VOL. XLVIII
UAH is see
English-Jewish Wmcly
Zim Israel: Problems, Problems, Problems, Including Liner Shalom, Kosher And Non-Kosher Ructions
The fire that tore through the five-story Zim Building in Tel Aviv on February 4 was only one of the many troubles besetting the Israeli shipping line. Insurance will probably cover much of the financial loss of the mid town office building, sixty-six per cent of which was owned by Zim, writes James Feron, from Jerusalem, for the New York Times. There is no insurance to cover the other problems.
Caught between a continuing loss in passenger traffic and a sharply critical report on its operations by the State Controller last fall, the country's largest steamship line has reorganized its fleet and has changed its management.
The new board met for the first time, headed by a new general manager, forty-two year-old Michael Tsour, a highly regarded Director General of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry for the last eight years.
Earlier, Israelis were told .what the changes of the last few months would mean: The number of trans-Atlantic sailings would be cut by half this year, and almost all the traffic would be carried on two Greek Line ships.
The Greek Line is the only shipping1 company with regular service between . North America and Israel. The Queen Anna Maria and the Olympia are scheduled for sixteen sailings. There will be one departure every two weeks during the vacation season and one a month at other times.
Zim'a mcxiern lirer SljMoni, used mostly as a cruise ship, will cross the Atlantic only four times. The Greek Line ships carry kosher kitchens as well as an attraction the Shalom did not have: non-kosher kitchens. When the Shalom operates on cruises, it serves interna-
tional cuisine with the tacit approval of the Orthodox rabbinate.
The developments that prompted Zim to withdraw from scheduled passenger service were not Zim's alone. Trends in trans-Atlantic travel point skyward, and other steamship lines are facing the same problem, says the New York Times. The number of people crossing the Atlantic by air rose by twenty-five per cent recently while those by sea fell by ten per cent; On Israeli ships the drop was seven per cent.
But the Zim Israel Navigation Company of Haifa found other problems lapping at its door. One was the cost of a vast expansion program; another, a need to modernize cargo operations; third, a growing inability to find sailors in Israel.
Public attention was focused on the line last fall when its report for 1964 showed an operating loss for the first time, a deficit of $3-rhillion. Some economists said the. report showed a disguised loss for the previous year as well.
Most of the losses were in passenger service. The Shalom was competing in a shrinking market with the older passenger-cargo ships Zion and Israel, built in Ger-^ many under reparations agree-1 ments.
The line decided to sell the 10,-000-ton combined vessels, to introduce fast new freighters to pick up the cargo business; and to con-pentrate the Shalom's efforts to cruise traffic.
The new express cargo service has been started. The freighters Etrog and Hadar will call at Naples and Barcelona on the way to New York; and at Barcelona and Piraeus on the way to Haifa.
(Continued on Page Three)
GARDEN VALE, QUEBEC, MARCH 11, 1968
WHAT TROUBLE IN THE MIDDLE EAST?: EXTEMPORE ISRAELI FLIER, LIVING A CHARMED LIFE, GOT TENDER CARE IN EGYPT; RETURNED AS THE ESSENCE OF "CHUZPAH (NERVE), TO A BIG NATIONAL SMILE; WOULD DO IT AGAIN
No. 24
Greatly Honoured Engineer Designed About Half Of High-Rise N. Y. Buildings Since 1945
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Abie S. Nathan returned on March 1 to the tiny Israeli airfield from which he left the day before on his personal peace mission to the United Arab Republic.
The Tel Aviv restaurant owner and former commercial pilot brought his rented, single-engine biplane through the gathering dusk into Herzlia Airport, where he was cheered by a small'crowd that had waited most of the day, writes James Feron in the New York Times. Two young men had to be dragged from the wings of the 39-year-old plane by airport officials. .
The thirty-eight-year-old Mr. Nathan also was met by the police, who charged him with leaving the country illegally. However, he was released on a bond of �100 ($33). Mr. Nathan told the crowd he would do it again.
Mr. Nathan said he had left his Bible with the Governor of Port Said, where he had spent the night in a cell. He said the Governor had given him a pair of pajamas and miniature pyramids as souvenirs.
Mr. Nathan left for Tel Aviv in a horn-blowing motorcade. He stopped at the new Hilton Hotel, where he had been offered the presidential suite. ."Hilton International believes in peace," an official said soberly.
At a boisterous news conference, Mr. Nathan said that Egyptian officials at first could not believe he had come from Israel.
"They received me very nicely, took me inside, gave me a glass of tea," he said. "They saw I was cold and brought around an elec-
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trie stove and put it next to me so I should get warm."
He showed them an Arabic version of the peace petition he had distributed in Israel calling for face-to-;face talks between Israeli and Arab officials, says the New York Times. They said it was "very nice," he reported.
