NOVEMBER 20/CHESHVAN 19
1923:
Birthday of Nadine Gordimer, outspoken critic of South African apartheid and winner of the 1991 Nobel Prize for literature "who through her magnificent epic writing has been of very great benefit to humanity."
1940:
Birthday of Arieh Warshel, Israeli-American biochemist who is a pioneer in computational studies on functional properties of biological molecules. He received the 2013 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for "the development of multiscale models for complex chemical systems."
1946:
The Vatican instructed the Catholic Church in France not to return Jewish children to their families after the Holocaust if they had been baptized.
1949:
The Jewish population of Israel reached one million.
1964:
The Second Vatican Council, under Pope Paul VI, condemned anti-Semitism, declaring that the Jewish people as a whole are not to be blamed for the death of Jesus.
1977:
President Anwar el Sadat of Egypt on his historic and unprecedented visit to Jerusalem addressed the Knesset with these words:
“Today I tell you, and I declare it to the whole world, that we accept to live with you in permanent peace based on justice.”
2014:
Eli Harari, Israeli-American SanDisk founder and holder of over 100 patents was awarded the National Medal of Technology for revolutionizing data storage with the semiconductor-based technology known as flash memory. This innovation enabled the development of digital photography, USB drives, smartphones, tablets, notebooks, e-books, apps and portable game controls.
