Today’s Yahrtzeits and History – 14 Iyar

Rav Meir Baal Haness (121 CE). A descendant of proselytes, Rav Meir was a talmid of Rebbi Akiva, Rabbi Yishmael, and Elisha ben Avuyah. There are 335 halachos are mentioned in the Mishnah with Rabbi Meir’s explanations. His wife was the famous wise woman, Beruriah. She advised him wisely when neighboring wicked people disturbed him (Berachos 10a), and when their two sons died she broke the news gently and comforted him. He was one of the five scholars ordained by R’ Yehuda ben Bava during the persecutions following the Bar Kochva revolt (Sanhedrin 14). Rav Meir was buried in Teveria.

–Rav Shmuel of Karov (1820). Born in Neustadt, he became a close chassid of Reb Elimelech of Lizhensk and later the Chozeh of Lublin. From the year 1815, he became Rebbe in Karov and Wangrob.

-Rav Leib of Zelikov, talmid of the Chozeh of Lublin and author of Lekutei Maharil (1826)

-Rav Yehudah Tzvi of Stretin (1907)

-Rav Eliyahu Chaim Meisel, av beis din of Lodz (1821-1912). Born in Horodok, he became the Rav of the city from 1840 to 1843. Later Rav of Drazin 1843-1861, Prozan 1861- 1867 (were he showed heroic dedication during a deadly epidemic), and Lomza.1867-1879 where he was able to reduce by 500 a year the number of people called for army service. He was Chief Rabbi of Lodz from 1873 until his petira.

-Rav Tuvia Goldstein (2003). Rav and Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshiva Emek Halacha in Boro Park.

Today in History – 14 Iyar

· The Jewish community of Bisenz, Austria, was massacred, 1605.
· Anti-Jewish riots by students and peasants resulted in damages and death in Lemberg and Cracow, 1664. In Lemberg, the shul was attacked on Shabbos and the Chazzan was murdered.
· Thousands of books written by Jewish and other authors were publicly burned by the Nazis, 1933.
· Berlinwas declared “Judenrein”, 1943.
· Ramat Rachel was repossessed by Israel, 1948. The battle for Jewish control of the Jordan Valley was successfully concluded on the same day.
· The only advance of the Arab Legion beyond the Old City walls into western Yerushalayim was halted in front of Notre Dame, 1948. The British commander of the Arab Legion, Sir John Bagot Glubb (Glubb Pasha), considered that battle to be the worst defeat suffered by the legion throughout the war.
· Adolf Eichmann, a key perpetrator of the “Final Solution”, was captured in Buenos Aires, 1960. He was in charge of sending all Jews to the extermination camps. The height of his career was reached in Hungary, 1944, when he transported 400,000 Jews to the gas chambers in less than five weeks, r”l.

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