Livia Well Travel 93 RATING Cabernet Sauvignon %Vine Spe•tittor We've Achieved Our Wish List. Place Baron Herzog SUPER GOLD Best of Category Chenin Blanc San Diego National On Yours. GOLD MEDAL Cabernet Sauvignon Beverage Tasting Institute A ROB ERZ For a complete list of Baron Herzog awards, visit www.baronherzog.com www.detroitjewishnews.com 4/7 2000 134 Meeting Ground In Nazareth NECHEMIA MEYERS Special to the Jewish News T he new Marriott in Nazareth is the only hotel in Israel where, in adjoining halls, there could be a Muslim wedding, a Christian engagement party and a Jewish cir- cumcision ceremony. Moreover, integration is not limited to the halls of the Marriott. Its entire staff is integrated to a greater degree than any in other Israeli enterprise. Integration begins at the top: Ownership is divided between NxiAreth Arab businessman Rashid Safoury, who owns 51 percent of the hotel, and a number of Tel Aviv Jewish entrepre- neurs, who control the other 49 percent. Half of the employees are Jewish and half are Arabs. Training Manager Noa Peri was born in Tel Aviv, studied hotel management in Boston and worked for the Marriott chain in the United States and Sweden before being offered a position in Marriott's first Israeli venture. Her Tel Aviv friends don't always understand why, and are apt to ask her with considerable bewilderment, how she can work with Arabs. The question annoys her. Such questions aren't only asked in Tel Aviv. New Jewish Upper Nazareth borders on old Arab Nazareth, but there is little interac- tion between residents of the two communities. Desk clerk Judy Stein from Upper Nazareth never had an Arab friend before she began work- ing at the Marriott. Now she has several, with whom she goes to movies and parties. But for Muslim Ali Abu Ganam, chief chef at the Marriott, interaction- people outside his group is far from a new experience. Trained at a hotel : school in east Jerusalem, he spent 25 years working in Eilat, where he lived first with an Israeli Jewish woman and then with an English Christian woman. He had a child with each and keeps in close touch with his Jewish son (who has already completed his service in the Israeli army) and his Christian daughter (now living with her mother in Great Britain). Some years ago, Abu Ganam finall entered the bonds of matrimony by marrying an Arab woman, who has given birth to his third child. ❑