1900's

YEAR	AMERICAN	AMERICAN JEWISH	WORLD JEWISH
1900	International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union is founded
1903		Oscar Straus is appointed Secretary of Labor and Commerce, the first Jew to hold a Cabinet post	Kishinev massacre increases Jewish exodus from Russia
1905			Settlers of the Second Aliyah arrive in Palestine, determined to create a Jewish working class
1906		American Jewish Committee is founded to safeguard Jewish rights internationally
1907		Jacob H. Schiff sponsors Galveston Experiment Physicist Albert A. Michelson is first American Jew to win Nobel Prize
1909	National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is founded
1912	United States abrogates treaty of 1832 with Russia because of Russia's refusal to honor passports of Jewish Americans	Henrietta Szold founds Hadassah, the Women's Zionist Organization
1913	Federal Reserve Act revises the nation's banking system	Anarchist Emma Goldman is deported Trial of Leo Frank in Atlanta leads to the founding of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith	Mendel Beilis, target of a blood libel, is tried in Kiev
1914	Panama Canal is completed	Joint Distribution Committee of American Funds for the Relief of Jewish War Suffers is established	During First World War, Russian forces in retreat drive 600,000 Jews from their homes
1916		Louis Dembitz Brandeis is first Jew appointed to the Supreme Court
1917	United States enters World War I	National Jewish Welfare Board is founded	Balfour Declaration conveys British support for Jewish national homeland Jews support revolution as solution to Russian oppression
1918		American Jewish Congress is founded
1919	Constitutional amendment grants women the right to vote President Woodrow Wilson signs Treaty of Versailles, ending World War I
1921	Felix Frankfurter seeks justice for anarchists Nichola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, convicted of murder in wake of "Red scare"
1922		Mordecai M. Kaplan founds the Society for the Advancement of Judaism, the cradle of the Reconstructionist movement
1924	Immigration Act severely limits immigration
1925		Edna Ferber is the first American Jew to win Pulitzer Prize in fiction	Hebrew University opens in Jerusalem with American rabbi Judah L. Magnes as chancellor
1927	Charles A. Lindbergh flies solo across the Atlantic	Warner Brothers produces drama of Jewish assimilation, "The Jazz Singer," the first film with sound
1928		Yeshiva College is dedicated in New York
1929	Stock market crashes		Arab rioters kill 67 Jewish settlers in Hebron
1933	Franklin D. Roosevelt is inaugurated President	Albert Einstein leaves his academic post in Nazi Germany to reside in United States	Adolf Hitler becomes German chancellor, initiates a series of anti-Semitic actions
1935	Social Security Administration is created		Nuremberg Laws deprive German Jews of their civic rights
1938	Charles E. Coughlin, a Roman Catholic priest, launches media campaign against Jews		Synagogues and Jewish businesses are destroyed throughout Germany on the night of November 9-10, Kristallnacht
1939	S.S. St. Louis, carrying 907 Jewish refugees from Germany, is turned back by Cuba and the United States David Sarnoff introduces television at New York World's Fair		World War II begins with German invasion of Poland, extending anti-Jewish policies of the Third Reich
1940			Nazis establishes ghettos in Poland
1941	Japan attacks Pearl Harbor		Einsatzgruppen (special units) follow German troops into Soviet Union, perpetrating systematic murder
1942	War Relocation Authority interns Japanese Americans	Rabbi Stephen S. Wise publicizes Riegner report confirming mass murder of European Jews	Nazi leaders refine the "Final Solution" -- genocide of the Jewish people -- at Wannsee Conference
1944		Camp for Jewish war refugees is opened at Oswego, New York
1945	American drops atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ending World War II		International tribunal for war crimes is established at Nuremberg
1946	Bernard Baruch presents U.S. policy statement to the control of atomic energy to the United Nations
1947	Marshall Plan provides post-war recovery to European nations		Scrolls dating from approximately 22 B.C.E. are discovered at Qumran, near the Dead Sea
1948	President Harry S Truman recognizes the State of Israel within its first hour of existence	Brandeis University is founded as first nonsectarian, Jewish-sponsored, institution of higher education	Jewish State of Israel is proclaimed
1949			Chaim Weizmann is elected first president of Israel
1950	President Truman sends U.S. troops to Korea, military advisers to Vietnam
1952			Yiddish writers and other Jewish cultural figures are executed in the U.S.S.R. on "Night of the Murdered Poets"
1953	Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are executed for conspiring to deliver U.S. atomic bomb secrets to the U.S.S.R.
