FEATURED JOBS
Comments (0)A bill honoring the life of the woman who hid Anne Frank’s family and salvaged her diary is winding its way through the U.S. House of Representatives.
The non-binding resolution seeking to honor the life of Miep Gies is sponsored by Rep. Mary Jo Kilroy (D-Ohio) and has 60 co-sponsors.
Gies helped to hide the Frank family from 1942 until they were turned in by an unknown informant in August 1944. Gies discovered the diary pages of Anne Frank and saved them in her desk for Anne’s return. When Anne’s death in Bergen-Belsen was confirmed, Gies turned the documents over to Anne’s father, Otto.
The bill commends Gies, who died on Jan. 11, just shy of her 101st birthday, “for her bravery during Nazi occupation of the Netherlands and her dedication to preserving the memory of Anne Frank and the Holocaust.”
Early American Jewish Books to be Auctioned
Several rare early American Jewish books will be auctioned in New York.
Among the offerings at next month’s sale by Swann Auction Galleries is an early Jewish-American cookbook and the first Hebrew Bible printed on American soil.
A first edition of Esther Levy’s 1871 “Jewish Cookery Book” is estimated to fetch $10,000 to $15,000. This first Jewish cookbook published in North America offers a glimpse into late-19th-century Jewish life and food trends, when mutton was popular and husbands expected special Sunday dinners.
Also for sale is an extremely rare “Liber Psalmorum Hebraice” from 1809, the first Hebrew version of the Bible printed in the Americas. No other complete copy has been seen at auction since 1998, according to the auction catalogue. The book is valued at $9,000 to $12,000.
Other items of interest include 200 books, manuscripts and other papers from the family archives of Abraham Moses Hershman, who became rabbi of Detroit’s Shaarey Zedek synagogue in 1907, and an early edition of Isaac Leeser’s “The Form of Prayers According to the Custom of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews,” dating from about 1852.
The sale begins at 1:30 p.m. March 18; online bids will be accepted.
Harvard Students Lobby Alumni Lawmakers on Iran
Harvard students leading an Iran divestment campaign at the university traveled to Washington to garner support from alumni serving in Congress.
The student-led campaign calls for the Ivy League school to divest from companies conducting more than $20 million in business with Iran’s energy sector.
“This divestment is in recognition that those funds help to fund Iran’s illicit nuclear program,” said a statement from the group.
If successful, Harvard would join Morehouse College as U.S. universities divesting from Iran.
Harvard alumni last week visited Sens. Al Franken (D-Minn.), Herb Kohl (D-Wis.), David Vitter (R-La.) and Mark Warner (D-Va.), as well as Reps. John Barrow (D-Ga.), Gerald Connolly (D-Va.), Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.), Artur Davis (D-Ala.), John Garamendi (D-Calif.), Jim Himes (D-Conn.), Ron Kind (D-Wis.), Jim Langevin (D-R.I.), Walter Minnick (D-Idaho), Scott Murphy (D-N.Y.), Tom Petri (R-Wisc.), Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.).
Legislation passed through both houses of Congress last year enabling state pension plans, and county and city entities, to divest from companies doing business with Iran. The $20 million benchmark is typical of past sanctions legislation, although bills under consideration would shrink the threshold to as little as $1 million.
Harvard in the past has divested from tobacco companies, South Africa because of its apartheid regime, Russell Athletic and PetroChina.