This week in Jewish history: The SS Exodus, Tisha B’Av, and Nobel pioneers

BySTEVEN DRUCKERJULY 18, 2026 10:14Av 1, 2487 (1274 BCE): Yahrzeit of Aharon was the elder brother of Moshe and the first high priest of Israel – the only Yahrzeit explicitly mentioned in the Torah (Numbers 33:38). Tradition regards him as the model peacemaker, “loving peace, pursuing peace” (Avot 1:12). DNA research shows that all the kohanim (priests) are descended from Aharon.July 16, 1942: The French police rounded up 13,152 Jews, including 4,115 children in Paris, imprisoned them under inhuman conditions in the Vélodrome d’Hiver stadium, and deported them to Auschwitz. Only 30 adults survived.July 17, 1888: The birthday of Shmuel Yosef Agnon, the Nobel Prize winner for literature in 1966, “for his profoundly characteristic narrative art with motifs from the life of the Jewish people.” He was the first Israeli citizen and the first Hebrew writer to win a Nobel. ISRAELI STAMP celebrates Nobel Prize in Literature laureate, Shmuel Yosef Agnon, 1981. (credit: SHUTTERSTOCK)July 18, 1947: The Exodus, a ship with 4,500 Holocaust survivors on board, unsuccessfully tried to run the British blockade of pre-state Israel. The British boarded, killing three Jews and wounding over 100, eventually forcing them to return to Germany. This cruelty enraged world public opinion and helped force the British out of Israel.Ha’ari Hakadosh, the founder of modern KabbalahAv 5, 5332 (1572): The yahrzeit of Rabbi Yitzhak Luria, known as Ha’ari Hakadosh (the Holy Lion), founder of modern Kabbalah and liturgical poet (many of his songs are still sung on Shabbat). After seven years engrossed in the study of the Zohar, at age 36, he moved to Safed in northern Israel, where his colleagues included R. Yosef Karo (author of the Code of Jewish Law), R. Moshe Cordovero, R. Shlomo Alkabetz, and R. Moshe Alshich. His primary student, R. Chaim Vital, collected his lectures into the six-volume Etz Chaim (Tree of Life). Ha’ari died at age 38, and to this day, his tomb in Safed remains a place of pilgrimage and prayer. During that brief period, Ha’ari revolutionized the study of Kabbalah, which until then had been the province of a select few in each generation, and came to be universally regarded as one of the most important figures ever in Jewish mysticism.July 20, 1897: The birthday of Tadeusz Reichstein, the Swiss chemist and endocrinologist who synthesized ascorbic acid (vitamin C) in 1933 by a process that is still in widespread use. In addition, he won the 1950 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his research on steroid hormones produced by the adrenal cortex.July 21, 1970: Libya’s Col. Muammar Gaddafi “nationalized” all Jewish property, in essence stealing over $1 billion in 2004 dollars.COLONEL MUAMMAR QADDAFI’S image is held up at a 1986 anniversary parade in Tripoli, celebrating the 1970 departure of the British from Libya. Also in 1970, Qaddafi ‘nationalized’ all Jewish property. (credit: Rob Taggart/Reuters)July 22: The birthdays of Emma Lazarus (1849), the American poetess who wrote The New Colossus, the last verse of which serves as the famous inscription for the Statue of Liberty; Janusz Korczak (1878), a Polish physician who founded a Jewish orphanage in Warsaw in 1911, where he developed an educational system based on love and respect for the child; and Selman Waksman (1888), the microbiologist who won the 1952 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for isolating streptomycin, the first and most widely used antibiotic of its time. Tisha B’Av (Av 9): The traditional day of national mourning for the Jewish people, on which they don’t eat, drink, bathe, or engage in sexual relations. Lights in the synagogue are dimmed, and the Book of Eicha (Lamentations), Jeremiah’s heartfelt recounting of the destruction of Jerusalem, is read.The tragedies of Tisha B'AvFive national tragedies all occurred on Tisha B’Av:• 2449 (1312 BCE): The 12 scouts dispatched by Moshe 40 days earlier to survey the Land of Israel returned bearing disheartening news that Israel was unconquerable. Due to a lack of faith, that entire generation was condemned to spend the next 40 years wandering in the desert before the new generation under the leadership of Yehoshua entered the Land of Israel.• 3174 (586 BCE): The Babylonians destroyed the First Holy Temple. • 3830 (70 CE): The Romans destroyed the Second Holy Temple. • 3895 (135 CE): Betar, the last independent Jewish outpost, fell to the Romans after a three-year siege. 580,000 Jews died by starvation or during battle, including Shimon Bar-Kochba, the charismatic leader of the rebellion who had succeeded in establishing an independent Jewish state (for three years).Yet Tisha B’Av is also a day of hope. The Talmud relates that the Messiah will be born on this very day.July 24, 1922: The 51 member countries of the League of Nations unanimously agreed to grant Britain the mandate to administer Palestine, which had been officially under a British military government since the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I. Based on the Sykes-Picot Agreement and the understandings reached at the San Remo Conference, the British committed itself to overseeing the establishment of a Jewish national home in Mandatory Palestine per the Balfour Declaration of 1917.Just a few months later, however, Britain decided to cede 77% of the land to establish the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan (now Jordan).July 25, 1994: Prime minister Yitzhak Rabin signed a peace agreement with King Hussein of Jordan.July 26, 1267: The Inquisition was established in Rome by Pope Clement IV and lasted 559 years, ending when its final victim was executed in Valencia, Spain.July 27, 1920: The birthday of Charles Ginsburg, the leader of the