1954		Tercentenary of American Jewry awakens interest in American Jewish history	Assassination of two Jewish Agency emissaries in Algeria prompts increased Jewish migration to France
1954	Desegregation of public schools follows Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education Jonas Salk develops polio vaccine
1955			Egypt, Syria and Jordan raid Israel
1956			Israel, France and England invade Sinai Peninsula
1957		United States attains world's largest Jewish population	Israel withdraws from Sinai Peninsula and Gaza strip
1958	Explorer I, America's first satellite, orbits
1960			Adolf Eichmann stands trial in Israel for crimes against Jews and humanity during World War II
1963	President John F. Kennedy is assassinated
1966			Hebrew writer S.Y. Agnon receives Nobel Prize
1967			Israel is victorious over Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Iraq in "Six Day War"
1968	Abbie Hoffman leads demonstration disrupting Democratic National Convention in Chicago Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy are assassinated		Polish government outlaws Jewish language and institutions
1969	Neil Armstrong takes first step on moon		Golda (Myerson) Meir is elected Prime Minister of Israel
1970	National Guard opens fire on anti-war demonstrators at Kent State University, killing four students		Soviet Jews agitate for right to emigrate
1972		Hebrew Union College ordains Sally J. Priesand first woman rabbi
1973			Egypt and Syria attack Israel on the Day of Atonement, starting "Yom Kipper War"
1974	President Richard M. Nixon resigns
1975	United States pulls out of Vietnam
1976			Israeli commando raid frees 105 hostages held by pro-Palestine terrorists at Entebbe, Uganda
1978	American Nazi party marches in Skokie, Illinois	Yiddish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer receives Nobel Prize	President Jimmy Carter's Camp David accords result in peace treaty between Israel and Egypt
1980			Terrorists bomb a Paris synagogue
1981			Congregation Mickve Israel in Curacao marks 250th anniversary of its synagogue, oldest in Western Hemisphere
1982			Israel returns the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt, invades Lebanon
1983		Reform rabbinate decides that children of mixed marriages whose fathers are Jewish, are Jewish if so educated
1984		15,000 Holocaust survivors gather in Washington, D.C.
1985	President Ronald Reagan visits Bitburg cemetery in West Germany, site of Nazi S.S. graves	Conservative Judaism accepts women rabbis	"Operation Moses" clandestine airlift to Ethiopian Jews to Israel ends Notorious Auschwitz doctor, Josef Mengele, is confirmed dead
1986	Space shuttle Challenger explodes	Elie Wiesel wins Nobel Peace Prize Proposed change in Israel's Law of Return -- the "who is a Jew" amendment -- prompts American Jewish outcry	Alleged Nazi criminal John Demjanjuk is deported from U.S. for trial in Israel as Treblinka's "Ivan the Terrible" Anatoly Shcharansky, Soviet Jewish dissident, is freed from prison
1987	Austrian president Kurt Waldheim, former officer of the Third Reich, is barred from the United States	Jonathan Jay Pollard, American spy for Israel is sentenced to life imprisonment	Uprising of Palestinian Arabs, known as the Intifada, begins on the West Bank and Gaza
1989	Supreme Court upholds state's right to ban public funding for abortion, individual's right to dishonor American flag		Soviet Union permits Jews to emigrate on their first application for visa
1992	500th anniversary of Columbus' arrival in the Americas
YEAR	AMERICAN	AMERICAN JEWISH	WORLD JEWISH