Front Lines NOTEBOOK JNenlinc This Week Wonders Of A Wordsmith W www.JNonline.us ords, words words! I'm so sick of words ..." Well, thank you, Liza Doolittle (My Fair Lady); but I disagree. Nothing is as wondrous as words and what can be worked with them. Where some people have trouble with the simplest defini- tions and struggle to find just the right word, others find that they can turn an even more clever phrase with the manipulation of words. If you like puns, then consider some of these daffynitions: • Abash : a great office party • Autobiography: a history of cars • Bassinet: what every fisherman wants • Counterfeiters: workers who put together kitchen cabi- nets • Dermatologist: one who makes rash judgments • Geometry: what the acorn said when it grew up • Hanging: a suspended sentence • Intense: where campers sleep • Laundress: a gown worn while sitting on the grass • Paradox: two physicians • Relief: what trees do in the spring Often, you will find that someone has an interesting outlook on things and can perceive irony in our everyday lives. These traits led to the following, which you can also view on the Figure Skater's Web site: • Adolescence: the period when a teenager feels that he will never be as dumb as his parents • Teenager: an adolescent whose hang-ups do not include his clothes • Americans: people with more timesaving devices yet less time than anyone else in the world • Budget: a method for going broke methodically • Coffee: break fluid • Experience: the name we give to our mistakes • Lame duck: a politician whose goose is cooked • Multitasking: screwing up several things at once • Professor: one who talks in someone else's sleep • Shin: a device for finding furniture in the dark • Suburbia: where they tear out trees and then name streets after them • Resume: the closest any of us will ever come to perfec- tion • Stupidity: letting a child with stomach flu sleep on a top bunk • Diet: a brief period of starvation followed by a gain of five pounds • Irony: buying suit with two pairs of pants and burning a hole in the jacket • Kids: people to be nice to since they are the ones who will choose our nursing homes If you'd like to continue this line of reading, may I suggest a clas- sic work, The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce. Do not keep your findings a secret (Secret: news you tell to one person at a time). El Protest Iran Leader's Visit The Jewish Community Relations Council of Metropolitan Detroit will hold a public protest at noon Monday, Sept. 22, at the Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills to object to Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's scheduled appearance at the United Nations. Members of the Jewish and wider community are encouraged to join the protest against Ahmadinejad's anti-Israel and anti-Western pronouncements, and his repeated denials of the Holocaust. Speakers at the event, including Rabbis Aaron Bergman of Adat Shalom Synagogue in Farmington Hills and Charles Rosenzveig, director of the HMC, will call for diplomatic, political and economic sanctions against Ahmadinejad's regime, which has threatened Israel and is pursuing nuclear weaponry. For information about the protest, please call (248) 642-5393. bered 600,000. Demographic estimates indicate that there are 120,000 Jews alive today who were 15 years old or older and were in pre-state Palestine at the founding of the state — 20,000 native-born Israelis and an additional 100,000 immigrants. There are several hundred more who were volunteers from abroad. To participate, contact Aryeh Halivni (Eric Weisberg), executive director, at info@toldotyisrael.org . - Keri Guten Cohen, story development editor Recording Israel's Founding Toldot Yisrael is a nonprofit organization dedicated to recording and sharing the firsthand testimonies of the men and women who helped found the State of Israel. Thousands of video interviews will be con- ducted with members of Israel's founding generation and used to create an interactive database and extensive archive. The footage will be developed into a Web site, films and educational material that will bring authentic accounts of the creation of the State of Israel to the general public — both in Israel and the diaspora. Toldot Yisrael's target interviewee is someone with sufficient recall of the period leading up to and including the founding of the State of Israel in 1948. This would likely be a person who was at least 15 years old at the founding of the State (born 1933 or earlier) and would now be close to 75 years old or older. Israel's Jewish population in 1948 on the eve of statehood num- A10 September 18 2008 - Keri Guten Cohen, story development editor Tel Aviv Gets Ready To Party Tel Aviv is set to mark its 100th anniversary in 2009, and the city "is gearing up for one of the biggest parties in Israel's history:' says Arie Sommer, Israel Tourism commissioner for North and South America. Celebrations will be yearlong, but the kickoff is April 4, 2009, with a massive concert in Rabin Square, complete with multimedia experi- ences and performances by international stars, the New Israeli Opera and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Zubin Mehta. Founded in 1909 on sand dunes as a garden suburb of ancient Jaffa, Tel Aviv very quickly burgeoned into a metropolis, styling itself as "the first Hebrew city in two millennia." By the 1930s, architects escaping the Nazis were creating the wealth of Bauhaus buildings that gave Tel Aviv its unique look. By the turn of the 21st century, the city had become home to dozens of world-class restaurants, a fashion scene that combines Milan, Tokyo and New York and a wealth of world-class cultural institutions. "If Jerusalem is our Washington, D.C.," says Sommer, "then Tel Aviv is our New York — the center of business, entertainment, and all the excitement associated with a big city that is also a beach resort on the Mediterranean." Full details of Tel Aviv's centennial can be found at visit-t1v.com and at www.goisrael.com. - Ken Guten Cohen, story development editor Latest From Israel Want the most current news from Israel? Check our streaming news from Ynetnews.com for continu- ous updates and longer news, opinion and feature stories. And look at the center of our homepage for an Israel story that changes twice daily. Just visit JNonline.us and click on a scrolling story on the left. E-Newsletter Desire notification when stories that interest you in particular are posted on JNonline? It's easy to des- ignate the kinds of stories you like when you sign up for your personalized e-newslet- ter. Only at JNonline.us . Just click on Newsletter on the menu near the top of the page. Celebrations! Find weekly listings of births, b'nai mitzvah, engagements, weddings and anniversaries as well as past simchahs all online. They are all bundled under each week's publica- tion date. Just visit JNonline.us and click on Lifecycles on the left. Online Poll This week's poll question: Should Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad be allowed to address the United Nations? Visit the JNonline.us homepage, below the left menu, to cast your vote. Last week's question: Is Israel making too many concessions under Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's peace initiative? Last week's poll results: Yes: 75% No: 25%