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3 Guest Column:

Missmg Grandpa

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99 And Counting

Welcoming the new secular year with 99 unusual facts
about everything from Israel to Jewish celebrities.

Elizabeth Applebaum
AppleTree Editor

He was the man Madonna
ce called the "love of her life."
Actor Sean Penn, long since
divorced from the former Material
Girl, is the son of actress Eileen
Ryan, who is Catholic, and the late
Leo Penn, who was Jewish. Leo
Penn, who died last September at
age 77, started out as an actor.
During the
1950s he
was placed
on Joseph
McCarthy's
blacklist. Later,
he directed
numerous IV
episodes of "I
Spy," "St. Else-
where and
Sean Penn
"Columbo," for
which he won an Emmy.

/ —

2) As early as 1873, New
Zealand had a Jewish prime minis-
ter. His name was Sir Julius Vogel, •
a native of London who moved to
New Zealand in 1861. He
became a journalist, then a mem-
ber of the New Zealand House of
Representatives. Vogel's term as
prime minister was 1873-76.

3) According to legend, pieces of
the afikomen can ward off evil spir-
its.

............

1.11.1891, quarterback Phil King
veton played on the All-Amer-
ica college Football team, two
years after the first team was cho-
sen. Michigan's first member of the
team was halfback Joe Magid-
sohn, who played in 1909 and
1910.

er Lansky's closest associates
were': tucky" Luciano, "Bugsy"
Siegel and Frank
Costello, but he
always insisted
he was just an
ordinary busi-
nessman. He
also said he was
an observant
Jew who was
shomer Shabbat.
And if you
thought other-
wise, I mean,
would you tell him?

6YE Feeling unappreciated by your
children, overworked by your boss,
ignored by your spouse? Sounds
like you need to visit
www.kvetch.com . Here, you can
kvetch all you want and meet up
with other kvetchers, too!

7) "if it weren't for me, there would-
n't be any Israel." Who said it?
Harry Truman? Golda Meir? David
Ben-Gurion? No, it was Richard M.
Nixon.

8

I/

akah does not translate to
" but rather to "justice."

9} Dr;. Joyce Brothers made her first
appearance as a contestant on
"Th6164,000 Question."

10 The modern version of the dyb-
.foots in a decidedly
unmyst!ca place. S. Ansky, whose
real name was S.Z. Rappaport,
was the author of Der Dybbuk. In
the early 1900s, Rappaport began
traveling throughout Europe as he
collected Jewish folk tales. During
his journeys he met an innkeeper's
wife, who told him of the dybbuk,
a strange spirit that supposedly
occupies a body. Rappaport was
so intrigued that he wrote it into a
play, which he tried to sell to a
Jewish theater troupe in Vilna. But
the actors weren't interested, and
Rappaport died soon after, not a
penny to his name. In an effort to
offer a brief tribute to Rappaport,
the Vilna group scheduled a perfor-
mance of Der Dybbuk, only to see
it become one of the most popular
Yiddish plays ever.

11):.ViOlinist Fritz Kreisler
4962), -gave his first performance
when he was 7 and won the Pre-
mier Grand Prix de Rome when he
was 12.

1 2) Feeling hungry for a nice meal
of leeches? If you're kosher-obser-

vant, think again. We all know
about pork and shrimp, but other
creatures that are treife include
lizard, flatworm, black snake, eel,
porpoise, toad and, yes, leeches.

arid, France, Italy, Portu-
all may seem like
tri
tOte n ed countries, but
suc
each has, in the past 900 years,
expelled its Jewish community.

—

1 ,,Ypu know you've really made
you're on the "Teletubbies,"
t's what happened to the
Jewish community of Great Britain
this year. On a holiday version of
the show, those bright little fellows
stopped off to catch up with a fam-
ily lighting its menorah.

ewish prime minister,
i, who served from
began his political
career organizing a mutual-aid
society for gondoliers in Venice.

als you might not believe
ten as kosher, but they
ox, hart, ibex, antelope and
buffalo.

he next time you're searchin
a Tom Jones collection
• really, isn't that every day?)
look for the album where he sings
— ready or not — "My Yiddishe
Mama."