June 27, 1967:
Israel adopted a Basic Law to protect all holy places. As stated: “The Holy Places shall be protected from desecration and any other violation and from anything likely to violate the freedom of access of the members of the different religions to the places sacred to them or their feelings with regard to those places.”
June 28, 1926:
Birthday of Mel Brooks (Melvyn Kaminsky), actor, director, producer, and/or writer of such comedy classics as Get Smart, The Producers, and Blazing Saddles. “Feeling different, feeling alienated, feeling persecuted, feeling that the only way to deal with the world is to laugh – because if you don’t laugh, you’re going to cry and never stop crying; that’s probably what’s responsible for the Jews having developed such a great sense of humor,” Brooks said. “The people who had the greatest reason to weep, learned more than anyone else how to laugh.”
Tamuz 3, 5754 (1994):
Yahrzeit of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the seventh and last Lubavitcher Rebbe. He led the Chabad movement from 1950 for 44 years, greatly expanding its activities and founding a worldwide network of institutions dedicated to bringing Judaism to Jews, no matter where they might be found.
June 30, 1926:
Birthday of Paul Berg, American biochemist who was awarded the 1980 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his pioneering work involving gene splicing of recombinant DNA. Berg was the first scientist to create a molecule containing DNA from two different species, a technique that was a fundamental step in the development of genetic engineering.
Tamuz 5, 3258 (502 BCE):
Ezekiel received his first prophecy (Ezekiel 1:2). His prophecies related to the Babylonian exile after the destruction of the First Temple and are filled with symbolism and visions. He is believed to be buried in Iraq.
July 2, 1941:
The mass murder of the Jews of Vilna by Nazis and their Lithuanian collaborators began. By August 1944, more than 70,000 Jews were murdered in the nearby Ponary forest. “For the Germans, 300 Jews are 300 enemies of humanity; for the Lithuanians, 300 Jews are 300 pairs of shoes, trousers, and clothes,” Polish journalist Kazimierz Sakowicz wrote in Ponary Diary 1941-43: A Bystander’s Account of a Mass Murder.
July 3, 1883:
Birthday of Franz Kafka, Czech author who captured modern man’s anxiety-ridden alienation in an incomprehensible, hostile, and indifferent world. “As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. His numerous legs, which were pitifully thin compared to the rest of his bulk, waved helplessly before his eyes. “What has happened to me? he thought...” – from Kafka’s novella Metamorphosis.
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