94 Friday, September 12, 1980 Solomon, Sheba Story in Fiction WE WISH OUR FRIENDS AND RELATIVES A HAPPY, HEALTHY By ALLEN A. WARSEN NEW YEAR MR. and MRS. JOSEF BERKOVIC & FAMILY L 1211Z11 'Mt 7131115 TO ALL OUR FAMILY AND FRIENDS MR. and MRS. ERWIN KEPES & FAMILY THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS vo• WE WISH OUR FRIENDS AND RELATIVES A HAPPY HEALTHY NEW YEAR LUBA and SAMUEL KLAIMAN isron It= 1135 TO ALL OUR FAMILY AND FRIENDS JILL and MICHAEL LUTZ WE WISH OUR FRIENDS AND RELATIVES A HAPPY. HEALTHY NEW YEAR SARAH and HY MERVIS & FAMILY =xi rtme ruir5 TO ALL OUR FAMILY AND FRIENDS MR. and MRS. MONIEK MARGULIES Faye Levine's novel, "Solomon and Sheba" (Richard Marek Pub- lishers), is a fictionalized version of the biblical story (I Kings 10). The novelist sketches briefly the life stories of Kings David and Solomon. She describes King David as a war hero and romantic figure, and his son, King Solomon, as a diplomat, builder and lover. She delineates Solomon's cabinet as consisting, among others, of a high priest, a secretary of the oxen, a raiser of flocks, a chief of drummers and musicians, a court gover- nor, jailer, a household grand master and the chief steward. The author states that Solomon, to gain his sub- jects' consent for the con- struction of a national sanctuary, invited repre- sentatives of the tribes to meet with him to consider the project. The tribesmen consisting, inter alia, of "the philosophical rapists of Re- uben," "the vengeful Le- vites" and "the robber flocksmen of Gad" met with the king at a high place at Gibeon "where once in the old days the sun stood still." We wish our family and friends a very healthy, happy and prosperous New Year MR. and MRS. EARL M. FRIEDMAN Helene & Michael IN! We wish our family and friends a very healthy, happy and prosperous New Year MR. and MRS. RUBIN HERMAN & RONNIE We wish our family and friends a very healthy, happy and prosperous New Year GARY and MARY KRASMAN 111 & LEONARD BORIN San Diego, Calif. Wishes Their Family and Friends A Happy & Healthy New Year tlzrzn. rt3v5 MR. and MRS. MORRIS H. FISHMAN & FAMILY would like to wish all our family and friends a healthy and happy New Year MR. and MRS. RICHARD PERGAMENT Wishes Their•Family and Friends A Happy & Healthy New Year After careful considera- tion of the king's proposal, the assembled unanimously approved it. The author continues her narrative with a description of the land of Sheba and its civilization. Situated at the high edge of Egypt from where the country gently rolls down "the belly and uterus of Ophir, past the Nilotic cradle and the great rift and on to the farther cape." The land, where love was law, was dominated by women loved by long-haired men "who were in all things their sisters." Its monarch, Queen Sheba; , following a mysterious vision and the receipt of a diploma- tic communication from King Solomon of Jerusalem, decided to visit him "to prove him with hard questions" (I Kings 10). While traveling to the land of the Hebrews, the novelist writes, Queen Sheba reminisced about her past. According to legend, she was born to a Chinese king and a fairy. Actually, her mother was of flesh and blood and the murderess of Sheba's older brother. Officially, Sheba was a virgin, "else she could not be queen." She prided herself of stopping the practice of "putting little girls with snakes" as offerings to Xal- kydra, who she said, would be pleased with a goat, or an "old woman who's become immune." As she and her caravan came closer to Jerusalem, she was anxious to meet Solomon for she felt "some- thing will happen between us." At their first rendezv- ous, the queen tested Sol- omon with a set of thought-out questions. The king answered wisely. They included: "What is the most power- ful organ of the body?" "Death and life are in the power of the tongue!" "How are body and spirit connected?" "The baseness of spirits is derived from their bodies. The nobility of bodies is derived from their spirits." The monarchs, the author fictionalizes, often