Friday, May 15, 2015

"Mr. Sinatra Adored Israel and Israel Adored Him Back"

Here is a magnificent article on Frank Sinatra's philosemitism via Tablet Magazine. 

Just lovely.

This part gave me chills:

"Sinatra and George Jacobs joined Ben Gurion and Dayan on the reviewing stand and were able to pass through Jerusalem’s Mandelbaum Gate border-crossing with Jordan and visit the Christian Holy Sites. Sinatra, brought up in the Catholic Church, was eager to visit the sites associated with the life of Jesus. And it was this same impulse that drew him to visit Nazareth a number of times and led him to fund the building of a Catholic church there that would bear his name."

"After their visit to the Jordanian side of the border Sinatra and Jacobs returned to Israeli West Jerusalem for a visit to Yad Vashem. Of this visit George Jacobs wrote:
Most moving for both Mr. S and me and was The Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial on the Hill of Memory, where all the trees had been planted in memory of the victims. This was stunning and solemn place. The external beauty of the land of milk and honey contrasted with the horrors shown within, particularly the underground Children’s Museum, where each of the more than one million tiny lights represented the life of a child that had been snuffed out. Afterward Mr. S said the visit had made him feel rotten about not fighting in World War II and that Israel was “a wonderful country worth dying for.”
And remember, of course, to visit the similarly philosemitic, groovy, right-wing, hatemongering lounge lizard hizzzzself, Mark Steyn, as he does his Top 100 Sinatra song countdown.

Each one is a gem.