iteen, Visits a Kin

King Solomon Welcomes the Queen of Sheba. Vienna,
Collection of Gobelin Tapestries, Series 77/4, XVIth Century.
* * *
By BOB BREWER
neath your gracious feet." Upon
(Standard Feature Syndicate)
which
It was a 1,200 mile journey
"Nay" Solomon replied
that the Queen of Sheba made
The wise and strong should seek
The welfare of the weak!
by camel caravan from the land
_ And turned his horse aside."
of Arabia to Jersualem to visit
( Whittier)
King Solomon. The long-winded
Hearing these noble words,
caravan, headed by the lovely the proud Queen bowed low and
Queen riding on a tall, richly- admired the King's wisdom and
decked camel, slowly made its the nobility of his character.
way through the Arabian desert
The Queen's eyes widened
across the wide land of Moab with respect and admiration.
and into Jerusalem. "It was a And she asked him: "What do
very great train with camels we bury before it is dead, and
that bore spices and very much the more it lies and rots be-
gold and precious stones" (I neath the earth, the stronger it
Kings 10:2). When, at last, she gets and more life come out of
arrived in Jerusalem, she was
it?"
met by the King and received
Bowing slightly towards her,
with great pomp: "And when Solomon answered slowly: "We
she had come to Solomon, she bury living seeds in the earth
spoke with him of all that was and there shoot forth golden
in her heart" (I Kings 10:3).
They exchanged expensive gifts heads of wheat."
"Now tell me, 0 wise
and when, after a lengthy stay,
the Queen departed, she praised King," the eager Queen con-
tinued, "What is it that,
the great King's wisdom and
prosperity with the words that when it descends from
have become famous: "Thou heaven, is pure and white,
hast wisdom and prosperity ex- but afterwards becomes sul-
ceeding thy fame" (I Kings lied? In time it returns to
heaven in the form of clouds
10:7).
and again becomes as pure
Later, numerous legends were as it first was."
woven about this meeting. One
Smiling at the easy test,
told of a love affair between Solomon replied: "What is
Solomon and the lovely young whiter than snow when it
queen. The son of their union, descends from heaven? And
so the legend goes, was named does it not turn into mud
Melech ("King") and is said to
on the highways? The clouds
have emigrated with his follow- gave birth to it and sent it
ers to Abyssinia. The Royal down upon the earth and
House of Ethiopia still claims when it thaws in the warm
descendance from the son of sun, it returns again where
Solomon and the Queen of it came from." The Queen
Sheba.
was satisfied.
Neither the Talmud nor
The story of King Solomon
the older Midrash collections and the Queen of Sheba has in-
refer to the story of the spired great painters, poets and
Queen of Sheba, but it does composers of all countries.
appear in the Targum Sheni
Old and modern masters have
to Esther 1:3, also in the be- painted the scene of their first
ginning of Midrashic prov- meeting. Most famous is Rub-
erbs, in Jalkut and Chroni- ens' masterpiece showing the
cles II and in I Kings 10. Queen as a dignified woman,
According to Josephus, Belki not too young, with an apparel
was queen of Egypt and Ethi- not too costly nor too gaudy.
opia and brought to Palestine
In Raphael's fresco in the
the first specimen of the balsam Vatican, she is shown as a vivia-
which grew in the Holy Land cious girl running up the steps
during the historian's time.
leading to the throne eager and
Once upon a time King Sol- impatient to meet the great
omon rode out in state with the
Queen of Sheba and a great re-
tinue. Lifting her beautiful eyes,
the Queen asked him candidly:
"Is it true, 0 great King, that
you know the tongues of all the
beasts and birds?" Solomon
smiled and nodded: "They are
simple, 0 Fair Queen. Their
speech has but few words—for
love, fear and hunger." Just
then they had come to an ant-
hill which lay in their path.
And Solomon heard the fright-
ened ants say:

"Here comes the Kingsman great
As wise and good and just,
To crush us in the dust
Under his heedless feet."

The King showed the Queen
how the eager ants were
shuttling to and fro and told
her what they had whispered.
The Queen smiled and answered
flatteringly: "They should be
only too happy to perish be-

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King. Modena represented her
in a similar vein. Sir E. J.
Pointer, the famous English
artist, painted her in 1891, as
a gorgeously attired woman,
with splendid jewels. The great
French painter, Eustache Le-
suer (1616-1655) in a typical ex-
pression of French baroque
painting, tells a vivid story of
the meeting expressed in grace-
ful movements and a rich, im-
lAssive background.
The picture shown here is
a hand-woven gobelin tapes-
try made in the 16th cen-
tury of unheard-of beauty
and skilled craftsmanship.
Poetry, fiction and music
have glorified the beautiful
Arabian Queen and her visit to
the wise King.
The popular opera by Carl
Goldmark entitled "The Queen
of Sheba" (1875) makes free
use of the Biblical material pre-
senting the Queen as _a de-
moniac, cruel woman who
Wings despair and death to
young Asad and his bethrothed.
Although the Kingdom of
Sheba is no more, its name has
outlived geographical identifi-
cation, by the sole virtue of a
gracious story. It is not of im-
portance whether Sheba ruled
in Ethiopia or in Arabia, but it
is the story that matters. She
was a great Queen in her own
right, of whom the historian
Josephus rightly said "That she
was inquisitive about philos-
ophy and was to be admired."
But she was not happy, for she
was one of the first women in
history to learn that neither
by wit nor by wealth can a
beautiful woman impress a
great king.

the nominating committee, oth-
Mrs. Bargman Heads
ers can be nominated by peti-
Nominating Committee tion.
officers will be elected
of Community Council at The
the May meeting.

Mrs. Theodore Bargman has
been named Chairman of the
nominating committee for the
Jewish Community Council. Her
committee includes Louis
Rosenzweig, Walter E. Klein,
Frank Rosenbaum, Robert Can-
vassar, Sanford Goldberg, and
Jack Caminker.
This committee will present
a slate of officers and members
of the executive committee to
the April delegate assembly of
the Council.
In accordance with the Coun-
cil constitution, in addition to
those who will be selected by

and his Orchestra
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Detroiters Named on
Committees of NCRAC

Several Detroiters have been
appointed to committees of the
National Community Relations
Advisory Council, David L. Ull-
man, Chairman of NCRAC, an-
nounces. They include:
Louis Rosenzweig, to commit-
tee on civil rights; Rabbi Mor-
ris Adler, to committee on in-
terreligious activities; Harold
Berry, to committee on mass
media; Stanley J. Winkelman,
to special committee on re-as-
sessment; William Cohen, to
committee on community coun-
cil consultation; and Boris M.
Joffe, to committee on com-
munity relations implications of
the developments in the Middle
East.

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