differed on matter of vital impor- tance. A good illustration is the case of the nursing mothers. The queen tried to resolve their quarrel dip- lomatically, but failed. Sol- omon looked at the infant both women claimed as their own, and brandished his sword over its head as if ready to cut it in two. Instantaneously, "one of the mothers screams and thrusts the baby at the woman she was con- testing a moment before, pleading for mercy." Sol- omon awarded the child to its rightful mother. Years later, in his old age, Solomon "in the phantas- magoria of insight, im- agined that the child the women had been fighting over that day was his own nsrizn 1S1m rt3V5 MR. and MRS. HYMAN GROSKIND & ERIC wish all their friends and relatives a happy and healthy New Year We wish our family and friends a very healthy, happy and prosperous New Year MR. and MRS. HENRY IGLEWICZ & DAUGHTER nzrizrri MID rue,5 FAYE LEVINE kingdom: young, fragile, vulnerable, that he had in- herited from his father and that this kingdom would be divided." (It was divided during the reign of his son, Jeroboam.) At one of their meetings, the queen told Solomon that in her country "women choose their men, and own the game and the gold and the cattle, and the groves, and allot all to their daugh- ters." "In Israel," she continued, "I see that your women are small and your men large, and I understand you do not allow your women to love or to work as we do in Sheba, and you say they are not fit for it." However, shortly after the queen's return from Jerusalem, she . gave birth to a son, who upon reaching maturity re- placed her as ruler of the country, thus ending "the line of queens who had ruled in Sheba since time out of mind." Simultane- ously, the women domi- nance in Sheba came to an end. In the appendix, titled "Such Facts as Are Known about Solomon and Sheba," Miss Levine examines the traditions and legends of her novel's two principal characters. She does not doubt the historic existence of King Solomon, but is skeptical about Queen Sheba. She ob- serves that the talmudic sages, too, disputed her existence. She notes, "My biggest surprise in doing this research was discover- ing that the talmudic rabbis didn't believe in the queen of Sheba at all . . . the Tal- mud says that the woman Sheba is a mistake in trans- lation, that the Bible word translated "queen" should rather be "kingdom." Equally interesting is the author's statement regard- ing the "son of Solomon and Sheba." According to her findings the son "arrived on the world literary scene in the 13th Century, when an epic of his birth and matur- ity was written in (or trans- lated from the Arabic into) Gheze, the classical lan- guage of Ethiopia." This national epic, curiously, "was used to bolster the legitimacy of Haile Selassie," who after a 44-year reign was over- thrown in 1974. The author of "Solomon and Shebu," Faye Levine, is an authority in the history and sociology of religion. MR. and MRS. ARTHUR KEPES & FAMILY wish all their friends and relatives a happy and healthy New Year We wish our family and friends a very healthy, happy and prosperous New Year THE KIRMANS Shirley, Norman & Sheryl nzrizri mzue m3r25 MR. and MRS. SAM MOSCOW & FAMILY wish all their friends and relatives a happy and healthy New Year We wish our family and friends a very healthy, happy and prosperous New Year KARL and MARGIE STERN Michael & Brian MR. and MRS. NATHAN FISHMAN & FAMILY Wishes Their Family and Friends A Happy & Healthy New Year nzrelzin rime ruv5 MR. and MRS. WM. SIMON GOTTLIEB would like to wish all our family and friends a healthy and happy New Year nznzin rit3v5 ALICE and HANK - KLEGON & FAMILY would like to wish all our family and friends a healthy and happy New Year nzialzn `isle ;1305. MR. and MRS. HENRY LEE & SANDRA would like to wish all our family and friends a healthy and happy New Year 11ZriZT1 `1211: rt3V5 MR. and MRS. PHIL S. WEISS Woodland Hills, Calif. Would like to wish all our family and friends a healthy and happy New Year ' t-i.AJ111,4