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THE ONE Sc. ONLY

of West Bloomfield

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Served Monday - Saturday
from 11:00 am to 3:00 pm

YOUR CHOICE OF:
• Cup of Soup & Salad • Sandwich & Salad

• Sandwich and Cup of Soup - $395

Banquet Facilities Available
Saturday Afternoons, Nights and Sundays.
Whether a wedding, shower,
Bar/Bat Mitzvah, Anniversary
or any special occasion,
The Sheik would love to serve you.

OPEN FOR LUNCH
AND DINNER 7-DAYS

9/3
1999

92 Detroit Jewish News

Wolf Blitzer built his
career covering
top stories for Jewish
newspapers.
The ormer
Cab e News
Network senior
White House
correspondent
debuts as anchor
of CNN's evening
newscast, "World
Today" airing
8 p. in. weekdays,
on Sept. 13. He'll
also continue
as host of "Late
Edition," airing
noon Sundays.

/

•

Why Israel? His answer, perhaps
resulting from an upbringing where
being Jewish was more natural than
pursued, is practical. "I had been
studying Hebrew," he says matter-of-
factly. "I figured it would be a good
place to go."
He returned home to get married a
few months before the 1973 Yom
Kippur War. Around the same time,
the Jerusalem Post asked him to be its
Washington correspondent, triggering
a 16-year tenure that made Blitzer
one of the most well-known reporters
in the Jewish world — and increas-
ingly visible in the greater journalism
community.
Blitzer's rise began with the pen-
ning of an analysis column that was
soon picked up by the London Jewish
Chronicle, and then U.S. papers such
as the Detroit Jewish News and its sis-
ter papers the Baltimore Jewish Times
and Atlanta Jewish Times.
Several Israeli dailies started
reprinting it in Hebrew under bylines
such as Ze'ev Blitzer and Ze'ev Barak
("Ze'ev" meaning "wolf" and "barak"
being "lightning," which correlates to
"blitzer," a German word).
"I got about $50 from the big
papers like Baltimore, and from the
small ones about $10 or $15, and
there were some who never paid any-
way," he says with a grin. "On any
week there could be 30 or 40 papers
using it. I had never had any account-
ing; if they used it I trusted them to
pay"
Then as now, Blitzer reported on
some of the world's largest stories. He
flew to Cairo to cover the breaking
Israeli-Egyptian peace treaties. In

1982, he was in Beirut for the with-
drawal of Syrian and Palestine
Liberation Organization forces. And
three years later he endlessly pursued
the travails of Jonathan Jay Pollard,
the U.S. Naval intelligence agent con-
victed of spying on the United States
for Israel. The research resulted in a
book, Territory of Lies.
"I still follow [the Pollard affair] to
a certain degree," he says, "but I'm
not really up on the details."
Throughout those years, Blitzer
became a pipeline of trusted informa-
tion for many Jews and others. "He is
regarded both within and without the
Jewish community and the journalis-
tic community as a man of integrity,"
says Buddy Sisslin, who often invited
Blitzer to speak at Washington's
Jewish Community Council. "He
starts off as a man who can be trust-
ed. He adds to that a certain insight-
fulness and an ability to draw people
out.
Quips Sislin, "He's just fundamen-
tally a really decent guy. In a world of
wolves, he's a really nice wolf."
Blitzer's Jerusalem Post days ended
in 1989 when new ownership and
new ideology took the paper to the
right of center. He joined other col-
leagues who felt that their era at the
daily had passed.
Around that time, some top
CNN executives invited Blitzer to
lunch. Before the meal check
arrived, Blitzer had a job offer, one
that he jumped at.
"I never had written a script for
TV or anything like that," he says.
"But I was looking for something else
and CNN, without knowing that,

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