From: leeper@cbnewsj.cb.att.com (mark.r.leeper)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.jewish
Subject: JEWISH HERITAGE MONTH paragraphs
Date: 9 Oct 92 00:44:49 GMT
Article-I.D.: cbnewsj.1992Oct9.004449.1649
Organization: AT&T


		JEWISH HERITAGE MONTH paragraphs

Once again this year we have paragraphs for November, Jewish Heritage
Month.  Please help spread the concept of Jewish Heritage Month and
post these paragraphs on the appropriate dates on local bulletin
boards.  I am posting early this year since I will be on vacation from
Oct. 10 to Nov. 1.

				Mark Leeper
				...att!mtgzy!leeper
				(201)957-5619

----------------------------- Nov_02 -----------------------------

        Jewish Heritage Month:  Samuel Gompers

Samuel Gompers was born in 1850 in London.  When he was 14, he became
a cigarmaker in New York City and joined the Cigarmakers' Union,
beginning his life-long connection with organized labor.  He
eventually became the first president of the American Federation of
Labor (AFL) in 1886,remaining in that position, except for the year
1895, until his death in 1924.  During World War I, he was the head of
the War Committee on Labor, which greatly enhanced the respectability
of labor unions in the United States.  Gompers saw unions' goals as
being better wages, hours, and working conditions, and championed
"business unionism," advising union leaders to build their unions and
bargain with employers for economic gains.  Unlike many other union
organizers, he was opposed to unions as a means toward political
reform and was against industrial unions, government regulation, and
the widening of the labor movement to include blacks, women, and
unskilled workers.  In spite of limitations on his powers, Gompers
built the AFL into the largest labor organization in the country.
Samuel Gompers was Jewish.

----------------------------- Nov_03 -----------------------------

        Jewish Heritage Month:  Ludwik Zamenhof

For millenia people have struggled to make themselves understood to
those of a different region.  Many languages have been proposed as a
"universal language," but political issues and ethnic pride have
blocked the acceptance of most of them.  The solution to this was
first suggested in 1887 by Ludwik Lazar Zamenhof and is called
Esperanto.  Being an artificial language, Esperanto can be accepted by
diverse peoples without showing preference toward one or the other.
Although it had problems initially, Esperanto has continued to
flourish and has over one million speakers around the world, and
organizations promoting its use in more than 80 countries.  Books have
been translated into Esperanto, and it is used for radio broadcasts
and various publications.  Its greatest popularity is in Europe and
China; In fact, the Esperanto program on Radio Beijing is the most
popular Esperanto program in the world.  Being completely regular in
spelling and grammar, Esperanto is considered one of the easiest
languages to learn.  Ludwik Zamenhof, the man who did the most to
solve the problem traditionally said to be caused by the Tower of
Babel, was Jewish.

----------------------------- Nov_04 -----------------------------

        Jewish Heritage Month:  Nelly Sachs and Shmuel Agnon

The 1966 Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to a woman and a man
of very different backgrounds, yet both were Jews.  Nelly Sachs
(1891-1970) was a German poet and translator.  She might well have
lived out a quiet artistic life had she been born in another country.
But as a German Jew she saw close up the tide of persecution that
spread from Germany across Europe.  1940 saw her safely out of her
mother country and in Sweden.  Her poetry collections included IN THE
APARTMENTS OF DEATH (1947), which chronicled her own experiences and
those of European Jews.  For this work and other poetry contributions
she was awarded the Nobel Prize.

Shmuel Agnon (1988-1970) was born Shmuel Yosef Czaczkes in Galicia,
Poland, but emigrated to Palestine and changed his name in 1907.
While popular in Palestine and later Israel, many of his works took a
long time to be translated.  With the exception of some Yiddish early
in his career, Agnon wrote entirely in Hebrew.  His short story
collection FORSAKEN WIVES was published in 1908.  His novel THE BRIDAL
CANOPY was published in 1919 but not translated into other languages
until 1938; his novel A GUEST FOR THE NIGHT (1939) did not get
translated until 1968.  His short story collection TWO TALES and his
novel IN THE HEART OF THE SEAS were translated and published to great
acclaim in 1966.  His subject was often the assimilation of Jews into
Western culture.

