A €JIV ISpecial
hj MORDECAI IIICHLEII
isrcieli dialoglies
Pages From A Journal
Outside, it was balmy; and what with London's sodden skies only eight hours behind me, I began to feel elated. The shuttle^ux from my hotel to Tel Aviv, al Volkswagen, was driven by a rotund Ethiopian r-Jew. "How do you like it in Israel?" he asked immediately.
"I've only been here an hour and a half," I said.
The other passenger in the bus, an American, boy with buckteeth, said, "I've been here three days. Leaving tomorrow. I'm going to see "Breakfast at Tiffany's."
"Did you come all this way to see movies?" I asked.
"But it's a very good movie.... I'm on a world torn-, you know." His voice dropped. "Have you seen the se-cond-floor chambermaid yet?"
' "No. Not yet."
"She's really something.... but there's a language barrier," he added glumly.
On the Allenby Road, boys and girls in uniform, kids with transistors clapped to their ears, lottery-ticket sellers, yoimgsters with tiny knitted skullcaps fastened to their heads with a bobby-pin, passed to and fro. At the comer of Ben Yehuda, a young man leaned against a MG spitting out poppy
seeds. Iht wizened street vendors, the fruit juice and poppy seed sellers, the bei-gel men, all looked Arabic to me. Actually, most of them were North African Jews. Two American ladies
with winged sunglasses and gaily-patterned skirts pasised with a click-clack of bracelets. :■
"But have you heard then: English yet. Sadie?:v^
"No". ■ . ■ ~
Mordecol Richler woi bom In Montreal, Januoty 27th, 1931. Ho left Sir George Williams University, Montreal, after two yeors of study to go to Europe and write. He spent two years in Europe and wrote his first novel, THE ACROBATS, there. Returning to Conoda he worked briefly in foctories ond then joined the C.B.C. as a news editor. In 1953 THE ACROBATS was accepted for publication by Andre Deutsch Limited, London, ond he returned to England, living ond working there for the next seven years and trovelling extensively in Fronce, Germany ond Spoin.
OHL YIHAMIRKA
bxJMRRY GOLDEN
The Celebrities
There was a time when there was a whole race of celebrities who did nothing more than accompany movie stars to dinner, nightclubs, and movie premiers.
Smce Hollywood had relocated East, in Italy, France, Switzerland and the South Seas where taxes are at worst an inconvenience, I cannot say offhand whom these celebrities are now freeloading on.
Some of these cejebrities per|iaps still maintain then: notoriety by invttations to dinner at the White House, which is a sure route to fame without accomplishment these days.
My friend Carl Szmdburg was recently involved in writing the captions to a book of portrait photographs. In essence, this was sort of a celebrity register. He confessed it was a rather difficult task.
It is easy to recognize a Stravinsky beside a piano, and it is possible, just barely, to discover who a Zizi Jeanmaire is. But how do you go about finding out the names of three durectors of a Swiss bank? And when you do, what do you say about them except to say they don't particularly look like capitalists, they look like celebrities,
i.e. well fed?
Values change, or let's say modulate, from age to age. When I was yoimg, getting invited out to dinner got you only the entre and no fame at all. We used to interest ourselves in the "eminence gris" as the French put it — the gray eminence^ the power behind the throne.
Everyone knows Colonel House was Woodrow Wilson's eminence gris and General Hindenburg's eminence gris was Colonel Max Hoffman who was also Lu-dendorf's and thus was the Russian army destroyed at Tanhenberg.
The last eminence gris I heard about was Harry "Pete" Pierpont who was supposedly the brains behind the Dillinger mob. You can see to what a state being a gray ghost was deteriorated.
If there is an eminence gris who is also a celebrity these days (for they are mutually contradictory terms) it must be the pollsters who advise governors and senators on whether or not they can be president. I fully expect some future president to declare, "AH that I am, all that I ever hope to be, Lowe to my pollster."
"So help me they speak better than us. They speak like the British."
The Yiddish restaurant I stopped at veas typical of its kind anywhere. Wine-stained linen tablecloths and toothpicks in brandy glasses, the familiar sour shuffling did waiter with his shirt-tail hanging out, and here and there satisfied men sucking their teeth absently. It was Mr. Berman. He had sat inunediately in front of me oft the aircraft. "This is your first time in Israel?"
"Yes it is," I said, excited.
"All cities are the same, you know. A main street.... hotels, restaurants.... and everybody out to clip you. Here they're champion clippers. What business you in?"
I told him.
"I'm in sporting goods. I sell guns, sleeping-bags, tents," He laughed, wiped his spoon on the edge of the tablecloth, and began to chop up his strawberries in sour, cream. "You'd never catch me spending a night in a sleeping-bag. People are crazy. I should complain." Mr. Berman told me he was leaving for Tokyo the next day. "The girls in Tokyo are the best. They're ugly, but you can get used to them. Used to them? It's easy. They wait on you hand and foot."
The American with the
HUMAN RELATIONS
DR. ROSE N. FRANZBLAU
QUESTION: I am a 36-year old woman, married and have two lovely children of school age. I buy and sell antiques to make a little iside money; This was also a hobby which brought me: lots of pleasure.
I had been doing quite well imtil lately, when I just can't seem to make up ray mind whether I like: the item enough to buy it. Then if I don't biiy it, I'm terribly Upset and Wish I had. I do most of my buying at auctions.. Once an item is sold it's sold and you don't get another chance to buy it.
It seems toine that I want the item only aftcir-it is sold.This has never happened to me before, only withm the last month. My decision has caused me consi-derable tension and aggravation.
