For Openers
Yiddish Limericks
Kirk Douglas' Bar Mitzvah
Los Angeles
GRAP6J6V/8
Mendel
A deputy D.A. named Morris
Once questioned a witness. "Dolores,
How much do you know?"
She said, "Listen, Moe,
Ich zol azay vissen fun tsorres!''*
Michael Jaco bs/MJ P
ollywood luminaries crammed the 200-seat chapel
at Sinai Temple as Kirk Douglas was called to the
Torah for his bar mitzvah reading and speech.
"Today, I am a man," intoned the 83-year-old
actor Dec. 9 in the prescribed fashion. He then added, from
the perspective of a long and rich life, "But it takes time to
really become a man
and assume your
responsibilities in this
troubled world."
Douglas decided
some years ago to
crown his return to his
Jewish roots with a
second bar mitzvah on
his 83rd birthday —
his 13th birthday fol-
Kirk Douglas, right, reads his Torah portion
lowing the traditionally at the bima as Rabbi David Wolpe, left,
allotted Jewish life
assists at Sinai Temple in Westwood, Calif:
span of 70 years.
Draped around his shoulders was the tallit he wore on Dec.
9, exactly 70 years earlier, when Issur Danielovitch, the son of
poor, illiterate Russian Jewish immigrants, marked his coming
of age at the Sons of Israel synagogue in New York.
Now, 84 films later, his trademark dimpled chin still juts out,
although his blond hair has turned to white. His slow and occa-
sionally slurred words are a reminder of a stroke he suffered
almost four years ago.
Douglas always identified as a Jew, but was not observant
except for one day a year.
"I always fasted on Yom Kippur. I still worked, but I fasted.
And let me tell you, it's not easy making love to Ava Gardner on
an empty stomach" — a remark greeted with enthusiastic applause
by the Hollywood crowd.
Douglas dates his Jewish observance to a helicopter crash in
1991 in which two young men died. While lying in a hospital
bed with excruciating back pains, he started pondering the
meaning of his survival and his life.
"I came to believe that I was spared because I had not yet
come to terms with my Judaism, that I had never come to grips
with what it means to be Jewish," he said.
Since then, he has become a conscientious Torah student
under the guidance of two Orthodox and two Conservative
rabbis in Jerusalem and Los Angeles. ❑
—Tom Tugend/Jewish Telegraphic Agency
*I should know as little about trouble (as I do about
what you are asking me)
— Martha Jo Fleischmann
notables
"Jewish education is our most
important task if we are to
survive as a people into the
next millennium."
— Ariel Sharon, former
Israeli defense minister,
speaking at the United
Jewish Communities General
Assembly in Atlanta.
SHIFT
INTO
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GEAR
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"Jerusalem was converted from
Ariel Sharon
`capital' to 'largest city,' leaving
Israel the only country in the
world without a capital."
— David Bar-Ilan, ex-spokesman for former Israeli Prime
Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, on CNN's capitulation to
American Muslims for Jerusalem, a group demanding that
the cable news network stop callingJerusalem Israel:s. capital.
"Jews for Jesus is kind of like vegetarians for cheese-
burgers.'
— Professor Ira Sheskin of the University of Miami,
speaking about the Hebrew-Christian movement at the
United Jewish Communities General Assembly in
Atlanta.
"We would have ended up with a mythological Rashi,
and we didn't want to do that."
— Ashley Lazarus, director and co-producer of the new
animated PBS film "Rashi: A Light After the Dark
Ages," on why it incorporates only one of the legends
about the 12th-century biblical commentator:
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2.It's Easy
a. It's Tax Deductible
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12/17
1999
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