----------------------------- Nov_05 -----------------------------

        Jewish Heritage Month:  Lauren Bacall

"You don't have to act with me, Steve.  You don't have to say
anything, and you don't have to do anything.  Not a thing.  Oh, maybe
just whistle.  You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve?  You just
put your lips together and blow." That was Lauren Bacall to Humphrey
Bogart in TO HAVE AND TO HAVE NOT.  Bacall specialized in roles of
women who were strong and intelligent, but were still always
attractive.  The best word to describe both the woman and her acting
is "class." Bacall was born Betty Joan Perske in 1924 in New York
City.  She went to drama school but got only minor roles when she
tried Broadway, so instead turned to modeling.  Howard Hawks's wife
saw a pretty face on the cover of HARPER'S BAZAAR and recommended her
to Hawks.  In her first film she had the female lead in TO HAVE AND TO
HAVE NOT (1944).  The following year she married Bogart and went on to
star with him in THE BIG SLEEP (1946), DARK PASSAGE (1947), and KEY
LARGO (1948).  She continued to have a strong film career while living
happily with Bogart until his death in 1957.  In the 1960s she
returned to Broadway for the lead in CACTUS FLOWER.  Other of her
films include YOUNG MAN WITH A HORN (1950), HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE
(1953), WRITTEN ON THE WIND (1957), DESIGNING WOMAN (1957), HARPER
(1966), MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS (1974), and THE SHOOTIST (1976).
Lauren Bacall is Jewish.

----------------------------- Nov_06 -----------------------------

        Jewish Heritage Month:  Max Born

Max Born was born on December 11, 1882, in Breslau, Silesia.  At the
time that was part of Germany, though today it would be Poland.  His
father taught anatomy at the university level.  Born received a Ph.D.
in physics in 1907.  Eight years later he became a Professor of
Physics at the University of Berlin, where he worked with Max Planck.
It was here, and later at the University of Gottingen, that he worked
on quantum physics.  Born's approach to studying electron movement was
to use the laws of probability.  He associated the rise and fall of
electron waves with the rise and fall in the probability that an
electron existed at a particular location.  From 1921 to 1933, Born
was the head of the Physics Department at the prestigious University
of Gottingen.  Then the rising wave of anti-Semitism in Germany
forced him out of his office and his country.  He went first to
Cambridge in 1933, then the University of Edinburgh in 1936.  In 1939,
when it was clear that he could not return to his beloved Germany, he
became a British subject.  He retired in 1953 and, with a different
political climate in Germany, he returned to his home.  His
contributions to the understanding of sub-atomic physics won him the
Nobel Prize in physics in 1954.  Max Born was Jewish.

----------------------------- Nov_09 -----------------------------

        Jewish Heritage Month:  Hannah Arendt

Hannah Arendt was born in Hanover, Germany, on October 14, 1906.
Educated at the universities of Marburg, Freiburg, and Heidelberg, she
fled the rising anti-Semitism of Germany in 1933 for France; in 1941
she came to the United States.  She worked for Jewish relief agencies
until 1952, afterward devoting herself primarily to university
teaching and writing, becoming a leading political philosopher.  She
was the first woman to be appointed a full professor at Princeton and
also held professorial positions at the University of Chicago and the
New School for Social Research.  Her books, which viewed the human
condition pessimistically, generated extensive controversy when they
appeared.  In THE ORIGINS OF TOTALITARIANISM (1951) she traced the
origins of Nazism and Communism to 19th Century anti-Semitism and
imperialism.  Her best-known work is EICHMANN IN JERUSALEM (1963),
which put forth her theory of the "banality of evil."

