Ten events that shaped modern Jewish history

In the millennia of Jewish history, several momentous events have stood out as turning points that subsequently influenced the lives of the Jewish people. The exodus from Egypt. The giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai. The destruction of the Holy Temples in Jerusalem, and the Jewish exiles that followed. The writing of the Talmud.

But many of these events are literally ancient history. And obvious.

Some more-recent events in Jewish history have also played significant but often subtle roles in the lives of the Jewish people and the State of Israel.

Here is a subjective - and very personal - list of 10 events, since the end of the 19th century, which have shaped the lives of many Jews:

Dreyfus Trial (1894)

Alfred Dreyfus, a secular Jewish lieutenant in the French Army, was tried and convicted on a fabricated charge of treason and exiled to Devil's Island. The trial brought out latent antisemitic feelings in France, notably shouts of "A Mort aux Juifs" ("Death to the Jews!") among enraged members of the court's gallery. One of the journalists covering the proceedings was Theodor Herzl, an assimilated Austrian Jew. Shocked by the open hatred expressed by the supposedly egalitarian, enlightened French citizens, he founded the modern political Zionist movement. "I was turned into a Zionist by the Dreyfus case," he wrote. Herzl authored two seminal Zionist books: "The State of the Jews" and "The Old-New Land."

In 1897 Herzl convened in Basel, Switzerland, the first Zionist Congress, drawing 208 delegates from 17 countries. "At Basel I founded the Jewish state - in five years perhaps, and certainly in 50 years," he stated at the Congress. His prediction, which seemed audacious at the time, was off by only two years; Medinat Yisrael, the State of Israel, was established in 1948.

Kishinev pogrom (1903)

While pogroms (plural for the Russian word that means a violent mob attack) were a common feature of Jewish life and death in Eastern Europe and the Russian Empire for more than two centuries, the Easter Day pogrom in the then-capital of the Bessarabia region of the Russian Empire (now Chișinău in post-Soviet Moldova) was particularly heinous - some four dozen Jews died in the attack, several hundred were injured, and 1,500 homes were damaged. Led by priests, it was arguably the most notorious or impactful pogrom in pre-Holocaust Jewish history. "Kishinev" traumatized the Jewish world in 1903 as "Gaza" did in 2023, convincing tens of thousands of Jews to leave the country, for the West and for Palestine, and galvanizing the early Zionist movement. The pogrom inspired the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in the United States, and of the precursor of the Haganah self-defense organization (that grew into the Israeli Army) in Palestine.

Bank's vault clerk meets depositor (1903)

Twenty-two-year-old Harry Truman, working in Kansas City's biggest bank, became friends with 15-year-old Eddie Jacobson, who brought the daily deposit from the dry goods business where he worked. A decade later they renewed their friendship in the National Guard, and after World War I became partners in a clothing store. Eventually, Jacobson became a traveling salesman, and Truman, a politician. After Vice President Truman became president in 1945, following the death of Franklin Roosevelt, he faced the decision of whether or not to recognize the soon-to-be-established State of Israel; inundated by advisers, and by U.S. citizens, Truman felt overwhelmed by the lobbying pressure. Jacobson traveled to Washington, D.C., to urge his old friend to meet with aging Chaim Weizmann, a prominent Zionist leader who would become the first president of Israel. Truman agreed to the meeting; and he agreed to recognize the State of Israel. In 1948, the U.S. became the first nation to recognize Medinat Israel.

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire (1911)

The conflagration on the 8th, 9th and 10th floors of the Asch Building in Manhattan's Greenwich Village, site of the factory that manufactured the popular women's blouses, was one of deadliest industrial fires in U.S. history, killing 146 people. Several dozen victims leapt to their deaths, most of them women, low-paid Jewish and Irish immigrants. The tragedy also affected the life of another woman -- Frances Perkins. A factory inspector in New York, she witnessed the horror, which strengthened her sympathy for minorities, for the powerless, and, during World War II, for Jewish refugees. In 1933, she became President Roosevelt's Secretary of Labor, the first female Cabinet member in U.S. history. Inspired by letters from threatened people in Nazi Europe who were blocked by restrictive legislation from entering the U.S., she quietly lobbied on their behalf, lessening the restrictions and extending the temporary visas held by some 10,000 immigrants already in the country. Her work is estimated to have helped - in other words, saved - the lives of tens of thousands of people.

