c 1476 BCE- The second of the three days of preparation in which the people of Israel prepared themselves to receive the Torah. Moses wrote the first sixty-eight chapters of the Torah two days before the revelation at Mount Sinai (from Genesis 1:1 through Exodus 19).
576- A mob, accompanied by the bishop of Clermont-Ferrand, France, razed the local synagogue to the ground. The bishop then informed the Jews that he, as bishop, could have but one flock, and unless they were willing to embrace Christianity, they must leave the city. Five hundred Jews were forced to be baptized and the remainder fled to Marseilles.
1481- Pope Sixtus IV instructed his local bishops that all Jews who had fled the Spanish Inquisition should be sent back to Spain.
1648- Bogdan Khmelnytsky's anti-Polish warfare begins, resulting in the massacre of more than 300,000 Jews and the destruction of three hundred Jewish communities.