c 167 BCE- A pagan altar was set up in the Holy Temple.

 

December 7, 1976- The UN Security Council (that bastion of impartiality), endorsed Nazi Kurt Waldheim, Secretary-General for his second 5 year term.

 

December 6, 1987- More than 200,000 American Jews marched on Washington to  demand that Soviet Jews be allowed to emigrate and practice their faith. The rally was timed to coincide with a meeting between President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Russian Jews like Natan Sharansky, Yosef Mendelovich and hundreds of others were imprisoned for the mere act of applying for an exit visa. Their plight, met with indifference by much of the Western world, spawned a massive activist effort on behalf of Soviet Jewry.

In the 1970s, when the Soviet Bolshoi Ballet performed in the U.S., they were greeted by Jewish pickets demanding rights for Soviet Jews. In 1974, the U.S. Congress passed the Jackson-Vanik amendment, which linked trade with Russia to freedom of emigration for Soviet Jews. The struggle for Soviet Jewry continued throughout the 1980s, and it was not until the collapse of the Soviet empire in 1991, that the gates opened to the emigration of some one million Jews.

 

Torah Portion

unknown

 

 

or view this week's triennial cycle reading.

Today is

Yom Chamishi, 10 Nisan, 5784

Thursday, April 18, 2024

 

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