----------------------------- Nov_10 -----------------------------

        Jewish Heritage Month:  Mel Blanc

Melvin Jerome Blanc was born on May 30, 1908.  His parents managed a
women's clothing business.  Blanc showed an interest in music and
learned to play the bass, the violin, and the sousaphone.  At 25 he
signed a contract to play on a daily radio show.  The show needed
actors and could not afford to hire them.  So Blanc agreed to
improvise multiple voices so that he could play several characters
himself.  Eventually Blanc's talents came to the attention of Leon
Schlesinger Productions, a cartoon workshop.  Warner Brothers hired
Schlesinger Productions to create shorts that would combine humorous
animation with popular songs.  They called these shorts "Merrie
Melodies" and "Looney Tunes."  As the music became less important and
stories more important in these animated shorts, Blanc's voice was
used for many characters who would appear only once.  Blanc's first
continuing character was a pig.  the previous actor who did the pig's
voice had a speech defect and stuttered.  Blanc liked the stutter and
decided to do it himself--this time intentionally--when he voiced
Porky Pig.  Blanc's second major character was a rabbit who grew out
of a caricature of Clark Gable eating a carrot in IT HAPPENED ONE
NIGHT.  For the rest of his life, Blanc would be associated with Bugs
Bunny.  Eventually Blanc was voicing nearly all of Warner Brothers'
cartoon stars, including Tweety Pie, Sylvester, Daffy Duck, the
"beep-beep" of the Road Runner, and Yosemite Sam.  Blanc continued his
radio work, voicing many characters on the Jack Benny radio program
(including sound effects for the car).  Blanc also did characters on
the radio shows of Burns and Allen, Abbott and Costello, and
"Blondie."  He frequently played characters on the Jack Benny
television shows.  Blanc continued to do voices his entire career and
taught his son to do all his characters and continue after his death.
Blanc created nearly 400 characters in over 3000 cartoons.  Mel Blanc
died in 1991.  Mel Blanc was Jewish.

----------------------------- Nov_11 -----------------------------

        Jewish Heritage Month:  Marc Tanenbaum

Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum, who died on July 3 this year, has been called by
the NEW YORK TIMES "a father of modern Christian-Jewish dialog." John
Cardinal O'Conor of New York called him "a pioneer in Christian-Jewish
relations."  Edward Cardinal Cassidy, president of the Vatican
Commission for religious relations with the Jews, called him "a great
source of reconciliation and strength during moments of deep
difficulty between our communities."  Tanenbaum was born in 1925 in
Baltimore, the son of Orthodox Russian Jews who ran a grocery store.
At the age of fifteen he entered Yeshiva University in New York and
was ordained a rabbi in 1950.  Shortly after that he devoted himself
full-time to improving Jewish-Christian relations.  In the 1960s when
Pope John XXIII convened the Second Vatican Council, Tanenbaum was
chosen to be an official observer and helped to bring about the
Vatican's decision to repudiate anti-Semitism "by anyone at any
time."  A program of radio commentary made Tanenbaum one of the most
well-known Jewish leaders in the country.  In the early 1980s
Tanenbaum turned his attentions to aid for the Vietnamese "boat
people" and made multiple investigatory trips to southeast Asia on
behalf of the International Rescue Committee.  He founded the National
Interreligious Task Force on Soviet Jewry, working for Jews and
Christians oppressed for their religious beliefs in the USSR.  He was
awarded the international Achievement Award of the Conference of
Christians and Jews and no less than fifteen honorary degrees.

----------------------------- Nov_12 -----------------------------

        Jewish Heritage Month:  Simon Baruch

The vermiform appendix is an organ that may have served some function
at one point in our evolution, but today serves no positive function
at all.  And even having an appendix is a liability since it leaves
one vulnerable to appendicitis.  Before the simple surgical technique
of excising the appendix, appendicitis was a very frightening disease
associated with much pain, a high fever, and nearly always the death
of the patient.  It was during the Civil War that Confederate surgeon
Simon Baruch realized that among all the ways people were dying,
appendicitis was among the most painful.  Faced with a patient dying
from this disease he invented and performed the world's first
successful appendectomy.  Today appendicitis is no longer the feared
disease it once was, due in large part to Simon Baruch.  Simon Baruch
was Jewish.

----------------------------- Nov_13 -----------------------------

        Jewish Heritage Month:  Bela Schick

Born in Hungary in 1877, Bela Schick moved to Vienna and later to the
United States. He is best known as the developer of the Schick test
for susceptibility to diphtheria, although he also did extensive work
on scarlet fever, tuberculosis, the nutrition of children, and
allergies.  The Schick test, developed in between 1908 and 1913 at the
University of Vienna, uses a small amount of dilute, purified
diphtheria toxin, which is injected into the skin.  Redness and
swelling at the site on the fifth to the seventh day indicate
susceptibility; absence of a reaction shows the presence of antibodies
to diphtheria as a result of previous infection or artificial
immunization.  This test has helped eliminate diphtheria as a major
childhood killer by helping determine when vaccination against
diphtheria was needed.  It also demonstrated that susceptibility to
the disease increases up to the age of one year, but then decreases
after that.  Bela Schick was Jewish.