Leo Frank lynching (1915)

Leo Frank was a 31-year-old superintendent at a pencil factory who lived in Atlanta. Accused (falsely) of murdering a 13-year-old Christian girl who had worked at the factory, he was convicted in 1913 and held in the Milledgville State Penitentiary. In 1915 he was dragged out by a drunken armed mob, and hanged on a tree in nearby Marietta, supervised by a prominent superior court judge. It was the only known antisemitic lynching in U.S. Jewish history. The travesty outraged the Jewish community of this country, and at the same time empowered a resurgence of the anti-Black, antisemitic Ku Klux Klan. In response to the deadly outbreak of Jew-hatred, at a time when prejudice against the Jewish people was common in the South, the B'nai B'rith Jewish service organization formed the Anti-Defamation League, which has grown into one of the most prominent opponents of religious and racial hatred, and a protector of minority rights in the U.S.

Kielce pogrom (1946)

On July 4, a mob of non-Jewish farmers, soldiers and police officers in Kielce, a city in southeast Poland, descended on the city's Jewish community building at 7 Planty Street, where some 160 Jews, mostly Polish-born survivors of the Holocaust were living temporarily. Angered by a rumor of a kidnapping of an 8-year-old boy, armed with firearms and weapons like iron bars, the horde entered the site, disarmed the residents, and began attacking. Forty-two Jews died in the attack (and 40 were wounded), the most deadly of a series of post-war pogroms in Poland, which shocked the wider Jewish community. As a result, the remnant of Polish Jewry (some 50,000 people) that had returned after liberation to their homes throughout Poland, and more throughout the region, concluded that they had no future in their homeland; they quickly left, going first to the American sector of Germany, then to Israel or the U.S. or other Western countries. The pogrom in effect ended most Jewish life in Poland, which before World War II had been the center of the world's largest Jewish community.

Arab Trade Boycott of Israel (1945)

Even before the State of Israel was created in 1948, a coalition of Arab nations, including those that did not border on the nation then known as Palestine, declared economic war on the yishuv, the country's Jewish community. Six member nations of the newly-formed Arab League, meeting in in Cairo, forbade other countries from conducting any sort of business relationship with Israel; the nascent Jewish nation was economically isolated - starting with a cutoff of a supply of business, capital, and technological knowledge from its closest geographic neighbors. Later, these punitive measures spread with the growing acceptance of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, forcing it to turn inward; to develop its own resources; Israel's only natural resource is its people, the population fostered by waves of emigration. Israel flourished - the army serving as an innovation incubator has the country of the world's "Start-Up Nation." Israel has the world's second-highest concentration of high-tech companies, and the world's largest number of start-ups per capita.

Sinai Campaign (1956)

Eight years after Israel was formed in battles that came to be known as the War of Independence, the country found itself at war again. In Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, aligned with the armies of France and England, each of which participated for its own political and economic reasons. The United States, which had no forewarning of the fighting, ordered the armies to withdraw or face economic sanctions. Leaders of Jewish organizations in the U.S. pleaded with the Eisenhower administration to withdraw the threats. They took their case to Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. Who said, Enough! He said he didn't have time to meet with each separate Jewish delegation. Form a single umbrella Jewish organization, he ordered, or I won't meet with any of you. The result was the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations (aka the Presidents Conference), which now is composed of 50 Jewish organizations and represents the country's Jewish community with a unified voice.

Arab hijacking of El Al flight (1968)

On July 23, El Al flight # 426, a Boeing 707 jet, from Rome to Tel Aviv was taken by force by three armed members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The plane was diverted to Algeria, where a dozen Israeli passengers and 10 crew members were held as hostages in return for the release of 16 convicted Arab prisoners. In response, the Israeli airline immediately upgraded and tightened the security measures it instituted for passengers who made reservations and boarded El Al's international network of flights. The airline is understandably very secretive about the safety procedures it has put into place, but they are believed to include advanced training for its security staff, tightened boarding screenings and interviews, reinforced cockpit doors, and the reported presence of armed plain-clothed air marshals on all flights - all of which are the gold standard for the airline industry, emulated by dozens of other airlines. El Al today is regarded as the world's safest airline. There has not been a successful hijacking of an El Al flight since #426.

Six-Day War (1967)

Threatened by an impending attack by Arab nations on three fronts, Israel struck first and miraculously won in less than a week; the victory brought the Old City of Jerusalem, captured from Jordan, under Israel control, as well as Egypt's Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip, and Syria's Golan Heights. The victory added to the number of people, mostly Arab Muslims, under Israeli sovereignty; and it added to Israel's political dilemmas - negotiating with three neighboring Arab countries. The war also had a major effect on Jews outside of Israel's borders. While Israel's success changed Israel's image among many non-Jews - and some Jews - from David to Goliath, it served as a major morale booster for millions of Jews in the Diaspora (including those in communist Russia), who typically lived as minorities in majority-Christian societies. Primarily seen since the Holocaust as weak underdogs, they were now regarded - and sometimes feared - as powerful, a reflection of Israel's macho soldiers. More importantly, thousands of Western Jews decided to move to the suddenly safe Jewish State.