Jewish History Soundbites

Aleksander the Great Chassidic Dynasty

Based in the Lodz suburb of Aleksandrow, the Aleksander chassidic dynasty was one of the largest and most prominent in prewar Poland. Established as a branch of Vorka-Peshischa in the mid 19th century, it grew under the dynamic leadership of successive generations of the Danziger family at its helm. The Bais Yisrael Yeshiva network contributed to its growth in the early 20th century. Aleksander gained further renown during its 30 year dispute with its arch rival - the Ger chassidic community based near Warsaw. Although Aleksander attempted to remain apolitical, they did nominally join Agudas Yisrael towards the end of the 1930’s.

Although given an opportunity to escape, the last great prewar leader of Aleksander Rav Yitzchak Menachem Mendel Danziger - the Akeidas Yitzchak, chose to remain with his followers. Having escaped from Lodz to the Warsaw Ghetto, he was deported along with his family and followers and martyred in Treblinka in the summer of 1942. A group of Aleksander survivors prevailed upon the only remaining member of the Rebbe’s family, Rav Yehuda Moshe Tyberg to lead and rebuild Aleksander. He did so and established an Aleksander court in Bnei Brak, even changing his family name to Danziger.

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Holy Crown in Brownsville: The Life & Times of Rav Moshe Rosen

Rav Moshe Rosen - the Nezer Hakodesh (c.1870-1957) was an early leader of American orthodoxy. Having served as a communal rabbi in Lithuania for three decades, he was the one who discovered the Chazon Ish as a young man in the town of Chveidan. In the late 1920’s he immigrated to the United States and settled in Brownsville. He served as the first rosh yeshiva of Torah Vodaath, and later served as a rabbi in Brownsville, whilst continuing to author his multi volume Nezer Hakodesh and other works. He served at the helm of the Agudath Harabbonim and was involved in many early initiatives of Jewish education during his thirty years in a leadership position of American Orthodoxy. 

 

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Early Secularization in Jewish Europe

The expulsion of the Jews from the Iberian Peninsula at the end of the 15th century was a period of great upheaval, as a Spanish-Portuguese diaspora formed in Western Europe and the Mediterranean basin. At the same time, many conversos remained in their home country, while many others emigrated and attempted to rejoin the Jewish community. 

As a result, there arose in communities such as Amsterdam, London, northern Italy and other places the beginnings of Jewish Enlightenment and early secularization, as the confrontation with the ideas of the Enlightenment and the modern world brought the challenge of Jewish identity to the fore. Jewish secularization did not commence in Mendelssohn’s Berlin of the 18th century, nor in Eastern Europe of the late 19th century. Secularization has been a slow but steady process through the 15th-18th centuries. Heretics and tragic figures from Converso families in Amsterdam such Uriel De Costa and Baruch Spinoza pioneered Jewish secularism, while an Italian rabbi in London named Rabbi David Nieto attempted to combat it. The addition of Sabbateanism and the rise of the court Jews in Germany in the 17th century, only led to an increasing trend towards secularization, long before Berlin and Mendelssohn. 

 

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Jerusalem Odyssey: Rav Yaakov Moshe Charlap

Rav Yaakov Moshe Charlap (1882-1951) was an important rabbinical leader in Yerushalayim during the first half of the 20th century. A product of the Old Yishuv, he was a student of Rav Yehoshua Leib Diskin, Rav Hirsh Mechel Shapiro and several others before becoming a lifelong close student of Rav Avraham Yitzchak Kook. He served as the founding rabbi of the Shaarei Chesed and Rechavia neighborhoods, as well as rosh yeshiva of Merkaz Harav and his own yeshiva Bais Zevul in Shaarei Chesed.

 

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The US & The Holocaust: A Review

The story of the confrontation of the US and the Holocaust is done well in the recently produced Ken Burns documentary ‘The US & the Holocaust’. It purports to cover the entirety of the Holocaust from an American perspective, and is by no means limited to the story of potential rescue. From the immigration quotas, to American anti-Semitism and the isolationist movement, to the war itself. 

There’s the story of how individual Jews confronted the reality of the developing Holocaust knowing that their relatives were facing impending doom. The questions of what role was played by the American people, the Roosevelt administration, Congress and the State Department - in particular senior officials such as Breckinridge Long - are duly analyzed. The response of the American Jewish community as a collective as well as individuals is explored as well. In addition, noble endeavors of the US government such as the Treasury Department’s role in the forming of the War Refugee Board is recorded as well.

