later, the remaining 9,000 Jews of Jaffa were also expelled, fleeing north, where they suffered from disease and starvation. They were only allowed to return with the British victory in 1917.

Dec. 18, 1946: 

Birthday of Steven Spielberg, the most commercially successful film director in history. His filmography includes Jaws; Raiders of the Lost Ark; E.T.; Jurassic Park; Schindler’s List; and Saving Private Ryan (both of which won the Best Director Oscar). 

In 1994, he founded the USC Shoah Foundation “to give opportunity to survivors and witnesses to the Shoah... to tell their own stories in their own words in audio-visual interviews, preserve their testimonies, and make them accessible for research, education, and outreach for the betterment of humankind in perpetuity.”

Dec. 19, 1852: 

Birthday of Albert Michelson (whose father was Jewish), the first American to win a Nobel Prize for Physics (1907), awarded for his experiment that determined the speed of light, made on an interferometer that he developed and is still used today for measuring the wavelengths of spectrums. 

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