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pieces of stone he works with.
To Mr. Mor, piles of rubble are
a potential gold mine.
"After the Temple was
destroyed, people carried
away the stones to build
things. Maybe one of my
Chanukah menorot is carved
from the steps of the Temple
." he muses.
Now, 2,000 years later, the
Jewish community of
Stoughton, Mass., has im-
ported some of that stone. Mr.
Ben Giat and his mostly Arab
work crew recently spent four
months there building a com-
munity center out of
Jerusalem stone. "The ar-
chitect wanted something
with the -spirit of Israel, so
they came up with the idea of
building with Jerusalem
stone."
Mr. Ben Giat's workmen
chiseled the stone here in
Israel and marked each piece
to show where it would go in
the building. The stone was
then shipped over, and Mr.
Ben Giat and his crew con-
structed the building with the
help of an American crew.
Even for wealthy Members
of the community, the
Jerusalem stone was some-
thing special: "One day I saw
a man at the construction
site, bending over to pick up
scraps of stone and put them
in his pockets," Mr. Ben Giat
recalled. "I filled a bucket
with pieces of stone and
brought it over to his Rolls
Royce, assuring him he could
take as much as he liked."

The Akron, Ohio, Jewish
community center, now has a
scaled-down replica of the
Western Wall, also built out of
Jerusalem stone by Mr. Ben
Giat's company. But Mr. Ben
Giat does not see much poten-
tial for exporting Jerusalem
stone as a raw material.
Also stonecutting, like
everything else in Israel, is
political. Mr. Ben- Giat gets
his stone from quarries in the
administered territories. Par-
ticularly now during the Arab
uprising, Mr. Ben Giat is not
sure that he would be able to
bet the stone in time to meet
a buyer's schedule.
But Mr. Ben Giat's com-
pany has recently come up
with a new idea for
marketing Jerusalem abroad
— decorative blocks, each
carved with a menorah or a
Star of David.
Here in Jerusalem, thanks
to the building law, there is
plenty of stone around. Even
as a contractor, Mr. Ben Giat
would not want to see the law
changed, "In spite of the ex-
tra money and work involved,
the stone is the nicest thing
about Jerusalem. ❑

Happy NewYear

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WISHES ALL THEIR FRIENDS
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HAPPY and HEALTHY
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6722 Orchard Lake Rd.
West Bloomfield

626-2212)

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

161