Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Culture

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.

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at editorial@forward.com, subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.

Exit mobile version