The BiG Story

died in 1948 before any deci-
sion was rendered.
Fb If you're one of those devoted
Three Stooges fans (but please,
don't admit it in public), no doubt
you're familiar with Jules White, a
director who worked for more than
10 years \i\iT r i . - He former vaudvil-
ians.
Fb The White Papers, issued by
the British government between
1922 and 1939, played an infa-
mous role in shaping pre-state
Israel. The various papers limited
Jewish immigration, strictly regulated
both the Jewish population of Pales-
tine and Jewish land ownership
there, and denounced any notion of
a Jewish state (the 1939 Malcolm
MacDonald White Paper stated,
•
His Majesty's Government now
declares unequivocally that it is not
part of their policy that Palestine
should become a Jewish State" and
"The objective of His Majesty's
Government is the establishment
within 10 years of an independent
Palestine State.")
II President John F. Kennedy
appointed Robert White as chief of
the U.S. \AecT.e.- BJeau.
Fb You cant miss the large sculp-
ture near the entrance of the Israel
Museum in Jerusalem. Made by
Bucky Schwartz in 1969, it shows
five steel bars, straight and at vari-
ous degrees of bending. It's called
"White from 0-degrees to 1 80-
degrees."
it Paul Whiteman (1890-1967)
was the first pianist to perform
Gershwin's Rhccsady in Blue. As
Gershwin sat beside him, White-
man premiered the piece in 1914.
Yet Whiteman actually began as a
violinist and made his professional
career as a band leader. Born in
Denver, he played violin with both
the Denver Symphony Orchestra
and the San Francisco People's
Symphony before starting his own
orchestra, which played light jazz
and contemporary favorites. He
also wrote seve-:c books, including

How to Be a Bandleader in 1941,
and established the Whiteman
Awards for symphonic jazz.
it Five Jewish soldiers were
awarded England's prestigious Vic-
toria Cross for service during World
War I. Among them was Private J.
White.
rbAustrolian author Patrick White
uses numerous Kabbalistic images
and ideas in his 1961 novel Riders
in the Chariot.
One of the more obscure birds,
which may be eaten as kosher is
the White wagtail.
it One of the most unusual, and
astonishing, works about the Holo-
caust is author D.H. Thomas' The
White Hotel.

BLUE FIT FOR A KING and other

incredible tales

it Variously translated as meaning
blue or purple, tekhelet is cited in
the Torah as the dye for ritual
objects such as the curtains in the
Tabernacle, and it became the
favored color of royalty, who used
it for their clothing. Today, it is best
known as the color on the dark-blue
fringes of the tallit (prayer shawls).
Much wonderful mystery surrounds
how tekhelet was obtained.
According to tradition, it came
only from the hillazon, a snail found
off the coast of Haifa. Originally,
the Tribe of Zebulon was responsi-
ble for securing the tekhelet, whose
members included in their inheri-
tance "the hidden treasures of the
sands" (Deuteronomy 33:19). The
snail bearing the color, which early
scholars described as "like the
sea," was said to appear only
once every 70 years, which is why
materials made with the dye were
so expensive.
Interestingly enough, tekhelet is
still being produced today. You can
learn more, and purchase fringes
made with the dye, by contacting:
P'til Tekhelet,P.O. Box 50234,
Jerusalem, Israel 91502 e mail:
www.tekhelet.co.il

-

it Joseph Bluestone (1860-1934)
was born in Lithuania and came to
the United States when he was 20.
After graduating from the New York
University Medical Center, he
worked as a physician. His great
passion, however, was Zionism. In
1889, Bluestone was editor and
publisher of Shulammit, a Yiddish
journal dedicated to Zionism, and
he served as vice president of the
New York chapter of the Federation
of American Zionists. He was a del-
egate to the Zionist Congress to
Basle in 1903, and later was sec-
retary of the new American
Mizrachi organization.
pi Among the leading art students
at the Blaue Reiter (Blue Rider)
School in Munich, along with Klee
and Kandinski, was a Jewish
painter named Eugen von Kahler.
pi Haller's Army, also known as
the Blue. Army, conducted countless
attacks on Jews in the last year of
World War I. The "army" was in
fact a group of some 50,000 Pol-
ish volunteers, which operated from
a base in Paris. This horrific group,
named for Polish freedom fighter
Jozef Haller (1873-1960), never
missed an opportunity to abuse
Jews — not just in an organized
fashion, with pogroms, but with
everyday attacks on individual Jew-
ish men, women and children.
Pb Director Josef von Sternberg
(1894-1969), a native of Vienna,
was famed for his astonishing cam-
era work, which often made use of
shadows. Von Sternberg (the "von,"
incidentally, was a Hollywood addi-
tion) made the first gangster film,
Underworld, in 1927 for Para-
mount Studios. His most famous
movie was The Blue Angel, a
1930 production starring a then-
unknown named Marlene Dietrich.
They went on to make another five
pictures together.
Pb Princeton football great Arthur
"Bluey" B/uethenthal (1891-1918)
was one of the earliest All-Ameri-
cans. El

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