SENIOR WRITER SHELI TEITELbaum found members of his own tribe living in the midst of another during a two-week visit to northern Canada earlier this year. As he traveled among the Inuit (formerly, and today politically incorrectly, known as Eskimos), Teitelbaum began spotting familiar faces. It all started with Dave Berman, a Toronto native who Teitelbaum ran across over Friday night dinner in a restaurant at Inuvik, near the Beaufort Sea. Berman gave Teitelbaum, a Montreal native who now lives in Los Angeles, a list of names of the handful of Jews whose stories are told in "Ethnic Survival in the Arctic" (page 30).
Teitelbaum also heard about some Jews who'd already headed south. "My favorite story," he says, "is about Mel Lassman, who ran an appliance store before returning to Toronto in the late 1960s or early 70s to open a huge retail chain. When he got back, his greatest feat was to advertise, truthfully, that he once sold a refrigerator to an Eskimo."
THE ARREST AND WEEK-LONG detention of Daoud Kuttab by Palestinian police in early May set off alarm bells among Israelis who've worked with the well-known Palestinian journalist. Shortly after Kuttab's release, Senior Editor Gershom Gorenberg commissioned an article from Kuttab on the causes and effects of his arrest ("Palestinian Democracy - Now," page 55). The article, Gorenberg notes, deals with the important issue of Palestinian human rights, which has been covered extensively in The Jerusalem Report. But there were other reasons. "Obviously when you know the guy's face, and his voice," says Gorenberg, "a story like this becomes a little more special."
THERE'S STILL TIME TO TAKE part in the Zionist centennial essay contest, sponsored by The Report and the Joint Authority for Jewish Zionist Education. First prize: A free round-trip flight to Israel, and publication of the winning entry in The Report. Final deadline for 800-word submissions, from 10th-, 11th- and 12th-grade high school students, is July 15.
Entries must be on one of four topics: Jewish Continuity; Israel's role as a "light among the nations"; whether Zionists must live in Israel, and the role of the Diaspora. Full details were published in a supplement on 100 years of Zionism, published in the May 1 edition of The Report and distributed in Jewish schools worldwide.