by Merrill Shapiro | Aug 5, 2021 | Uncategorized |
In 1391, during the great persecutions which began at Seville and spread over all Jewish communities of Spain, the community of Barcelona was destroyed. Three days after the massacre at Palma in Majorca, on Saturday, August 5, 1391, on the feast of San Dominic, two...
by Merrill Shapiro | Jun 24, 2021 | Uncategorized |
The St. Augustine Jewish Historical Society’s Eighth Annual Commemoration of the largest mass arrest of Rabbis in US History took place outdoors at the Hilton St. Augustine Historic Bayfront on the 57th anniversary of the original event. On June 18, 1964, 16 Rabbis...
by Merrill Shapiro | Jun 13, 2021 | Uncategorized |
On this day, June 13, 1877: Joseph Seligman, the famous New York financier arrived at the Grand Union Hotel in Saratoga Springs, NY, as he had every summer for the past ten years. When he asked for his rooms the manager told Seligman that “he was required to inform...
by Merrill Shapiro | Jun 3, 2021 | Uncategorized |
On this day, June 3, 1455: Pope Calixtus III canonized Vincent Ferrer, the Dominican friar who converted thousands of Jews to Christianity with threats of violence and the actual incitement of mobs in a variety of places including Toledo and Valencia. Vincent Ferrer...
by Merrill Shapiro | May 30, 2021 | Uncategorized |
Today, May 30, 2021 would have been James Earl Chaney’s 78th birthday. But James Earl Chaney (May 30, 1943 – June 21, 1964) was one of three Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) field/social workers killed in Philadelphia, Mississippi, by members of the Ku Klux...
by Merrill Shapiro | May 26, 2021 | Uncategorized |
On May 26, 1135: Alfonso VII of León and Castile was crowned in the Cathedral of Leon as Imperator totius Hispaniae, “Emperor of all of Spain”. At the start of his reign he curtailed “the rights and liberties which his father had granted the Jews. He...