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Zealand's communications system,
railroads and highways. As a result
of the improvements, New
Zealand's population doubled in
less than 10 years.
him to set up a wine-bottle factory
Clarence Darrow, and former presi-
there. The factory .failed after work-
dents William Howard Taft and
! ers realized the sand, while abun-
Theodore Roosevelt.
dant, could not be used for making
glass, and Dizengoff moved to Jaffa
8. Former British Prime Minister Ben-
in 1905.
jamin Disraeli (1804-1881) was
Dizengoff opened his own busi-
born to Jewish parents who had con-
i ness in the Jaffa suburb of Ahuzat
! verted to Christianity and raised their
Bayit, where he served as chairman
children as Christians. Yet Disraeli
1 of the city council. This suburb in
always spoke with pride about his
1921 became Tel Aviv, of which
Jewish heritage, featured positive Jew-
Dizengoff was mayor almost every
ish figures in his novels and eloquent-
year until his death.
ly advocated for a Jewish homeland
1 in his books Alroy and Tancred.
9. David Z. Farbstein (1868-1953),
1 born in Warsaw, was a member for
more than 20 years of the Switzer-
! land Parliament.
Sir Julius Vogel
Vogel continued his bold pro-
grams when he was appointed
prime minister, prompting one
British official to call him, "the most
audacious adventurer" who "ever
held power in a British colony."
Vogel, who died in 1899,
encouraged Jewish education in
New Zealand and wrote a book
called Anno Domini 2000, full of
his predictions for the future.
Among his prophecies was that
one day "an air cruiser traveling
one hundred miles an hour would
leave Melbourne in the morning
and arrive at Dunedin [in New
Zealand] at night."
4. Abba Eban (b. 1915), Israel's first
representative to the United Nations,
was born in South Africa. He moved
with his family to London when he
was 6 months old. His birth name is
Aubrey Eban.
•
or* 41reltakt,
.‘tit 6.11,
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2000
Published by The Detroit Jewish News
5. Meir Dizengoff (1861-1936), first
mayor of Tel Aviv and the man for
whom the city's most glamorous and
cosmopolitan boulevard is named,
was a native of Russia who hoped to
become an engineer.
He went to Israel, thanks to Baron
Edmond de Rothschild, who asked
Abba Eban
6. France's firstJewish premier was
Leon-Andre Blum, who served from
1936-1937, again in 1938, and
again from 1946-1947. Although
in no way a practicing Jew, Blum
became interested in politics
because of the Dreyfus Affair, in
which a Jewish soldier was falsely
convicted of espionage.
7. Following Henry Ford's reprinting
in The Dearborn Independent of the
infamous forgery, The Protocols of the
Elders of Zion — which claims a Jew-
ish conspiracy to control the world —
a group of 119 leading Americans
responded with a 1921 protest.
Called "Citizens of Gentile Birth and
Christian Faith," the signatories includ-
ed poet Robert Frost, attorney
John F Kennedy
10. PresidentJohn F. Kennedy asked
his longtime friend, Connecticut Sen.
Abe Ribicoff, to serve as his attorney
general. But Ribicoff declined, saying
that as president, Kennedy would
have enough religious challenges to
address with his own Catholicism.
Kennedy subsequently appointed his
'orother, Robert, to the powerful posi-
tion. Ribicoff did, however, go on to
serve as JFK's Secretary of Health,
Education and Welfare.