FROM OUR ARCHIVES
65 YEARS AGO
November 20, 1952
Most textiles and practically all footwear were taken off rationing by the Commerce and Industry Ministry. Under the new regulations, only work shoes and work clothes, shirts, towels, underwear, cotton stockings, white cotton cloth, cotton dresses, diapers and children’s knitwear would continue to be rationed and price controlled. Decontrolled items included artificial and real silks, poplin and linen cloth, curtain material, cloth for brassieres, for pockets, and prayer shawls.
Jerusalem’s dim-out went into effect as a result of new power regulations. Shop windows were unlit and the interiors of stores used less lighting. Businessmen demanded changes in the regulations which allocated power only for industry from 6 to 11 a.m. and from 1 to 4 p.m. Private consumers would be given limited current from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. and after 4 p.m., while shops could use electricity from 4 to 7 p.m. and cinemas from 7 to 11 p.m.
Relief measures were prepared by a joint Jewish Agency-Social Welfare Ministry committee to meet any emergency in the coming winter in the ma’barot (immigrant transit camps). In addition to the 1,000 families who would remain in tents and who would be given special attention, the agency listed five centers, with more than 4,000 families living in canvas and wooden huts, where floods were likely to occur because of their faulty location.
25 YEARS AGO
November 20, 1992
The flap over the nearly 2,000-year-old bones unearthed during an archeological excavation in northern Jerusalem was defused, when the Antiquities Authority gave in to the rabbinate’s demands to re-bury the bones together with their stone coffins. A spokesman for the Antiquities Authority stressed that the decision to turn the coffins over for burial was a one-time “goodwill gesture to bring quiet to the city,” and should not have been seen as a precedent. The agreement was announced by loudspeakers in Mea She’arim’s Shabbat Square to calm the crowd that had gathered there. Despite the announcement, several car stonings were reported and garbage bins were set alight for the third night in a row.
15 YEARS AGO
November 20, 2002
Slated to be the country’s first astronaut, IAF Col. Ilan Ramon was scheduled to be on NASA’s Columbia space shuttle, which was due to lift off on January 16 and remain in space for two weeks. The Israeli Space Agency asked Ramon if he was interested in voting in the elections from space; he said he was, but set two conditions: that his vote be secret and that NASA approve.
A US federal judge ruled that the Ten Commandments monument in the rotunda of Alabama’s judicial building violated the constitution’s ban on government promotion of religion. The judge gave Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, who had the 5,300-pound granite monument installed in the state building, 30 days to remove it. Moore testified during the trial that the commandments were the moral foundation of American law. He said the monument acknowledged God, but did not force anyone to follow his conservative Christian religious beliefs. “The basic issue is whether we will still be able to acknowledge God under the First Amendment or whether we will not be able to acknowledge God,” Moore testified.