Today’s Jewish Birthday

Today’s Jewish Birthday: Isaac Mayer Wise

In 1875, his dream of opening Hebrew Union College to train rabbis was realized, with Wise serving as its president. In 1883, non-kosher food was served at what became known derisively as the “Trefa Banquet” for the first graduating class, which Wise declined to condemn. This incident led to the formation of the Conservative movement, which positioned itself as more liberal than Orthodox Judaism, but conserving some traditions. [SDJW staff]

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Today’s Jewish Birthday: Rudolf Serkin

At the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, Serkin instructed generations of pianists and served from 1968 to 1975 as the Institute’s director.  Busch and Serkin founded the Marlboro Music School and Festival in Marlboro, Vermont in 1951. Serkin made numerous classical music recordings on such labels as Columbia Masterworks, RCA Victor, Deutsche Grammophon and Terlac. [SDJW staff]

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Today’s Jewish Birthday: Budd Schulberg

In 1941, Schulberg’s first novel, What Makes Sammy Run?, was an indictment of Hollywood’s studio system. Its cold-blooded, driven protagonist, Sammy Glick, was so obviously Jewish that Schulberg was accused of antisemitism. When a higher-up in the Communist Party of the USA demanded that Schulberg make changes in the novel to conform to Communist dogma, he quit the party. [SDJW staff]

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Today’s Jewish Birthday: Viktor Frankl

Shortly after the Holocaust, during which Frankl survived four concentration camps, he wrote Man’s Search for Meaning.  It became an international best seller after it was published in English.  The Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club on the basis of a 1991 survey said it was one of the ten most influential books in the United States.  [SDJW staff]

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Today’s Jewish Birthday: Gloria Steinem

In 1972, she was a co-founder with five other women of the feminist magazine Ms.  That same year, Steinem was the first woman to speak at the National Press Club, and ran a campaign to persuade DC Comics to restore Wonder Woman’s original powers.  In 1976, she attended the first women-only Passover seder in the New York City apartment of Esther M. Broner.  In 1979, she wrote a Ms article on female genital mutilation, bringing international attention to the practice. [SDJW staff]

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Today’s Jewish Birthday: Harry Houdini

His escapes became more and more complicated and thrilling, including from nailed packing crates that were lowered into water, riveted boilers, giant milk cans filled with water, and even from the belly of a whale that had washed ashore in Boston.  Sometimes Houdini would have himself put in a straight-jacket and suspended by his ankles from a tall building as the public watched him wriggle free. [SDJW staff]

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Today’s Jewish Birthday: Erich Fromm

He wrote, “It is the paradox of human existence that man must simultaneously seek for closeness and for independence, for oneness with others and at the same time for the preservation of his uniqueness and particularity … the answer to this paradox – and to the moral problems of man – is productiveness.” [SDJW staff]

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Today’s Jewish Birthday: Broncho Billy Anderson

He acted in over 300 short films, 148 of which he played the first cowboy movie star, Broncho Billy.  Many were filmed in Niles, a small town in Alameda County, California.  Today, Niles is part of Fremont, California, where there is an annual silent film festival in his honor. [SDJW staff]

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Today’s Jewish Birthday: Philip Roth

Portnoy’s Complaint was Roth’s fourth novel and most controversial because of its frank treatment of sexual subjects, including masturbation.  Roth became more prolific thereafter, knocking out 26 additional works through 2010, the most notable of which was the 1997 novel American Pastoral, which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.  It told of a star athlete whose daughter becomes a domestic terrorist during the late 1960s. [SDJW staff]

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Today’s Jewish Birthday: Deborah E. Lipstadt

She wrote Denying the Holocaust in 1994, later defending herself successfully against a libel suit by author David Irving that brought her name to public attention.  She won the 1994 National Jewish Book Award and an appointment by President Bill Clinton to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council. [SDJW staff]

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Today’s Jewish Birthday: Jerry Lewis

In 1945, 19-year-old Lewis met Dean Martin, who was eight years his senior, and the two developed a comedy act,  in which Martin was a straight man and Lewis was a zany ad libber.  The duo started with a radio show, moved to television, then to Paramount Pictures where they starred together in 14 movies between 1960 and 1956.  DC Comics published The Adventures of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis from 1952 to 1957.  The team ended the partnership in 1956. [SDJW staff]

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Today’s Jewish Birthday: Ruth Bader Ginsburg

President Bill Clinton nominated Ginsburg to the Supreme Court in 1993, and the Senate confirmed her on a 96-3 vote, thereby filling the seat that had been vacated upon the retirement of Byron White. She was the first Jewish female justice of the Supreme Court, and eventually became the longest-serving Jewish justice.  When Sandra Day O’Connor retired in 2006, Ginsburg temporarily became the only woman on the nine-member court. [SDJW staff]

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