June 9
100 YEARS AGO IN THE FORWARD
Phoebe Cohen came to New York from Liverpool, England, to find her father — and have him arrested for abandoning his wife and family. Though she searched high and low for him, she wasn’t able to find him until, purely by chance, she saw Brooklyn resident Max Cohen on a streetcar at 125th Street in Harlem. When she saw him, she demanded that he return to Liverpool to support his family. Cohen responded by picking up his daughter and trying to throw her under the wheels of the streetcar. Fortunately, a nearby policeman arrested Cohen, who is being held in the Harlem jail until his hearing takes place.
75 YEARS AGO IN THE FORWARD
Hasidim numbering anywhere from 2,000 to 3,000, dressed in kapotes and shtreimlekh, showed up at a Jerusalem soccer pitch last Saturday — not to play, but to attack the Jewish soccer teams who had a game scheduled. The Hasidim, including women and children, rushed the field during the game but were held back by British police. This infuriated the Hasidim, who, as a result, began attacking the police by throwing stones at them. The police called in reinforcements, who ended up arresting 11 Hasidim but managed to clear out the crowd. Thousands of Hasidim later surrounded the police station, demanding the release of the 11 arrestees. Eventually they were let out on bail.
“Oy, do I have a great son-in-law. He’s such a fine sheygets. I simply kvell from him.” This is how a Jewish mother talks in the USSR, where intermarriage rates are said to be upward of 70%. There’s not a Jewish family in the USSR that has not been touched by intermarriage. And, it seems, many Soviet Jews seem to like it. One interesting fact is that the number of Jewish women intermarrying is greater than that of Jewish men. One sees them often, on the street and in the theater: a strapping Russian soldier walking proudly, arm in arm, with his dark-haired Jewish wife. “A Jewish wife makes a mensch out of her husband,” some of the Russians said.
50 YEARS AGO IN THE FORWARD
The government of Saudi Arabia has broken a contract with Poland to build a railroad line from Aleppo to Medina, because there are Jewish engineers on the Polish team. A group of Polish engineers already had arrived in Saudi Arabia to see the site for the 1,000-mile-long railroad, when King Saud was told that many of the Polish engineers were Jewish. The Saudi government canceled the contract immediately. It is also of value to note that Saudi Arabia has not permitted American soldiers of Jewish extraction to enter the country, where there is an American army base.
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