Jewish Post, Indianapolis, Marion County, 5 January 1962 — Page 5

The Notional Jewish POST and OPINION

Friday, January 5, 1962

CAVE IS HOME for the Sirhan family, Palestinian refugees. They and their neighbors in the caves which honeycomb hillsides east of Bethlehem are dependents of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. The Sirhans formerly owned land in the now-Israeli village of Deir Abab. They departed upon Israel’s becoming independent, lived for a while in a rented house in Jordan, then “moved” into their present quarters when money ran out — and while their “spokesmen” wrangled with them as eight of nearly one million pawns.

LEARNING IS FUN — for both kids and student teacher at Yeshiva University’s graduate school of education. An experimental teaching fellowship program is operated on the New York Campus for the benefit of would-be teachers, both recent college graduates and mature men and women who seek new careers. Yeshiva, which is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year, operates the program with the aid of a grant from the Fund for the Advancement of Education. Degrees given include Master of Religious Education and Doctor of Philosophy.

THE FISH is supposed to be the subject of this photo. However, the entire pretty view could well be the miracle of life — burgeoning, beautiful, life — at Eilat, where scenes like this take place within spitting distance of hostile Jordan.

EMPTY AS somebody’s heart? Beit Ham courtroom is a quiet place now that Eichmann trial has ended. The subject sits in a red suit, official attire for the condemned, in prison. The reporters have gone again. They never came back in the same number as attended the first session to hear tt>e later proceedings or the verdict. Meanwhile, there’s still a minor controversy over what to do with Eichmann’s “‘memoirs” — the furiously scribbled lines which occupied so much pt his time during the trial.

STURDINESS AND ATTRACTIVENESS of chuppah aro meant to symbolize strength and beauty of lives led after marriage beneath the canopy. It's designed by Efrem Weitzman, for Cong. Rodeph Sholom, New York City. For all its suggestion of strength, the Weitzman chuppah is collapsible for easy storage. When erected, it shows the "Tree of Life" beneath the "Crown". It's all done in different shades of green satin, velvet, wool, etc., on a white satin background. The "Crown" text, suggested by Rodeph Sholom's Rabbi Neuman, is: "Blessed be they who come in the name of the Lord."

BEST PLAY of year is judgement of many critics of “Gideon”. Paddy Chayefsky wrote the comedy after considerable research into Biblical literature and archeology. Gideon isn’t the usual stalwart hero — he’s a coward, amateurish, confused, in constant need of reassurance that God’s miracles will help him. Chayefsky says he got the idea for the play while in Israel doing research on King Saul. “I came across Gideon again and again and couldn’t get him out of my mind.” The New York Times, in a notable lapse into the adjectivial, commented that the result is “a play with simplicity and humor, modesty, sweetness, freshness and keenness, tinged with innocent wonder and wise laughter.” Frederic March plays the cowardly hero who with 300 fellow farmers — and Divine aid — defeats 120,000 Midianites. A bit part in the play is performed by a belly dancer, who got herself some publicity by inviting Saudi Arabian King Saud to watch her perform in Gideon. This brought the suggestion irom numerous wags that Chayevsky had better re-write the ending if the Arab monarch was to be expected to enjoy the show.