FROM OUR ARCHIVES
65 YEARS AGO
October 23, 1952
“Sanitary conditions in the immigrant settlements must be improved immediately before the incidence of typhoid in Israel can be decreased,” Dr. Morris Fishbein told The Jerusalem Post after referring in a lecture to the amazing triumph of hygiene over typhoid in the US. “Typhoid fever is so rare in the States that students are rushed to see a case. I would put my finger on the immigrant camps as a priority in clearing up the bad sanitation; disease can easily be carried from there to town.” He said he had a long talk a day earlier with prime minister David Ben-Gurion about brain surgery. Fishbein gave a glimpse of the potentialities of this field of medicine when he described an operation which “enabled you to think correctly.” He quipped that he had about 500 politicians scheduled for the operation.
US President Harry Truman sent a message to the National Jewish Welfare Board, in which he accused the Republican presidential nominee, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, of “moral blindness” for endorsing senators who, Truman said, had displayed anti-Catholic and anti-Jewish feelings by supporting certain amendments to the McCarran Immigration Act. New York Herald Tribune columnist David Lawrence criticized Truman for attacking Eisenhower, saying that the Jewish Welfare Board convention was presumably non-partisan. He asked if the convention should be used for political purposes. The Jews in America did not wish to be catalogued as voting for one party in politics, he said. Minority groups had learned years ago to vote as Americans rather than as class-conscious religionists.
50 YEARS AGO
October 23, 1967
Naval patrol craft were continuing to search for the 36 seaman of the destroyer INS Eilat who were still missing and feared dead, a day after the Eilat was hit by three missiles launched by Egyptian missile boats. [All told, out of a crew of 199, 47 were killed and more than 100 wounded. The Eilat was the first vessel ever to be sunk by a missile boat in wartime. The sinking ushered in a new era in the development of naval weapons and the formulation of naval strategy throughout the world. Israel’s navy began focusing on new and more agile missile-armed boats that helped the Israeli Navy considerably during the Yom Kippur War six years later.]
25 YEARS AGO
October 23, 1992
More than 10,000 hassidim from around the world packed into Chabad headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn for Simhat Torah services, responding to reports that the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, would be attending. “Some people in the shul passed out from the pressure,” reported one spokesman. “People came from all over the world when they heard what happened Yom Kippur and Sukkot.” Virtually bedridden since a debilitating stroke in March, Schneerson surprised followers by leading singing during the High Holy Days, and by beginning to move his left hand, which had been paralyzed. Suring the Simhat Torah services, he showed continued improvement by holding the Torah scrolls during two of the hakafot, and by spurring on his followers to louder singing with vigorous upper body movements and gestures with his left hand.