No. 6

November 29, 1999

HICAGO  - “I know the Vice President likes a good Jewish joke,” said Menno Ratzker, international board chairman of Shaare Zedek Medical Center of Jerusalem. So Ratzker told about the elderly gentleman in Boca Raton who goes into his favorite restaurant and sees a lady sitting alone at the bar.

“I’ve never seen you here before,” he says. “Where have you been?”

“In prison,” she replies.

“Really? How long?”

“Almost 25 years.”

“What for?”

“I bludgeoned my husband to death.”

“Oh, does that mean you’re single?”

Al Gore broke up. He was the centerpiece at a Shaare Zedek dinner honoring basketball icon Michael Jordan’s mama, Deloris, at Chicago’s Drake Hotel. Ratzker presented her with the 1999 Raoul Wallenberg Humanitarian Award.

Chicago TV broadcaster Jay Levine noted the ecumenical aspect of the evening: “We are seeing an African American woman honoring a Swedish gentile who saved Hungarian Jews.”

“I like a good Jewish joke,” Gore confirmed, and proceeded to offer one that everyone had heard before but everyone laughed heartily because, after all, he’s the Veep.

The first Jewish president is to be inaugurated in January 2009. (Notice it will not happen during the next two terms, which Gore aspires to fill.)

The man calls his mother: “Ma, I’d like you to be there and sit on the platform.”

“I can’t. I have nothing to wear. It’ll be too cold. Who’ll I sit with?”

“Don’t worry. I’ll buy you a new coat and you’ll sit with the secretary of commerce.”

As he takes the oath of office, the mother nudges the secretary of commerce: “You see that man up there with his hand raised in the air?”

“Yes.”

“His brother is a doctor.”

Gore probably sensed his audience had heard this one, so he told us something we didn’t know. He revealed the three top Jewish country and western songs making the rounds in his native Nashville:

            1. “The second time she said shalom I knew she meant goodbye.”

            2. “I’ve got my foot on the glass - now where are you?”

            3. “I was one of the Chosen People till she chose somebody else.”

Gore, who affirmed his strong support for Israel - “I took my whole family there” - said he was happy to honor Deloris Jordan. They worked together two years ago in Nashville at his annual conference on family policy.

He asked her what made Michael succeed as a basketball champion. Did she send him to camp to become an outstanding athlete?

“Deloris told me she did not set out to raise a superstar,” Gore said. “She simply raised all her five children to be upstanding individuals.”

Three of her five children (but not Michael) were at the dinner. At the beginning of the evening, daughter Roslyn sang Hatikvah - in flawless Hebrew.

Now that Gore and his wife Tipper have become grandparents for the first time - the baby was born on the Fourth of July - he said he could use some grandfatherly advice.

“I learned one thing. I learned that the preferred technique is to give your grandchild whatever he wants. If that doesn’t work, just send him back to his parents.”

Similarly, Deloris made mention of her 11 grandchildren “whom I get to spoil and then send home.”

Deloris will lead a mission to Israel in March to dedicate the Raoul Wallenberg Pediatric Day Hospital at Shaare Zedek in Jerusalem.