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• In Athens, there is a temple called the Pancreas.
hat is there about the sense of place that so
• Georgia was founded by people who had been executed.
mystifies us?
• The general direction of the Alps is straight up.
No, I do not care to get into that old bit
•What is the sound west of the state of Washington?
about men not wanting to ask for directions. I am con-
The sound of the ocean.
cerned that we, as Americans, are solely lacking in a true
• Canadians raise boll weevils for their wool.
sense of geography.
• Denver is just below the "o" in Colorado.
So often, we have laughed about someone saying, "Oh,
• The chief product of the Hawaiian Islands is rainfall.
you're from Chicago; do you know my friend ... ?" And yet,
• The climate is hottest next to the Creator.
when we are faced with identifying places in the country
Sy Ma nello
• The Mason line is the line running north of the equator;
or anywhere in the world, we are apt to make some funny
orial
Edit
the Dixon line is south.
statements ourselves.
tant
Assis
• In the West, farming is done mainly by irritating the land.
For example, you need to study more geography if you
• The climate of Bombay is such that the inhabitants have to
think ...
live elsewhere.
• The Balkans are an alien people on Star Trek.
• The sun never sets on the British Empire because the British
• The United Kingdom is a cultural theme park.
Empire is in the east and the sun sets in the west.
• The Gaza Strip is a Middle Eastern folk dance.
• The Eskimos are God's frozen people.
• The Cumberland Gap gives out a pair of clogs with every pair
• The Equator is a menagerie lion running around the earth
of jeans sold.
through Africa.
• The Equator is a cartoon action figure.
• Nearly at the bottom of Lake Michigan is Chicago.
• The Continental Shelf is a specialty section of a supermarket
•A mountain range is a cooking stove to use at high altitudes
•A fault is what you find in other people.
• The Mediterranean and the Red Sea are connected by the
•A fjord is a Norwegian car.
Sewage Canal.
•You can do a research paper to find out who killed the Dead Sea.
•A watershed is a shed in the middle of the ocean where ships
Knowing from my experience as a teacher how students misunder-
shelter from storms.
stand what they hear or just fail to pay strict attention, I am amused,
Does
anyone out there recall a radio show (radio ... you know, a TV
but also worried, that the following are actual responses to questions
without
a picture) that was called It Pays To Be Ignorant? If that's the
on geography exercises in school.
case,
we
are gong to have some wealthy kids soon.
•Where is Alaska? Alaska is not in Canada.
Time After Time
The Calendar of the Jewish People is all about time.
For hundreds of years, the Jewish calendar has been no more than
Gregorian calendar pages over-printed with Hebrew dates and Jewish
holidays. That's problematic because
all Jewish calendars incorrectly place
the Jewish day and date in exactly the
same block as a secular day and date.
The Jewish and the secular are not
two equal units of time. Every Jewish
calendar requires the user to remem-
ber, without it being visually commu-
nicated, that the Jewish day started the
night before and ends at sundown of
the following secular day. This is true
of calendars published in Israel.
The Calendar of the Jewish People
solves the problem of dual calendars.
The patented grid clearly shows the
Jewish day beginning in one evening and spanning to the next. The
calendar shows the lunar and solar signposts of Jewish time, the
Jewish week beginning on Saturday night after Shabbat. The one-day
festival schedule for Israel is included as are secular (legal) holidays
from around the world.
This year's edition is a 128-page, full-color, spiral-bound weekly
planner, with time sensitive icons, small commentaries, "This Date in
Jewish History" entries, graphics from Israel's Scopus Films and room
to write.
"Our calendar remains the single pillar of Jewish life about which
Jews agree the most," says Shlomo Perelman, inventor of the Calendar
of the Jewish People.
He added, "Regardless of the issues that separate us, all Jews should
be on the same page of time, at least!'
—Robert A. Sklar, editor
8
September 27 0 2007
JN
A Holocaust Hero
The death of the mime Marcel Marceau in Paris at age 84 on Sept. 23
marks a sad moment not only for the arts world — it is also a great loss
of a World War II hero.
When the Germans uprooted the Jewish residents of Alsace-Lorraine
in 1939, Marceau and his family were given two hours to pack their
belongings to be transported to the southwest of France. Marcel and
the brothers changed their name from
Mengel to Marceau and fled to join the
underground movement in Limoges,
France. Marceau's father, a kosher
butcher, was captured and deported
to Auschwitz in 1944, where he was
killed.
While in the French underground,
Mime Marcel Marceau
Marceau used his artistic skill to
change the identity cards of scores
of children so they would appear to be too young to be sent to labor
camps. He also posed as a Boy Scout leader, and under the pretense of
hiking in the Alps, he led 70 children to safety in neutral Switzerland,
saving them from certain death.
In 2005, the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation honored
Marceau in recognition of his solidarity and courage during the War.
After Paris was liberated, Marceau enlisted in the Free French Army,
where he was appointed liaison officer to U.S. Gen. George S. Patton
because of his fluency in English. Word of Marceau's pantomime antics
spread through the troops, and he soon gave his first performance in an
Army tent before 3,000 GIs.
The artist later incorporated his wartime experience in one of his
most elaborate sketches,"Bip Remembers!'
In it, said Marceau, "I go back in memory to my childhood home, how
my father took me on a carousel. I show life and death in war; I show
Hitler and waves of soldiers being mowed down by machine guns."
A Holocaust Hero on page 10
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Last week's poll results:
With 600 long-range mis-
siles aimed at Israel, is Iran
issuing an ultimatum it will
carry out?
Yes 68%
No 32%
This week's poll question:
Do you plan on building or
visiting a sukkah during
Sukkot?
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