Year Unknown:
According to tradition, the Amalekites defeated the Jews who had stormed their mountain stronghold in defiance of Moses’ order (Numbers 14:45).
3619 (141 B.C.E.):
Shimon the Hasmonean was elected High Priest and governor of the Jews, marking the renewed independence of the Jewish nation (which lasted for 206 years).
5369 (1609):
Yahrzeit of Rabbi Yehuda Loew, the "Maharal of Prague," a brilliant Talmudist, author, philosopher, mathematician and astronomer. A famous legend arose that he made a man of clay known as the Golem and gave him life, in order to protect the Jewish community of Prague from the frequent threat of blood libels. The story became widely known, giving birth to novels, plays and operas.
1710:
Hodel Kikinish, the daughter of a wealthy Jew of Lemberg (Lvov), Poland, was martyred after falsely confessing to blood-ritual charges in order to save the lives of other Jews.
5494 (1734):
After many years as a member of a society of "hidden tzaddikim," living under the guise of an ignorant clay-digger, Rabbi Yisrael Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Chassidism, was instructed by his masters to reveal himself on his 36th birthday, and begin to publicly disseminate his teachings. He emphasized the importance of joy and simple faith, rather than ascetism. Initially, his teachings encountered fierce opposition from the established leadership of the Jewish community, but by the time he passed away at age 62 on Shavuot of 1760, the movement he founded had spread significantly.
1922:
President Warren G. Harding signed the Lodge-Fish Joint Resolution of Congress, "favoring the establishment in Palestine of a National Home for the Jewish People.”
1926:
Birthday of Donald Glaser, American physicist and neurobiologist who received the 1960 Nobel Prize in Physics for his invention of the bubble chamber used in subatomic particle physics. This allowed scientists to observe what happens to high-energy beams from an accelerator, thus paving the way for many important discoveries.
1934:
Birthday of Leonard Cohen, Canadian singer, songwriter and poet with “a deep tribal sense,” who dealt with themes of religion, loss and love.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.Anthem