Three years after the request by the Council of Colmar, Emperor Maximilian I granted permission to expel the Jews of Colmar, Germany (now France). The community exerted every effort to secure the repeal of the decree of banishment. With the help of Rabbi Joselman of Rosheim, the leader of the Alsatian Jews, the enforcement of the decree was postponed until S. George's Day of 1512.
Birth of the revered Torah scholar, pietist and Jewish leader Rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan (1839-1933) of Radin (Poland), author of Chafetz Chaim (a work on the evils of gossip and slander and the guidelines of proper speech) and Mishnah Berurah (a codification of Torah law).
“I was in the midst of the exile, on the river of Kevar.” (Ezekiel 1:1)
(Kevar is the Hebrew word for “already.”)
At the onset of the exile, Ezekiel sat on the bank of a river called “I heard that already.”
It is a river so cold, it can make icicles from fiery sparks of wisdom.
It is a river of exile. Because it is a lie.
Wisdom never says, “I heard that already.”
When you truly hear, when you absorb wisdom deep within your soul until it means everything to you, it is new to you each time you hear it, again and again.