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Traveling ★★★
with the Stars
by Tim Boxer
NEW YORK—LAURIE BEECHMAN wasn’t supposed to get the
role of narrator in “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.”
This delightful show was originally presented at theBrooklyn Academy
of Music where the narrator was black actor Cleavon Little.
When we moved to Broadway,” Laurie said, “they intended to use
another black actor. I went to the auditions. Turns out they were looking
for someone unusual, so I got the part. They
said I was the only one who could wear
pantaloons.”
Ironically, the narrator who was at first
black is now played by Laurie, who’s Jewish.
And the title role, originally played by the
son of Israel in the Bible, is being portrayed
at the Royale Theater by Bill Hutton, a goy.
ALAN KL’G has a story about a little
boy who came home from Hebrew school
Daddy asked what he learned. The kid
related an account about the Jews escaping
from Egypt 4,000 years ago by constructing
i suspension bridge across the river. Then
they planted dynamite. With the Egyptian
tanks pursuing them across the bridge, the
Tim Boxer Jews ^* ew ' l U P an( * drowned the enemy.
“Is that what the rabbi told you'’" the surprised father asked.
“No,” the boy said, “but you’d never believe the story he did tell.”
* * *
ONLY IN CHELM: Jerry Schiller of the Bronx sends in a tale about
poor Chaim 7.emel whom the eldersof Chelm barred from thesynagogue
during Pesach. You see. /emel means “roll," which is absolutely chometz.
* * *
SURVIVAL is the name of the game The Jews were saved from
Pharoah and Haman. and again from Hitler and Idi Amin And they
survived countless inquisitors, crusaders, pogromers, libelers and other
types of murderers.
Sharad Patel, an Indian-born filmmaker who lives in Kenya, has
produced and directed a film about Amin that is terrifying in its
documented brutality and numbing ruthlessness. Called “Amin—The
Rise and Fall," it is not a documentary but a vivid dramatization of a man’s
insane cruelty to his own countrymen.
“Part of the success of the Israeli raid on Entebbe to rescue the Jewish
hostages,” Patel told me, “was due to an American female spy who
became Amin’s mistress. I don’t know if she answered to Mossad or the
CIA. but she passed information to a foreign government during the
three years she was with Amin. She was smuggled out to safety just before
Amin was driven out.
“On the night of the raid, she kept Amin occupied in bed. The Israelis
cut the telephone lines so he wouldn’t know what was happening in the
airport.
“Had Idi Amin been out of bed and the phones working, he would
undoubtedly had called for Libyan planes or Soviet rockets from Somalia
to destroy the Israeli rescue planes in the air
“Amin swindled the national treasury and left the country dry of
foreign exchange. He stole it for himself. He now lives in Jiddah, Saudi
Arabia, where he occupies three floors of a luxury hotel."
Patel researched the Entebbe rescue for a possible film, but
abandoned the idea when three other versions were released. He says
those three films were superficial. Much was left unsaid. For instance, no
one addressed the problem of the hostages' safety the moment the Israeli
soldiers burst into the air terminal with blazing guns.
How was it possible that hostages were not cut down in the crossfire
between rescuers and hijackers? The most natural reaction would have
been for the hostages to panic and run all over the terminal, getting
caught by flying bullets.
“Yet, strangely enough, nothing like that happened," Patel said. “It
appears that the hostages had been forewarned, advised to stay low on the
ground while the rescuers finished off the hijackers and the Ugandan
guards. This part of the story, and other interesting details, have never
been revealed Maybe someday I’ll make an authentic film about the
Entebbe rescue.”
* * *
DON’T PASSOVER THESE ITEMS: Love makes the world go
round but then, so does a good swallow of horseradish. ..My wife Nina
did her Passover cleaning she started with my pockets... Inflation has
caused even unleavened bread to rise. 1 finally figured out how they built
the pyramids without heavy machinery—they cut out coffee
breaks. Rabbi Kenneth Ham’s daughter asks. “How do you know
frogs are dumb?” and tells you. “It’s in the Ten Plagues: dumb
tzefardaya.”
* * *
WHILE ESC ORTING a tour through the British Museum a guide
declared, “That Egyptian mummy is 4,(XX) years old It is possible that
Moses saw it.” An American tourist, possibly my neighbor, asked,
“Moses saw it? When was Moses in London?"
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8:30 a.m.-5:00 p.m., Monday-Friday
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East Cobb County Phone: 973-2033
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PAGE 11 THE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE April 9. 1982