"Then," he said, "the Governor of Port Said came in and said he had heard about me and said 'we're interested in peace, too, but it's not up to us. It's up to you/ Then he began talking about,refugees, and I said: 'Don't talk about
James Ruderman, a structural engineer who designed many of the major office buildings in New York City, died of a heart attack while going to work on the Long Island Rail Road. He was 67 years old and lived at 28 Norgate Road, Manhasset, Long Island, N. Y. Mr. Ruderman, a civil engineer, was responsible for the structural design of more than forty million square feet of office space in New York, says the New York Times, about half of all the high-rise office construction in the city since the end of World War II.
Among the buildings he was responsible for were: the Pan American Building at Grand Central Terminal; the American Tobacco Building at Park Avenue and 46th Street; the Chemical New York Trust Building, Park Avenue and 48th Street; the New York Hilton Hotel, Sixth Avenue and 53d Street; and the Sperry Rand Building at Rockefeller Center.
these things to me, I'm sure if you">\ Among the more than seventy sit down with my Government you buildings he helped build is the
might come to some arrangement.'
"They said: 'No. The step must come from you. You must talk about these steps in your own home.'" .'..'�
Mr. Nathan said the Governor had told him: "Your intentions are good. We will fill up your plane with gas and you will fly back."
"But how to spend the evening?" Mr. Nathan said. He said he had played cards with some security officers. "<)f course, I won," he said, bringing a roar of laughter.
Later the Governor asked Mr. Nathan if he would like to see the city. "So I saw the Suez Canal and ships in the canal and a night club, which they said was not for me," he recalled.
Next morning they repaired the ancient plane's damaged tail, and Mr. Nathan, with a hearty shalom, took off. But a patch Wre loose and he landed again.
"'Oi, we are not through,' they said," Mr. Nathan related.
During the second repair job he got into a discussion with the Governor, who chided the Israelis for reporting that Mr. Nathan had been killed on his flight. Mr. Nathan said he replied: "You also think that we have atom bombs in every corner. It's not true."
"You are making atom bombs?" the Governor asked.
"Just like you make them, we make them," Mr. Nathan replied.
Mr. Nathan's flight has delighted Israelis, and even Government officials had to smile at his stunt. Mr. Nathan was the embodiment of "chuzpah", says the New York Times, a Yiddish word that means nerve, to the point of effrontery.
Abie Nathan stories made the rounds most of the day. The favorite was that he would change the name of his plane from Shalom I to Shalom II arid try his luck in Beirut, Lebanon.
The flier was regarded by some as well-meaning and naive, and by others as a dangerous^.exhibition-ist whose escapade had made a mockery of any real peace feelers. A state of war prevails between Israel and the Arab countries.
In general he', was regarded as extremely lucky not only, to have left the United Arab Republic with little more than a pat on the head, but also to have survived two long flights in the old.training plane.
Mr. Xathan and his Egyptian-born wife, Susie, co-owner of a discotheque -in Tel Aviv, wore divorced twelve years ago. They have a daughter, Sharona, fourteen years old. He had three brothers and two sisters. His mother, aged seventy, lives in Israel.
The Cairo press ridiculed Abie Nathan's flight from Tel Aviv to Port Said as a "comic act which failed to catch any laujjhs." But the Egyptian Government treated Mr. Xathan with traditional Arab hospitality.
His rickety plane was patched up, and he dined on roast chicken shrimp curry._ fish, mayonr.ai?c and pastrami. 1 he Egyptians, who j?ave Mr. Nathan pajamas because he had brought rone with him. also sent him home with a brass miniature of the pyramids for his daughter, who is interested in Egyptian antiquities. But his peace p!ea got nowhere.
The newspaper Al Ahrani, which often reflects the regime's views, derided the flight as a publicity-stunt carried out with the "approval and blessings'' of the Israeli Government "to attract attention to its timeless plea of
(Continued on Page Five)
General Motors Building, which is now being constructed at Fifth Avenue and 58th Street. He also designed the structural work on many theaters and office buildings in other cities in the country and throughout the world.
Mr. Ruderman always championed' the steel-framed building against competitive modes of construction. He warned prospective clients to consider that over the 50-year life of a building its owners would be constantly called upon
to change its interior to accommodate successive tenants � a practice only feasible with steel framing.
Associates described Mr. Ru-derpian as a charming man with a Keen'sense 'of humor. He was recognized as a top theoretician in his field as well as a practical man.
Many of his designs were for buildings constructed on the air rights of the New York Central Railroad in mid-Manhattan. He had to accomplish intricate construction feats without disrupting rail service, says the New-York Times. Because of his work on more than a dozen buildinjm^n Park Avenue between Gran(TsSHi-tral Station and 67th Street, friends describe Park Avenue in jest as Ruderman Boulevard.
Born in Minsk, Russia, Mr. Ruderman came to the U.S. at the age of five years. He attended Townsend Harris Hajl 'in New York and was graduated from the City College in 19i9. He received a degree in civil engineering from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn in 1922; and a Master's degree in civil engineering from Columbia University in 1939.
Mr. Ruderman formed the partnership of Ruderman. & Severud in 1927, but this was dissolved in 1932 because of the depression. After that he was in business alone, except for five years during World War II when he was a commander in the Civil Engineering
(Continued on Page Seven)
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