January 22, 1998

Celebrating Israel’s 50th

Jewish Journal January 22, 1998

Celebrating Israel\’s 50th.

Speaking at the Skirball Center recently, Gilbert Cates of the Geffen Theater in Westwood told an anecdote to illustrate,indirectly, why Los Angeles theaters don\’t draw audiences as do those, say, in his native New York.

Gearing Up for 50

Ruth Stroud January 22, 1998

The peace process is stalled, pluralism issues remain unresolved and the Netanyahu government is in turmoil. But organizers of a major, star-studded 50th anniversary tribute to Israel later this year are focusing their attention on celebration, not contention. Indeed, a rare in-gathering of major Hollywood celebrities, Jewish communal officials and organizational leaders has come together to mark Israel\’s first half century.

PhotographyImages from the Territory of Belief

Diane Arieff January 22, 1998

In the company of his friend, fellow world traveler and photographer Maxime du Camp, French novelist Gustave Flaubert visited Jerusalem in 1850. The urbane and sophisticated Flaubert was decidedly unimpressed with this crumbling backwater of the Ottoman Empire: \”Jerusalem stands as a fortress; here the old religions silent rot away. One treads on dung; ruins surround you wherever your eyes wander — a very sad and sorry picture.\”

That same year, a Rev. George Wilson Bridges also made his way tothe Holy City. An English cleric and an amateur photographer, Bridges and his young son traveled through Palestine as part of a seven-year journey around the Mediterranean and the East. Bridges undertook the journey as a form of solace: He had just buried his wife and daughter in Jamaica — victims of a tropical fever they contracted while the reverend was there doing missionary work. Steeped as he was in grief and religious conviction, Bridges found that Jerusalem\’s atmosphere of melancholia and desolation suited him. \”What sight,\” he observed after witnessing Jews praying at the Western Wall, \”even in this wondrous city, so touching, so impressive as this — Jews mourning the ruins of Jerusalem….\”