----------------------------- Nov_16 -----------------------------

        Jewish Heritage Month:  Irving G. Thalberg

Each year at the Academy Award presentations, the Irving G. Thalberg
Memorial Award is presented "for the most consistent high level of
production achievement by an individual producer."  Who was Irving
Thalberg?  Thalberg was born in 1899 to a German-Jewish family living
in Brooklyn.  His childhood was one ailment after another, including a
rheumatic heart condition.  His doctors told him he might not live to
30.  At 19 Carl Laemmle, a personal friend and the head of Universal
Studios, hired Irving as a secretary but soon made him a trusted
confidante.  With the boy's knowledge of filmmaking, he soon proved
himself worthy of better things and became head of film production.
The faith paid off as the man, barely 20 and looking even younger,
showed he had an uncanny knack for knowing stories the public would
like.  Hollywood nicknamed Thalberg "The Boy Wonder."  In 1923
Thalberg left Universal to work with film giant Louis B. Mayer.
Mayer's small company was absorbed into Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and MGM
grew into the most prestigious studio in Hollywood, with Thalberg as
its artistic director.  Thalberg made it clear that MGM was to make
quality films and was willing to pay when necessary for massive
re-shootings and re-editings.  He did audience research with sneak
previews and often had films rewritten and reshot if audiences were
unfavorable.  Thalberg supervised such productions as BEN HUR (1926),
FLESH AND THE DEVIL (1927), THE BARRETTS OF WIMPOLE STREET (1934),
MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY (1935), A NIGHT AT THE OPERA (1935), ROMEO AND
JULIET (1936), and THE GOOD EARTH (1937).  In 1936 Thalberg died of
pneumonia.  He was 37.  A year later the annual award was created to
memorialize Thalberg's achievements.

----------------------------- Nov_17 -----------------------------

        Jewish Heritage Month:  Dennis Gabor

Dennis Gabor was born in Budapest in 1900.  He began as an industrial
research engineer in Germany.  When the Nazis came to power in 1933,
however, he fled to England.  In 1947, he invented holography, a
method for recording and reproducing a complete image of a
three-dimensional object, using conventional filtered light sources.
But conventional light sources provided too little or too diffuse
light, practical applications were still years off, not being
available until the 1960s, after C. H. Townes had invented the
laser.  When its possibilities became known, however, Gabor was
awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics (in 1971).  Meanwhile, in 1949 he
began teaching at the Imperial  College of Science and Technology in
London.  By 1958 he had become professor of applied electronic physics
there, and in 1968 he was appointed staff scientist at  CBS
Laboratories in Stamford, Connecticut.  Gabor died in 1979, having
earned the title of "Father of Holography" and been awarded more than
one hundred patents.  Dennis Gabor was Jewish.

----------------------------- Nov_18 -----------------------------

        Jewish Heritage Month:  Emma Lazarus

This poet, who is best known for her poem about America's acceptance
of immigrants, was in fact born in the United States in 1849 to a
cultured family of Sephardic Jews.  Educated in languages and the
classics while still young (and during a time when girls were
frequently denied such education altogether), she published her first
book of poems and translations at the age of 17, and at 21 published
another collection (ADMETUS AND OTHER POEMS) inscribed to Ralph Waldo
Emerson.  She also wrote a novel, ALIDE, based on Goethe's
autobiography which won praise from such authors as Ivan Turgenev.
Other works include THE SPAGNOLETO, POEMS AND BALLADS OF HEINRICH
HEINE (a translation of Heine's works), THE DANCE TO DEATH (about the
accusations of well-poisoning brought against the Jews during the
Black Plague), SONGS OF A SEMITE (dedicated to George Eliot), and BY
THE WATERS OF BABYLON.  But her best known work is "The New Colossus,"
which is inscribed at the base of the Statue of Liberty:

    Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
    With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
    Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
    A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
    Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
    Mother of Exiles.  From her beacon-hand
    Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
    The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
    "Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
    With silent lips.  "Give me your tired, your poor,
    Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
    The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
    Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me,
    I life my lamp beside the golden door!"

(Note: the "twin cities" mentioned are New York and Brooklyn; the
latter was a separate city until 1898.)

