Forward Looking Back
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1916 100 Years Ago
The Jewish quarter of Bayonne, New Jersey, is reeling after a scandalous episode occurred in which a Jewish landlord evicted an elderly couple on the first day of the Passover holiday. The couple, who have lived in the house at 88 W. 18th St. in Bayonne for nearly two years, have never been late on the rent. Just before Passover, however, the old man fell ill and told the landlord that they would be late on the $5 rent. The landlord, who works as the boss of a painting crew, is known to be an angry Jew, and instead of having a bit of sympathy for the old couple, he called the police to throw out the pair. But the police took one look at the situation and had pity on them, so they were able to stay. But on the first day of Passover, the police came back and the couple was out on the street. It was truly a pitiful sight.
1941 75 Years Ago
The Romanian fascists known as the Iron Guard have renewed a call to the citizens of Romania to perpetrate pogroms on the Jews of the country, only a few months after a number of anti-Jewish pogroms rocked the country. The call increased the tension between the Iron Guard and Premier Ion Antonescu, whom the Iron Guard has accused of being a “slave to the Jews.” Meanwhile, Antonescu is continuing to attempt to prosecute Iron Guard members who were responsible for the pogroms that took place a few months ago. This week, 25 Iron Guard members who were involved in the recent upheavals were sentenced to anywhere from five to 25 years in prison, depending on their specific roles in the pogroms.
1966 50 Years Ago
The Rabbinical School of the Jewish Theological Seminary has announced that it will temporarily shut down so that their hundreds of students can spend as much time as possible attempting to save JTS’s huge collection of holy books that suffered smoke and water damage after a fire tore through the library in March. In addition, numerous students from other nearby colleges, among them City College, Columbia University, New York University and Yale University, have donated their time in order to participate in the rescue of these books. Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, in Cincinnati, also approached JTS and offered to do whatever is possible to help provide the library with duplicates or copies of anything that was destroyed in the fire. The institute also offered to help the library in any way possible.
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