 

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Founder of a Dynasty: The Bais Halevi

Rav Yosef Dov Soloveitchik - the Bais Halevi (1820-1892) was the founder of the Soloveitchik/Brisk dynasty. Following his studies in Volozhin and a short stint as a rosh yeshiva in Minsk, he was appointed assistant rosh yeshiva in Volozhin alongside the Netziv. In 1864 he departed to assume the rabbinate in Slutzk, where he remained until 1875 when he retired to Warsaw. In 1879 he moved once again this time to Brisk, where he served as rabbi until his passing.

 

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Jews, Sports & Identity

Jews and sports is an exploration of Jewish identity and integration in the modern world. This was expressed as Jews became fans of sports teams, with the most famous baseball fan in history being an eccentric Jewish woman named Hilda Chester. Jews were always prominent in the labor movement, and it was a Jewish labor organizer named Marvin Miller who, as president of the Player’s Union, successfully rid Baseball of the reserve clause and emancipated the players from the owner’s grip.

During the 1920’s and 30’s Jews were especially prominent in boxing. Benny Leonard and Barney Ross were famous boxing champions, but there were many others as well. Jewish participation in boxing is perhaps the most typical expression of both the struggles of the immigrant generation, along with the process of Americanization. 

Several victims of the Holocaust were famous Jewish athletes. Eddy Hamel of the Dutch National Football (soccer) team, Victor Perez the boxer, gymnasts, fencers and others as well. Though they may have been celebrities known for their physical prowess, Nazi racial theory considered them Jews and they suffered the same fate as European Jewry.

 

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Organizing Orthodoxy: The Story of the Agudath Harabonim Part I

The Agudath Harabonim of the US & Canada was founded in 1902 with the goals of strengthening traditional Jewish observance in the country. Its membership was primarily composed of Eastern European immigrant rabbis, and they focused on the areas of Shabbos observance, kashrus, Jewish education, strengthening the office of the rabbinate and assisting their brethren back in the old country.

The Agudath Harabonim supported RIETS, founded the Central Relief Committee and Ezras Torah during World War I and the Vaad Hatzalah during World War II. Its leadership was composed by some of the greatest rabbinical leaders of the era, including Rabbi Moshe Zevulun Margolis (Ramaz), Rabbi Dov Bernard Levinthal, Rabbi Yisrael Rosenberg, Rabbi Moshe Rosen, Rabbi Yaakov Kontrovitz, Rabbi Eliezer Silver and many others. 

 

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Our Grandfathers Came to this Land

The Great Immigration was the population movement of millions of Jews primarily from Eastern Europe to the United States and other countries over the course of a half century between 1875-1924. Although the process, scope, catalysts, challenges of the immigration and immigrants are fascinating aspects of the story, perhaps the most unique angle is the fact that the entire endeavor was a ‘silent revolution’. Throughout the 19th century the Jewish community in Russia and elsewhere debated, discussed and pondered solutions to the many challenges facing the Jewish community and Jewish identity in the modern era. No solutions were incredibly successful. Yet one was. Immigration. It completely transformed the Jewish landscape.

And it was this solution which was really a silent revolution, for it had no leadership, no political platform, no organization. It was a grassroots movement from rank and file anonymous individuals making subjective life choices regarding migration. It was this silent revolution which made a decisive and quite astounding impact on the future of the Jewish People.

 

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Feivels Going West: Jews in the Wild West

The German Jewish immigration of the mid 19th century caused a demographic explosion of the American Jewish community from a mere 5,000 in 1830 to approximately 250,000 in 1880. Economic opportunity, the California Gold Rush and a general American migration to the frontiers of the west, led thousands of these immigrants to try their luck as peddlers and merchants in San Francisco and other mining towns in the Wild West. 

When Levi Strauss arrived from Bavaria with his family in 1847 he initially settled in NY. The Gold Rush enticed him to open a branch of the family’s dry goods business in San Francisco in 1854 where he serviced the mining community. Two decades later he began marketing Levi’s pants, which were the world’s first blue jeans with rivets to secure the pockets in the rough environment the miners operated in. Josephine Marcus was the daughter of German Jewish immigrants in NYC who migrated to California and later to Tombstone, Arizona where she married the legendary Wild West figure Wyatt Earp. 

 

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