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I was just one of many thousands of Americans visiting Is rael for Passover. In the lobby of the Tel Aviv hotel, where I was sitting, I could see that the man in the next chair came from a western country. An American Jew, maybe a South African. Looked a little prosperous. He was reading the Jerusalem Post. Now and then, he would glance up from the paper and look around at the lobby, as if admiring it, then he would look at me. as though wanting to start a conversation. Finally, he did open up. “It’s a wonderful country,” he said to me. “Yes,” I said, “they really have modern hotels.'' “It’s not that I was thinking of,” he said, “they’ve got good hotels in New York too. You don’t have to come to Jerusalem and Tel Aviv to find a good hotel.” I tried again. “Israel has some very nice roads,” I said. “I was riding on the new road from Sodom to Beershebe. Do you know,” I said, "that they built that wonderful road with materials quarried from the rocks alongside. They dug up the stones as they laid out the roads. They didn't have to carry the stones and it was built with the aid of Israel Bonds,” I said ”1 guess you yourself have bought Israel Bonds.” “Sure, I bought Israel Bonds" he said "and they sure have built a nice road, but do you know, he said, “they got some good roads in America, too." I saw I had missed again. I tried once more. I am a person who doesn’t admit defeat. “You know.” I said, “they are growing cotton in Israel and Virginia tobacco too.” "No," he said, “so they are growing cotton and Virginia to bacco just like in Virginia and Kentucky, so what! Maybe you'll tell me that in Israel they are beginning to say “vou-all” like in the South - in the United States. So what! They already do that in the United States. What’s new about it?” I could see he was a hard man. I remembered something 1 had read in an Israel Bond leaflet, about the biggest concrete pipe factory in the world being located at Ascalon. I said it’s a great thing for a small country to have the biggest pipe factory in the world. And did you know, I said, Ascalon is the place where Samson lived. Imagine today, I said, what a fight he would put up at Madison Square Garden! "All right,” he said, "I admit all that. The biggest pipe fac tory in the world, financed by Israel Bonds, is at Ascalon. but after all, can you hold a Seder in a pipe?" “Well,” I said, “some of the pipes are so large that you can drive a car through them - a small car of course, so maybe you can hold a Seder in them. In fact, I have been told." I said, "that in case of war, the pipes could be used for air raid shelters " I could see at once by the look on his face that he was dis pleased with me. “If you had said," he went on, "that nowhere in the world at Passover time can you see so many different kinds of Seders, there would be some point to your remarks. There are," he said, “at least a dozen different types of Seders celebrated in Israel. Take the Samaritans who roast the paschal lamb like it used to be in the Temple. Or take the Moroccan Jews who put Matzos on their backs and then rush out from their homes and say th:s is how our forefathers left Egypt carrying the dough on their backs’ or take the Jews of Chocin who sit down to a Seaer with the women in their colorful saris or the Yemenites wh on carpets and eat from a table only about a half a foot from the floor. That’s something to comment on," he said, at Pas- ver time. But, he said, “that’s not what I meant either." So I go, giving up, what did you mean?” “What I was thinking of," he says to me. and he lifts the paper and points to an item, “is something which is printed in this paper. It is a little item, and it is not about any of the Seders I have mentioned. It is about the Seder which Chief Rabbi Herzog of Israel is having. Do you know,” he asked, "who are going to be guests of the Seder? According to this paper, the American. British, and Russian ambassador sitting in a yarmulke, when the Chief Rabbi makes Kiddush. Where else in the world could you see that? If Israel only achieved that, it would be a wonder ful country.” I said he was right. “Sure,” he said, “I am right. Most of the time I am right,” he said, rising from his chair. “I hope you have a Gut YomTov,” he said. 20 Seder With the Soviet Ambassador by BEN ARUCH YOU WILL SAVE MONEY BY GETTING OUR DEAL ON BEFORE YOU TRADE REMEMBER WE ARE ATLANTA’S VOLUME DEALER TOM MITCHELL BUCK C H. 944t> 3130 Roswell Rd. Open Evenings I'ntil 9 J The Southern Israeli: