Oakland County's Premier Lifestyle Magazine act-A-Day 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, For advertising, or subscription information please call (248) 354-6060 I 1 /3 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.