This Day in History – 16 Iyar/May 16

16 Iyar

In 2449/1312 B.C.E., on this date, manna appeared in the Midbar in the morning for the first time. Moshe Rabbeinu introduced the first brachah of the Birkas Hamazon (Brachos 48:2).

In 3826/66 C.E., the Roman legion under General Afolorus ransacked Yerushalayim, killing 3,000 Jews.

In 3830/70 C.E., Titus recaptured the middle wall of Yerushalayim and demolished it.

In 5657/1897, anti-Jewish riots erupted in Algeria.

In 5699/1939, the Nuremburg anti-Jewish laws went into effect in Hungary.

In 5705/1945, the Dachau concentration camp was liberated.

Yahrtzeiten

5370/1610, Harav Meir, the Maharam of Lublin, zt”l

5616/1856, Harav Shmuel Waldberg of Yaroslav, zt”l

5763/2003, Harav Yechiel Michel Feinstein, zt”l, Rosh Yeshivas Beis Yehudah

5766/2006, Harav Tzvi Hirsh Rosenbaum of Kretchinef, zt”l

5685/1925

Harav Menachem Nachum Twersky, zt”l, the Makarover Rebbe

Harav Menachem Nachum Twersky was born in 5632/1872. He was the son of Harav Dovid Twersky, the Makarover-Kiever Rebbe (son of Harav Yaakov Yitzchak, zt”l). His mother was the daughter of the Trisker Maggid, and his maternal ancestors include Harav Pinchas of Koritz and the Chozeh of Lublin.

Reb Menachem Nachum married the daughter of his uncle, Harav Efraim Zalman Margolies, the Matziover Rebbe.

Following the petirah of his father on 24 Cheshvan 5663/1902, Reb Menachem Nachum succeeded as Rebbe in Makarov. Having earlier served in Zhvil, he became known as the Zhvil-Makarover Rebbe. He was renowned for his mofsim and ruach hakodesh.

In 5666/1906, during a major pogrom, a son of Reb Menachem Nachum was killed. Hashem yinkom damo.

After several hard years for Reb Menachem Nachum and his family, World War I broke out and Reb Menachem Nachum moved to Lublin, where many Trisker chassidim lived.

In Iyar 5684/1924 he immigrated to America. Arriving in New York, he stayed first at the home of his brother-in-law, the Novominsker Rebbe, zy”a, on the East Side. His arrival was celebrated by the thousands of his chassidim who had preceded him to the other side of the ocean.

Soon the Makarover chassidim brought Reb Menachem Nachum to Chelsea, Mass., near Boston, where he had the largest concentration of followers. In those years Chelsea had a large Jewish community, numbering in the thousands. Some even called it the “Yerushalayim of New England.” The Rebbe established a beis medrash in Chelsea.

Reb Menachem Nachum was niftar less than a year after arriving in America, on 16 Iyar 5685/1925, at the age of just 53.

The Rebbe’s levayah was attended by close to 10,000 people, with a procession of 362 automobiles. He was eulogized by the leading Rabbanim and Rebbes of the generation.

His wife and four children had been left behind in Europe. Tragically, they all fell victim to the Nazis. Hashem yinkom damam.

The site of the kever of Reb Menachem Nachum was found in 5760/2000 by Rabbi Yonah Landau.

Zechuso yagen aleinu.

Directions to the kever:

Everett Jewish Cemeteries

Fuller Street

Everett, MA 02149

(Chevra Tehillim Section)

May 16

In 1770, Marie Antoinette, age 14, married the future King Louis XVI of France, who was 15.

In 1868, the U.S. Senate failed by one vote to convict President Andrew Johnson as it took its first ballot on the 11 articles of impeachment against him.

In 1939, the federal government began its first food stamp program in Rochester, New York.

In 1943, the nearly month-long Warsaw Ghetto Uprising came to an end as German forces crushed the Jewish resistance and blew up the Great Synagogue.

In 1953, Associated Press correspondent William N. Oatis was released by communist authorities in Czechoslovakia, where he’d been imprisoned for two years after being forced to confess to espionage while working as the AP’s Prague bureau chief.

In 1989, during his visit to Beijing, Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev met with Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, formally ending a 30-year rift between the two Communist powers.