Looking Back: May 4, 2012
100 Years Ago in the Forward
Reports are coming in offering details of a particularly brutal pogrom that recently took place in Fez, Morocco. Hundreds of Jews were killed and wounded, many Jewish women were raped, children were kidnapped and babies were slaughtered. The pogromists apparently were so vicious that they threw babies off of rooftops. Twelve thousand Jews are currently homeless because of the attack. Most have camped out in an open area near the sultan’s palace. It is said that dozens are dying of hunger each day. Numerous Europeans were also attacked during the pogrom. Many were beheaded; others were buried alive.
75 Years Ago in the Forward
Anyone who recently happened to be at the Jewish Arbitration Court that is in Manhattan on Madison Avenue at Clinton Street got a good glimpse of how strange Jewish life is in the New World. There they would have seen a real live “angel” from Harlem-based Father Divine’s Black Heaven — a Jewish angel, one that left the Garden of Eden on the Lower East Side; she left her husband and children to go uptown and join the good father’s International Peace Mission. Though she can barely speak English, Sarah Eisenberg does speak a fine Warsaw Yiddish. She was brought to court by the landsmanshaft, the Warsaw Fraternal Society, which is attempting to ban her for joining the strange uptown cult.
50 Years Ago in the Forward
Last year’s great fear for Israel was that Egyptian strongman Gamal Abdel Nasser was pouring weapons into the Sinai for a potential attack on its northern neighbor. This year, however, the fears relate more to the fact that the Soviet Union is eagerly arming a number of Arab countries, all of which have Israel in their sights. The danger, according to Israeli Foreign Minister Golda Meir, is that the Arabs have consistently refused to accept Israel, or even to recognize it as a legitimate state. These states, the foreign minister claims, have refused to accept “Israel’s outstretched arm in the name of peace.” Until they do, there will be antagonism.
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