Jerusalem reunited, a shortage of babies
Jerusalem becomes unified city
While the United Nations Assembly continued its debate on the Israeli Arab dispute, Israel on Wednesday formally extended the jurisdiction of the Jerusalem municipality to include the Old City of Jerusalem and its suburbs, formerly occupied by Jordan. The dramatic decision to reunite the two sectors was preceded by legislation authorising the Israeli Government to apply Israeli law, justice and administration “in any area of Palestine,” and by a Bill safeguarding the Holy Places and assuring free access to them. Both in Jerusalem and other occupied areas, conditions rapidly returned to normal as the process of transferring greater control to local Arab authorities continued. The spontaneous movement of refugees across the River Jordan continued unabated and the Israeli authorities strongly denied propaganda reports emanating from Arab sources that refugees had been maltreated or forced to leave the West Bank.
Not enough babies
It is still difficult to find sufficient babies to enable more mohelim to be trained, said Dr L. V. Snowman, medical officer,at Sunday’s annual meeting at Jews College, London, of the Initiation Society. The numberof babies for circumcision at the Bearsted Hospital went down last year from 83 to 67. Although there were a number of cases of unmarried mothers with children, requiring this service, there was still a great need for further cases for tuition, he said. Consequently, it was taking longer to train student mohelim. This year it was only possible to train two.
Odd indeed
A reader in Time and Tide reports this remark by his 15-yearold son: “Dad, isn’t it odd how everybody seems to hate the Jews … Yet when you put them in uniform and call them Israelis —they suddenly become heroes.”