----------------------------- Nov_19 -----------------------------

        Jewish Heritage Month:  David Sarnoff

David Sarnoff was a great and often controversial pioneer of wireless
communication from early radio well into the television era.  He was
born in Minsk, Russia, in 1891.  In 1900 his father emigrated to the
United States and at age 14 David brought the rest of his family to
join him.  Two days after his arrival in America he was selling
newspapers on the street and soon bought his own newsstand.  When his
father died he became a messenger boy for the Commercial Cable
Company.  He learned the telegraph and was hired by the Marconi Cable
Company.  In 1912, working as a telegraph operator, he picked up the
signals of the sinking "Titanic" and stayed at his key for 72 hours,
relaying names of survivors.  Sarnoff believed in the idea of sending
voice and music via radio.  RCA staked him in this venture and made
Sarnoff a Vice-President.  The idea turned into one of the great
entertainment media of the 1930s and RCA became an industrial giant
and took Sarnoff with it.  In 1939 Sarnoff was pushing the idea of
broadcasting pictures with sound as television.  He was drafted in
1944 and made General Eisenhower's communications consultant.  He was
commissioned a Brigadier General.  In 1947 Sarnoff became chairman of
RCA.  He died in 1971, having seen wireless communication turn into
color television.  David Sarnoff was Jewish.

----------------------------- Nov_20 -----------------------------

        Jewish Heritage Month:  Boris Pasternak

Boris Pasternak, the Russian poet, novelist, and translator, became a
world-wide symbol of artistic integrity in the face of overwhelming
political oppression.  Pasternak was born in 1890, the son of a
celebrated painter father and  a concert pianist mother.  The composer
Scriabin and the author Leo Tolstoy were family friends.  While he
studied music, he found philosophy and poetry more to his liking.
Even before the 1917 Revolution he was acknowledged as a great
national poet.  He did not like the Tsarist government and supported
the Revolution only to find heavy restrictions placed on his art by
the victorious Bolsheviks.  In the late 1920s he wrote narrative
poems, short stories, and other poetry.  In the 1930s his writings
came under heavy critical attack for not being politically correct.
He had to channel his creativity into the translating of other poets
such as Shakespeare and Goethe.  It is thought that the only thing
that save him from being purged and murdered by the government is that
Stalin liked his translations of Georgian poets.  He was already
becoming a symbol for Russian intellectuals and artists, who cheered
his public appearances.  He tried to publish two more collections of
stories, only to have the Soviet government once more block his
creativity.  It is then that he wrote his great epic novel of life in
the Soviet Union, DOCTOR ZHIVAGO.  Then came the struggle to see the
novel published.  The Soviet authorities refused to publish the novel
or to allow it out of the country to be published.  A copy found its
way to Italy where it was published in 1957.  In 1958 it was published
in 1958 and that same year Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize for
Literature.  He delightedly accepted his award.  But the Soviets were
not about to allow a Russian Jew to accept a Nobel prize for writings
critical of the Soviet government.  They put pressure, not only on
Pasternak, but they also unbearably persecuted his collaborator and
lover Olga Ivinskaya.  In anguish, he declined the prize.  To avoid
exile from the country he loved, he allowed himself to be expelled
from the Soviet Writers Union.  He died two years later in virtual
exile from the writing community.  While Pasternak was not allowed to
be a practicing Jew, he was of Jewish descent on both sides of his
family.

----------------------------- Nov_23 -----------------------------

        Jewish Heritage Month:  Casimir Funk

Casimir Funk was born in Warsaw in 1884.  After receiving his
doctorate at the University of Bern, he worked in Paris, Berlin,
London, and the United States.  He moved permanently to the United
States when the Nazis invaded his native country in 1939.  In 1912
Funk first proposed the "vitamine hypothesis": that many diseases
(such as beriberi, scurvy, pellagra, and rickets) were caused by the
lack of a specific substance in the victim's diet.  (The term
"vitamine" comes from the chemical term "amine," and means "life
amines." Eventually the final "e" was dropped.  Interestingly, though
Funk was right about these diseases being caused by the lack of a
substance, only one of the substances was actually an amine--
thiamine, or vitamin B-1, the substance that prevents beriberi.)  In
1912, Funk isolated nicotinic acid, the anti-pellagra substance.  That
scurvy was caused by a lack of vitamin C was not known when Funk
started his research, but the British navy had already figured out
that providing fresh limes to its sailors would help prevent the
disease somehow--hence the term "limeys." Rickets in children is
caused by a lack of vitamin D, which is now routinely used to fortify
milk; as a result rickets has almost entirely disappeared in the
United States.  Many other diseases were later shown to be caused by a
lack of Funk's "vitamines" and you can thank him for all those pills
your mother made you take when you were growing up.  Casimir Funk was
Jewish.