team working for Ampex that invented the first practical videotape machine in the early 1950s, revolutionizing television broadcasting and eventually leading to the home video machine.July 28, 1925: The birthday of Baruch Samuel “Barry” Blumberg, the American physician, geneticist, and recipient of the 1976 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering “new mechanisms for the origin and dissemination of infectious diseases.” Blumberg identified the hepatitis B virus and later developed its diagnostic test and vaccine. Tu B’Av (Av 15): In ancient Israel, it was the custom that on this day “the daughters of Jerusalem would go out in borrowed linen garments (so as not to embarrass those without beautiful clothes of their own)... and dance in the vineyards” and “whoever did not have a wife would go there” to find himself a bride (Ta’anit 31a). Nowadays, it has become the Israeli Valentine’s Day.July 30, 1992: Yael Arad became the first Israeli to win an Olympic medal, taking the silver in judo in Barcelona.Av 17, 5780 (2020): The yahrzeit of Rabbi Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz, an educator, philosopher, author of over 60 books, and Israel Prize laureate, who was also a physicist, chemist, a biting social critic, and a beloved public figure in Israel. Rabbi Steinsaltz’s magnum opus was indisputably the 45-year project to complete a full translation (into Hebrew, English, Russian, and various other languages) of and commentary on the entire Babylonian Talmud (all 2,711 pages!).This monumental feat led Time magazine to declare him a “once-in-a-millennium” scholar. Its completion was commemorated by a Global Day of Jewish Learning, which has since become an annual event in over 40 countries.Aug. 1, 1914: August Von Wasserman instituted the Wasserman test, the most advanced diagnostic tool of its day against syphilis. He also developed inoculations against tetanus, typhoid, and cholera, antitoxins against diphtheria, and a diagnostic test for tuberculosis.Aug. 2, 1923: The birthday of Shimon Peres, the ninth president of Israel and winner of the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize (together with Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat) for the peace talks that he participated in as Israeli foreign minister, producing the Oslo Accords. In a political career spanning over 66 years, Peres served twice as prime minister, was a member of 12 cabinets, and was one of the fathers of Israel’s nuclear program.Aug. 3, 2001: After 20 years working on the idea and successfully creating a prototype in 1998, Gavriel Iddan, an Israeli electro-optical engineer, received FDA approval for a disposable, pill-sized camera that passes straight through the digestive tract and continuously broadcasts to an external receiver. Since then, there have been over 500,000 capsule ingestions and nearly 1,000 scientific articles on its clinical use.Av 21, 5678 (1918): The yahrzeit of Rabbi Chaim Soloveitchik of Brisk, an outstanding Talmudic scholar and Jewish leader who developed the Brisker approach to Torah study, a highly analytical method with emphasis on the legal writings of Maimonides.Aug. 5, 1944: MV Mefkure, a Turkish schooner carrying Jewish refugees from Romania to Istanbul, was torpedoed and sunk by a Soviet submarine, killing over 300 people. Aug. 6, 1933: The birthday of Sheldon Adelson, the American casino magnate, owner of Israel Hayom, and philanthropist, who was one of the wealthiest people in the world.Aug. 7, 1955: Bar-Ilan University (named in honor of Rabbi Meir Bar-Ilan, who led Jews from the ashes of Europe to rebirth and renaissance in Israel) was founded with the mission of blending ancient Torah tradition with modern scholarship. It is Israel’s largest academic community with 32,000 students, scientists, and staff.Aug. 8, 1809: A group of 70 disciples of the Vilna Gaon arrived in Israel, after traveling via Turkey by horse and wagon, becoming pioneers of modern settlement in Israel. In 1878, on this date, Petah Tikva, the “mother of settlements,” was founded in pre-state Israel, mostly by the descendants of these pioneers.Aug. 9, 2001: An Arab terrorist detonated a guitar case filled with explosives in Sbarro’s pizzeria in the busiest area of downtown Jerusalem, killing 16 people and wounding 100. Among the dead were children and a pregnant woman. A few months later, Al-Najah University in Nablus opened a public exhibition, a gruesome reenactment of the Sbarro bombing, strewn with fake blood and body parts.Aug. 10, 1920: The Treaty of Sèvres was signed, in which the Turkish government renounced its sovereignty over Palestine and recognized the British Mandate.Aug. 11, 1929: The Jewish Agency, a worldwide organization based in Israel, dedicated to establishing the Jewish homeland and encouraging and facilitating Jewish immigration, was created at the 16th Zionist Congress in Zurich. Since 1948, it has brought over 3 million immigrants to Israel.Av 29, 2448 (1312 BCE): According to tradition, Moshe carved the Second Tablets of the Law out of sapphire in preparation for his third ascent to Mt. Sinai on the following morning (Exodus 34:4). These tablets were placed in the Ark of the Covenant, along with the first broken set, symbolizing every person's ability to make amends and rebuild anew.Aug. 13: Birthdays of Arthur Eichengrün (1867), who developed the highly successful anti-gonorrhea drug Protargol; and Nobel Prize laureates Richard Willstätter (1872) – Chemistry in 1915, and Salvador Luria (1912) – Physiology or Medicine in 1969.The above is a highly abridged monthly version of Dust & Stars – Today in Jewish History. For the complete newsletter highlighting the seminal events and remarkable Jews who have changed the world: dustandstars.substack.com/subscribeFollow us on Google