ANSWER: The state of indecision, although it is nerve-wracking sometimes, gratifies;certain needs at other times. As long! as one doesn't make a decision one can't make a mistake, the reasoning goes/
A woman in her roles of wife and mother al\yays prefers to have her husband take over as the master, of the house.. She is happy to have him make all the decisions, and tell her what to dp, how to do it, hov^ much to spend, and what ■:tO'buy.-
But should there come a time when a husband does not do too Well, and the wife feels called _upon to help put, she may feel let down, and even betrayed. She must now do fPr herself what she feels is her husband's job and what he had always done for her. Her resentment cpimterbalances the gratifying feeling of strength . and independence which she derives from her gainful activity outside the home.
\ • As long asi your antique buying was
a hobby, it brought you gratification. You could do what you pleased, and no one could judge you by what you bought or passed up. Your taste and the choices you made were your own affair, and you needed no one's approval or disapprbval.
But oncis you went into business and had hot only c to sell a thing to yourself but then to others, it beearrie a different matter. You felt it as a rejection of your taste, and therefore of ybuV to have somebody dislike and refiise to buy what you wanted to sell. Perhaps, also, when the hobby became a business, all the ftm was
You may like to 1% antiques, but when it pomes to buying for others, the responsibility may seem tpo great to assume. Also,' some people do-not like to buy for others because, basically, they do hot like to ^veujp to the others what they have acquired, even if the others piay for it. . Sometimes a revival of the insecurities of childhood leads one to wint what one does not have or cannot keep. After a thing is no longer available, it becomes most desirable. These factors can also lead to indecisiveness.
You must give yotirself the freedom to make a mistake, and not judge yourself a failure if you do make one. If you can give yourself the right to be wrong, you will, not feel so driven to be right'all the time.
Novf that you are becoming better knowia in your circle of buyei-s, the faith that has been piit in you may make you feel that any mistake is a fatal failure. This is, of course, an outsized expectation and can only lead to a driving anxiety which can stymie aU decision. .
buck teeth was waiting at the bus stop. "How was the movie?" I asked.
"It was really something. I'm on a World tour, you know." "You told me." "I leave for Bombay at three o'clock tomorrow afternoon."
What's playing in Bombay, man? But^ I didn't say it. Instead, I said, "Enjoy yourself."
"I'll only be there overnight."
Drivmg into Tel Aviv the next morning we slowed dovra for donkey-carts, motor-cycle trucks, and cars so ancient they couldn't fetch 50 dollars on the Canadian market. Weaving through streets of machine shops and junk yards, I saw rusty wheels and dilapidated bedspreads, all being thriftily reclaimed. In the suburbs we passed blocks of new apartment buildings, that looked like concrete biscuit boxes.
It was hot, oppressively hot, and most people, very sensibly I thought, were informally dressed, ^ot so the ultra - Orthodox Jews, who clung to costxmies more appropriate to their East European origins. They wore black Homburgs or large round fur hats ("streun-lech") and long black coats ("kaftans") and, underneath jackets and sweaters. The streimel is made of a dozen taUs, representative of the twelve tribes of Israel.
I bought a copy of the "Jerusalem Post'', the English-language daily, arid was immediately attracted to a boxed notice on page one.
We have lost our crowning gloiy! The great rabbi Nissim Benjamin Ohanna, Chief Rabbi of the City of Haifa and its environs, has been taken by his maker. Funeral cortege will leave the RothschUd Hospital, Haita_(April J,;1962) 11
a.m.; ;.\, V-,,-The Bereaved Family
On Sunday I moved to the
Garden Hotel in Ramat Aviv.
On the w^y to my bungalow
I passed the pool, wherfc lots
of foot-vveary, middle-aged
tourists were sunning themr
selves*
"The ones I saw in Jerusalem, they're poor kids," a lady said. "They don't even know what a handkerchief is. Should I chase thena away? They're sneezmg and blowing and_doughmg at me all the timl" -
A card player jlooked up from under his baseball cap long enough to say that he Was taking the tour to Elath tomorrow.
"If you are cons Mr. Hersh said, "the water is good for you, if not—pardon me the expression you'll probably get diar-
rhoea."
Mr. Hersh, who was in the dry goods business in Windsor, Ont., questioned each new arrival. at the hotel. Shooing flies off with his rolled newspaper, pondering his toes, as be curled and uncurled them, he'd ask, "And where are 'you' from? Aha! ... How long you here for? I see ... Longer you couldn't stay? . . . And tell, me, Mr. Richler, you came pver here on one of our aircraft, you liked it? You were unpressed?"
"They're Boemg 707s, you know. American-made."
"And the pilots? Eh? . . . This country, it's a miracle. . .. So? The only thing I got a complaint is the hotel keepers they make the monkey business. I been here seven years ago and what they done since is remarkable. ... I'm not a millionaire, Mr. Richler, and I'm not poor. I spend? It's the children's money. ... Do I want to be the richest man in the cemetery? The less I leave the less the children have to fight over, God bless them! So. Mr. Richler, you're enjoying here?"
The port of Elath, Israel's gateway to Africa, is a rough, dusty boom town on the edge of a desert. The people who have gone to settle there get special tax concessions. On one side of the
a young Canadian, Harvey Goodman, who was brought up on Clark Street, Montreal, just around the comer from where I used to live. He has been in Israel for ten years. "All Jevys should come here," he^ said. "We're-hated every-where." — I protested.
(CoflHnued on Page 9)
Til* Conadlon Jiwitli HtNf$, fMof, Juht 7Hi, 1963 — Foft 3
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gulf there's Sinai, Egypt. On the other side, the frontiers with Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Before the Sinai campaign life in Elath was dangerous, Arab gun positions in the gulf prevented ships from entering the port. Today, the guns are silent, but they are still very, very close. So close that when a tanker steams into the gulf you have to wait a while before you can tell for sure if it's heading for Elath or Akaba, only five miles away, .f The Hotel Elath is,run by
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