The Mormon And The Jew

ARRY KING has served as emcee of the American Friends of Rabin Medical Center annual gala in New York since the beginning seven years ago. "I feel like I belong in the hospital," he quipped at this year’s dinner at Cipriani 42^nd Street.

He doesn’t often get to tell jokes on CNN so he unburdened himself with a doozy to the delight of such guests as playwright (Fiddler, Rags) Joseph Stein, composer (A Chorus Line) Marvin Hamlisch, Israel Ambassador to UN Daniel Gillerman, U.S. Ambassador to UN John Bolton, Nava Barak, Cantor Ofer Barnoy of Cong. Beth Sholom of Roslyn Heights, Long Island.

King said that the overnight train from New York to Chicago was so packed that a man had to share a Pullman compartment with a strange woman. He took the lower berth and she took the upper. It was chilly so the man asked her to pass him the extra blanket.

"You know," the woman said, "we are strangers on a train. We’ll never see each other again. Why don’t we play husband and wife just this one night?"

The man eagerly agreed.

"Good," the woman said. "Get your own damn blanket!"

Ambassador Bolton brought the audience back to reality when he welcomed the death verdict for Saddam Hussein. "It sends a signal throughout the Middle East that the days of the dictators are numbered."

Cantor Barnoy had nothing but praise for Rabin hospital in Petach Tikvah. He said his nephew in Israel was in a motorcycle accident last June that left his nephew near death. The boy was taken to Rabin where they saved his life.

Hamlisch took to the piano to perform a piece that would have become the overture to A Chorus Line, but never made it, so his show, now in revival on Broadway, has no overture.

Shawn King, Larry’s drop-dead gorgeous wife, performed selections from her next CD which will be out in December. As it was her birthday, Rabin CEO Dan Oppenheim gifted her with a glittering necklace.

Larry said he met Shawn "on the street, in front of Tiffany’s. It was the Mormon from Utah and the Jew from Brooklyn. We couldn’t meet in front of Target? It cost me three houses!"