The Jerusalem Post

November 13, 1992

Way to Go

We're deep in the pit of the flu season--at least in my head we are--so I've been thinking about obituaries. It's a Jewish thing, I suppose, to worry about death on a crisp November morning as the birds make their joyful noise outside my window. Shut up, birds.

Despite the traffic jam in my nose, I don't fear that death is imminent--I haven't felt that way since a cement-faced Palestinian security prisoner told me in broken Hebrew that he would really enjoy, if it is no bother, to stick a shwarma knife in my eyes.
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October 30, 1992

Happy Jewfest

Are the holidays over yet? I'm ner vous about asking--any minute, I fear, one of my more educated friends is going to tell me that Simhat Shwarma, the annual celebration of meat and meat by-products, begins at sundown tonight, or that I'm missing a service commemorating Hag HaNudnikim, in which we gather to remember all the people we've dropped as friends over the years.
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October 2, 1992

The Story Never Told

After much anticipation, the world will be happy to know that I have finally completed translating the three previously untranslated sections of the Dead Sea Scrolls assigned to me by the Israeli Antiquities Authority: "The Book of the Herring," "Judaism: For Lovers Only," and "Jesus of Nazareth: What's With This Guy, Anyway?" I have also finished translating several fragments of letters found in the Kumran caves that were sent to the Essenes and the Sadducees by their enemies, the Jets and the Sharks, along with several recipes written by Essene gourmands, including excerpts from their famous 1001 Ways To Cook Sand.
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September 25, 1992

Miami Beach Memoirs

It's 10:30 a.m. on Ocean Drive, the uber-trendy heart of the hip-hop new Miami Beach, and only the ghosts are out under the scalding morning sun. Things shut down for the night just a few hours ago, at a time when most people are getting up for the day. The glittery fashion designers, actors, models and more models who jam the South Beach district by night are sleeping off their liquor in the pastel-colored hotels that, newly renovated, glisten in the Florida sun.
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September 18, 1992

The Veal Option

As I write this, Rosh Hashana and the accompanying Days of Awe are fast approaching, so my thoughts naturally turn to cows.

The first cow I ever knew in a serious way was a little milker named Shulamit. I was a teenager when I met her at my Socialist-Zionist, Vegetarian-Anarcho-Syndicalist Nuclear Free Zone summer camp, just down the road from Grossinger's in the Catskills. Shulamit was our experimental cow--we were all prepping, we believed at the time, for life as pioneers on kibbutzim, so, clearly, we needed to know all there was to know about the mechanics of cows. Shulamit (I first thought her name was Hebrew for "cow"--I know now, of course, that Shulamit means "horse") wasn't very intimidating, even by cow standards. She wasn't too much taller than I was, and she wasn't in the habit of moving around too much--and before she did, she would let out a a big sour burp to announce her intentions, like a tugboat coming to a drawbridge.
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September 4, 1992

Tampering with a delicacy

A true story: Marshall Honaker was the sheriff of Bristol, Virginia, a mountain town near the Tennessee border, until the day earlier this year, January 22 to be exact, when he walked into his office and shot himself dead. Apparently, a grand jury was investigating charges that Honaker, formerly the head of the National Sheriffs Association, embezzled more than $350,000 from the local government till Robert O'Harrow Jr., a staff writer of The Washington Post, reported that Honaker was considered a political boss in Bristol, which is located nearly 300 miles southwest of Richmond in the Appalachian hill country.
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August 21, 1992

Going for the Gold

What a thrill it was to see Yael Arad win a silver medal! I still think she should do something with her hair, but nevertheless, it was a proud moment and all 12 tribes should cherish it. But we also have a responsibility to ensure that our victories in Barcelona were not mere flukes. This is why I have begun to train in judo myself, and I believe with some degree of certainty that I will bring home the gold medal for Israel come 1996. I hope to win it in actual competition, but I am also willing to take it when no one is looking.
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August 7, 1992

Ask Mr. Love Doctor

Dear Mr. Love Doctor,

My husband and I have a wonderful marriage, great kids and a nice house. You would think he would be happy, yes? Unfortunately, he must be going through some sort of mid-life crisis, because he came home from work the other day and said that he wanted to practise origami. I mean, really, who does he think he is, a Mormon? An Arab prince? I'm sorry, but I'm not going to share him with three or four other wives. One wife, one husband, that's what I always say. No origami for me. Mr. Love Doctor, how do I convince him to stop this silliness? How do I win my husband back?

- Baffled in Bat Yam
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July 24, 1992

Take a Memo

July 13, 1992

To: Y. Rabin

From: J. Goldberg

Re: Prime ministership

As an experienced politician myself, I think I'm in a position to help you out during your first, difficult days in power. I've decided to compile a list of tips and pointers to ensure that your new administration is successful, or at least more successful than your previous administration, which, as everyone knows, was as flat as a pancake in a pressure chamber. Whatever that means.
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July 10, 1992

Dating Tips for Girls

Men are bad. Women are good. Men, bad. Women, good. This is, more or less, my philosophy. There are some permutations to the rule, as well as some exceptions. For instance, I am a man, but I am not bad, because I am engaged. But that's another story. Let's talk instead about Israel.
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June 26, 1992

Perot for Premier

By the time this column is published, the elections will be over and President Herzog will have asked Texas billionaire H. Ross Perot to form a government. Perot, as you know by now, withdrew from the American presidential race earlier this week and immediately declared himself a candidate for prime minister, instantly wowing the tired Israeli populace with his campaign slogan, "After 44 Years Of Short Jews, Isn't It Time For A Short Goy?"
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June 19, 1992

Ready to serve

Last September, I declared myself a candidate for the office of prime minister. Since the day that announcement first appeared in this newspaper, I have been deluged with telephone calls and telegrams from citizens eager to rally behind me and my slogan, "Goldberg--He'll Stand Firm, Unless He's Not Feeling Well."
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June 12, 1992

He Who Laughs Last

The following is a transcript of a debate that did not take place in the Aloha Lounge of the King David Hotel on June 10, 1992, between Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and Labor Party leader and Knesset member Yitzhak Rabin. The debate was not moderated by former IBA News anchor-stewardess Kimberly Boore.

BOORE: Welcome, everybody, to the first in a series of debates between Yitzchalk Shamir and Yitzchalk Rabin, who are both running for the position of president of the United States of America ...

RABIN: I wish.
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May 29, 1992

Heroic Exploits

The good thing about serving in an army unit made up primarily of immigrants is that you are exposed to an extraordinarily diverse collection of cultures and languages. The bad thing about serving in an army unit made up primarily of immigrants is that you are exposed to an extraordinarily diverse collection of body odors.
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May 15, 1992

One Day at a Time

"The State Department last week admitted it had knowledge of instances of transfers of US-built equipment from Saudi Arabia to Iraq, Syria and Bangladesh over the past decade ...

"Responding to allegations published in The Los Angeles Times, department spokesman Richard Boucher said that in 1986, the US received 'reports' from an unnamed source that the Saudis had given American weapons to the Iraqis ...
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May 1, 1992

From Damascus... to Brooklyn?

ALONG the tree-lined streets of Brooklyn's Flatbush neighborhood, the only topic of conversation these days is the news that Syrian President Hafez Assad may finally be ready to free his country's remaining Jews.

There are more Jews of Syrian descent here--nearly 40,000--than in any other city in the world, and they are expecting that number to grow by 4,000 if Assad follows through on his promise made earlier this week to liberalize the travel restrictions that have kept Syria's Jews virtual hostages for more than 40 years.
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