----------------------------- Nov_24 -----------------------------

        Jewish Heritage Month:  Franz Kafka

Born in Prague in 1883, Kafka was only forty years old when he died of
tuberculosis.  He had published only a few stories, including THE
METAMORPHOSIS, and would have remained unknown were it not for the
efforts of his friend Max Brod.  You see, on his deathbed Kafka gave
Brod the option of destroying all his (Kafka's) unpublished works.
(Some say he ordered Brod to destroy them.)  But Brod decided to have
them published instead, giving the world the opportunity to read such
masterpieces as THE TRIAL and THE CASTLE.  Kafka's early influences
are apparent in the works: his overbearing father left Kafka
guilt-ridden, a trait which shows up in his characters, and the
Hradcany Castle area in which Kafka lived is reflected in THE CASTLE.
It is worth noting that Kafka's works about the oppressiveness of the
all-powerful state were written before the rise of Stalinist Russia
and Nazi Germany.  (The latter, ironically and unintentionally, tried
to fulfill Kafka's last request by burning his works.)  Kafka's
portrayal of the average man lost in the bureaucracy was so perfectly
described as to give rise to its own word-- Kafkaesque.  Franz Kafka
(and Max Brod) were Jewish.  (Brod fled Prague in 1939 and settled in
Palestine, where he did his work on Kafka's books and diaries.)

----------------------------- Nov_25 -----------------------------

        Jewish Heritage Month:  Melvin Rosen

Melvin Rosen was born in 1951.  He began his career in public service
as the director of Wildcat, and was appointed executive director of
the then-starting Gay Men's Health Crisis in 1982.  During the year he
held that position, he started a buddy program which sent volunteers
into the homes of AIDS sufferers too sick to leave home or to care for
themselves.  The program has been copied around the world.  In 1983
Rosen became the head of the newly-formed New York State AIDS
Institute, started by Governor Mario Cuomo to coordinate programs that
service people who are HIV-positive or afflicted with AIDS.  At the
time of his death in 1992, Rosen was chairman of the Jewish Board of
Family and Children's Services' volunteer services program for people
with AIDS.  It is the only family agency in the city offering
comprehensive counseling programs for AIDS patients.  Of Rosen's work,
Governor Mario Cuomo said, "When there was no time to lose, Mel Rosen
helped New York channel its compassion and resources into an effective
response to the AIDS crisis.  Much of New York's nationally recognized
capacity to help people with AIDS is attributable to his pioneering
work."  And Irwin Hochberg, board chairman of the United Jewish
Appeal-Federation of Jewish Philanthropies said, "As a committed Jew,
he fought long and hard to spur a compassionate response to those
suffering with the disease."

----------------------------- Nov_30 -----------------------------

        Jewish Heritage Month:  Irving Berlin

"Alexander's Ragtime Band," "God Bless America," "This Is the Army,"
"Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning"--some of the most popular
American songs, including "I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas" and "The
Easter Parade," were the legacy of a Siberian-born Jew, Israel Isidore
Baline, better known to the world as Irving Berlin.  He was born the
son of a part-time cantor in 1888.  In 1893 his family fled the
frequent massacres ("pogroms") of Jews.  They came to New York City's
lower East Side where young Israel would sing in the streets for
pennies to help support the then fatherless family.  As a young teen
he worked as a singing waiter and started writing some of his own
songs.  At age 19 he sold his first song, but his first successful
song was in 1911 when he wrote "Alexander's Ragtime Band."  he wrote
patriotic songs and musicals during World War I and served as a
"doughboy."  he wrote popular screen musicals between the wars.  In
1939 he wrote "God Bless America," made popular by Kate Smith.  He
raised $10,000,000 for the Army Emergency Relief in World War II by
writing the musical THIS IS THE ARMY.  In 1942 he won an Oscar for the
song "White Christmas."  He continued to write film musicals and in
1955 President Eisenhower presented him with a gold medal for his many
patriotic services.  Berlin died in 1989 at the age of 101.
Newsgroups: soc.culture.jewish