COMPILED BY ELIZABETH APPLEBAUM

New Booklet Helps
With Child Safety

'nai B'rith has pub-
lished a new child
safety guide called
Play It Safe. Through role-
playing exercises and
guided discussions, the
manual helps
parents
instruct their
children on
being cau-
tious of
strangers, and
teaches young-
sters to devel-
op their own
sense of safety
awareness.
Produced
by the B'nai
B'rith Corn-
mission on
Community
Volunteer
Services, the
guide poses
such situa-
tions to children as, "You
and your parents have
gone shopping in a big,
crowded shopping mall.
All of a sudden you look
around and you don't see
your parents anywhere.

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What do you say and do?"
and "On the way to school
one morning, you're
stopped by a stranger who
tells you he's lost his
puppy. He says he has a
little boy or
girl your age
at home who
will be very
sad that the
puppy is lost.
He tries to
get you to
help him look
for his lost
puppy. What
do you say
and do?"
The first
guidebook is
free, with
additional
copies avail-
able at 50
cents each.
To order, con-
tact B'nai B'rith's
Commission on Com-
munity Volunteer Ser-
vices, 1640 Rhode Island
Ave. NW, Washington,
D.C. 20036.

Polotsk Jews
Organize

he Jews of Polotsk
(about 187 miles
from Minsk) came
together last February as
an organized community
for the first time since
pre-World War II. Some
500 persons attended the
gathering, representing
about a third of the city's
Jewish population.
Polotsk is home to one
of the oldest Jewish corn-
munities in Lithuania.
Jews were reported living
in the city by the end of
the 15th century.
By the 1930s, some
8,100 Jews resided in
Polotsk. Virtually all were
murdered by the Nazis,
after being herded into a
brick factory in December
1941.

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New York Tenants File Suit:
Does This Case Ring A Bell?

different twist in
the field of reli-
gious rights has
come up in a case now
making its way through
the New York court system.
The suit was brought
by a group of Orthodox
Jewish apartment
dwellers whose landlord
installed electric locks on
the doors of their build-
ings, despite being told it
would prevent the ten-
ants from opening them
on Shabbat and the
Jewish holidays.
Jewish law prohibits,
among other activities,
the creation or destruc-
tion of an electric current
on Shabbat or holidays --
as many as 65 days a
year. The locks in ques-
tion hold doors closed by
means of a magnetic
force created by an elec-

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tric current. To open the
doors, one must insert a
special key that breaks
the electrical current.
After the group of ten-
ants, residents of an
apartment complex in
Rego Park, Queens,
brought suit against the
landlord and manage-
ment agent, a lower New
York State court ruled
that they indeed had a
cause of action, based on
the Fair Housing Act and
the New York State
Human Rights Law. The
case is now pending
before the State Supreme
Court Appellate Division.
The Agudath Israel of
America, an advocacy
group for Orthodox
Jewish rights, petitioned
last month for the right
to file a friend-of-the-
court brief in the suit.

Sticker Demands
Pollard Freedom

he Mazel Project, a
Monsey, N.Y.-based
Jewish awareness
organization, is offering a
free bumper sticker
demanding freedom for
Jonathan Pollard.
Mr. Pollard was found
guilty of conspiring to
commit espionage after
passing top-secret docu-
ments to Israel. He is
serving a life sentence, the
harshest sentence in U.S.
history for his crime.
To receive a bumper
sticker, which reads
"Pollard's Had Enough!",
write the Mazel Project,
30A College Rd., Monsey,
N.Y. 10952.

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Members of the Martha Graham Dance Company gather at the unveiling in
Jerusalem of a Jewish National Fund memorial grove honoring Ms. Graham, the
company's founder. The grove, which commemorates the 100th anniversary of her
birth, was established recently on a hillside at the southern edge of Jerusalem. A
pioneer of American dance, Ms. Graham was a longtime friend of Israel who fre-
quently visited the country.

This Is No Ordinary Fern

T

el Aviv (JTA) — A
scientist at Hebrew
University reported-
ly has discovered a fast-
growing fern that absorbs
radioactive waste and pre-
vents the loss of gold in
jewelry manufacturing.
The plant, called the
azolla, lives among blue-
green algae, which bind
carbon monoxide.
Professor Motti Sela of
the Jerusalem-based uni-
versity's agricul-
ture faculty says
the fern grows
quickly, doubling
its mass every
three days. It
does not require
fertilizer and can
flourish not only
in potable water
but also in partially treat-
ed sewage water.
The fern grows natural-
ly in Southeast Asia,
North and South America
and Egypt. It was brought
to Israel for research.
After being cultivated ini-

tially in the Hebrew
University's Abu Kebir
botanical garden in Tel
Aviv, it was brought to the
university's agriculture
faculty in Rehovot.
Professor Sela found
that the fern can absorb,
through its roots, a num-
ber of poisonous heavy
metals including lead,
cadmium, nickel, zinc,
mercury and chromium —
all polluting metals which
are by-products
of many industri-
al processes.
Not only does
the living azolla
absorb them, but
dried azolla has
been found to
absorb these met-
als to up to 6 per-
cent of the plant's weight.
Further research by
Professor Sela and his col-
leagues showed that the
fern also can absorb ura-
nium radioactive waste
from nuclear reactors.

Sephardim Plan Convention

T

he American Se-
phardi Federation
will hold its 1993
national
convention
Memorial Day weekend
in New York City. The
theme is "Sephardim:
The Next Generation,"
and will feature pro-

, grams by 15 Jewish

communities, including
Turkish, Syrian, Indian
and Iranian.
For information, con-
tact the American
Sephardi Federation, 305
Seventh Ave., New York,
N.Y. 10001, or call (212)
366-7223.

