March 14, 2003
100 YEARS AGO
• From Rivington to Hester Street, and all over the Lower East Side, dozens of Jews stood around waving their fists, threatening to “hang that Haman” even before Purim. “Haman,” in this case,” is Sanitation Commissioner Woodbury, who declared that the selling of fish from pushcarts will be permitted no longer. It seems that the Board of Health has determined that it is unsanitary to sell fish on the street and is planning to build a new fish market. In theory, a new fish market would be excellent. However, for the fish peddlers, it is simply an evil decree. Only 300 stalls will be made available at the new market, a problem for the more than 1,000 Jewish fish peddlers.
75 YEARS AGO
• Isadore Wertheimer, the treasurer of Temple Bet-Yisroel in Washington Heights, was sentenced to three years in prison for forging his father’s will. Wertheimer’s father, Yitzhak, owned a successful dry goods store. In the faked will, Wertheimer wrote that only he and his brother would get the store and nothing would go to their sisters. It was determined that the will was a fake because it was notarized the day after the elder Wertheimer died. Isadore said he falsified the will because he didn’t want his sisters, who, he claimed, never worked in the business, to get any of it.
• Another disputed inheritance case involves members of the family of the extremely wealthy businessman Benjamin Menachem-Moshe of Aden, Yemen, known as “Rothschild of Aden.” He became the biggest businessman on the Red Sea coast and traded throughout the region; it was said that half of the businesses in Port Said belonged to him. Menachem-Moshe had two daughters from his first wife, a son from his second and none from his third. When he died at the end of World War I, he left an inheritance valued at 100 million pounds sterling. And ever since then, the family has been fighting over the money. It’s been more than eight years of court cases from Egypt to Yemen with no result in sight.
50 YEARS AGO
• The most successful and best-known Jewish career woman, Carrie Nieman, died this week. Nieman, who founded the high-end department store, Nieman-Marcus in Dallas, Texas, was one of a small number of women who became successful in the retail industry. Nieman’s influence in the garment industry was so great that in recent years, designers sent their new fashions to her in Texas before sending them to retailers in New York. Nieman grew up in Louisville, Ky., and opened her first store with her husband and her brother in Dallas in 1908. It quickly grew into a large department store that catered to the new oil wealth in the area.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
2X match on all Passover gifts!
Most Popular
- 1
News A Jewish Republican and Muslim Democrat are suddenly in a tight race for a special seat in Congress
- 2
Film & TV What Gal Gadot has said about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
- 3
Fast Forward The NCAA men’s Final Four has 3 Jewish coaches
- 4
Culture How two Jewish names — Kohen and Mira — are dividing red and blue states
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward ‘Another Jewish warrior’: Fine wins special election for U.S. House seat
-
Fast Forward A Chicagoan wanted to protest Elon Musk — and put a swastika sticker on a Jewish man’s Tesla
-
Fast Forward NY attorney general orders car wash to stop ripping off Jews with antisemitic ‘Passover special’
-
Fast Forward Cory Booker proclaims, ‘Hineni’ — I am here — 19 hours into anti-Trump Senate speech
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
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 comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag 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 [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.