Supporter Of Israel Like Elizabeth Taylor

 Nadene Goldfoot                                             
                       

Dame Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor was 2 years older than myself (February 27, 1932 – March 23, 2011) died at 79,  was a British and American actress. She began her career as a child actress in the early 1940s and was one of the most popular stars of classical Hollywood cinema in the 1950s.

Where are supporters of Israel like Elizabeth Taylor was?  Taylor was raised as a Christian Scientist and converted to Judaism (Reform Branch) in 1959. Although two of her husbands – Mike Todd and Eddie Fisher – were Jewish, Taylor stated that she did not convert because of them, and had wanted to do so "for a long time", and that there was "comfort and dignity and hope for me in this ancient religion that [has] survived for four thousand years.  I feel as if I have been a Jew all my life." Walker believed that Taylor was influenced in her decision by her godfather, Victor Cazalet, and her mother, who were active supporters of Zionism during her childhood.

Following her conversion, Taylor became an active supporter of Jewish and Zionist causes. In 1959, she purchased $100,000 worth of Israeli bonds, which led to her films being banned by Arab countries throughout the Middle East and Africa. She was also barred from entering Egypt to film Cleopatra in 1962, but the ban was lifted two years later after the Egyptian officials deemed that the film brought positive publicity for the country. In addition to purchasing bonds, Taylor helped to raise money for organizations such as the Jewish National Fund, and sat on the board of trustees of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

Taylor also advocated for the right of Soviet Jews to emigrate to Israel, cancelled a visit to the USSR because of its condemnation of Israel due to the Six-Day War, and signed a letter protesting the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379 of 1975. In 1976, she offered herself as a replacement hostage after more than 100 Israeli civilians were taken hostage in the Entebbe skyjacking. She had a small role in the television film made about the incident, Victory at Entebbe (1976), and narrated Genocide (1981), an Academy Award-winning documentary about the Holocaust.

Taylor's health increasingly declined during the last two decades of her life and she rarely attended public events after 1996. Taylor had serious bouts of pneumonia in 1990 and 2000, two hip replacement surgeries in the mid-1990s, a surgery for a benign brain tumor in 1997, and successful treatment for skin cancer in 2002. She used a wheelchair due to her back problems and was diagnosed with congestive heart failure in 2004. She died of the illness aged 79 on March 23, 2011, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, six weeks after being hospitalized. Her funeral took place the following day at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. The service was a private Jewish ceremony presided by Rabbi Jerome Cutler. At Taylor's request, the ceremony began 15 minutes behind schedule, as, according to her representative, "She even wanted to be late for her own funeral." She was entombed in the cemetery's Great Mausoleum.

Richard Burton as Mark Antony with Taylor as Cleopatra in Cleopatra (1963)  During her prime in the 1950s and 1960s, Elizabeth Taylor was widely regarded as the most beautiful woman in the world, often cited as a "miracle of construction" due to her rare violet eyes, thick lashes, and high-contrast features. She was frequently voted the most beautiful woman in lists and polls.

Resource:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Taylor

Movie Industry's Chosen Ones For Cleopatra, Elizabeth Taylor and Gal Gadot

 Nadene Goldfoot                                           

I thought no one could top the beauty of Elizabeth Taylor in Cleopatra.  Dame Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor DBE (February 27, 1932 – March 23, 2011) was a 5'2" British-American actress.                            

Art dealer father, Francis;  with parents  1947; Elizabeth  at 15,  Francis was born in Springfield, Illinois, the son of Elizabeth Mary (née Rosemond) and Francis Marion Taylor. The family later moved to Arkansas City, Kansas.  Francis began dealing in art in New York City for a wealthy uncle by marriage, Stephen Howard Young, later, a friend of Dwight Eisenhower after World War II.  Taylor married stage 

actress Sara Sothern (whose real name was Sara Viola Warmbrodt and who was also from Arkansas City) in 1926 in New York.  Sara's father was from Switzerland.  They were the parents of Howard Taylor and of Elizabeth Taylor.

 Born in London to socially prominent American parents,  Francis Lenn Taylor and Sara Sothern, who were Americans living in England. Her parents were originally from Arkansas City, Kansas. Taylor moved with her family to Los Angeles in 1939 who first became a child actress, as famous as Shirley Temple.    It had happened that in early 1939, the Taylors decided to return to the United States due to fear of impending war in Europe.  United States ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy contacted her father, urging him to return to the US with his family.                     

Richard Burton as Mark Antony with Taylor as Cleopatra in Cleopatra (1963)

After completing her MGM contract, Taylor starred in 20th Century-Fox's Cleopatra (1963). According to film historian Alexander Doty, this historical epic made her more famous than ever before.

Taylor was several months pregnant when she married her third husband, theatre and film producer Mike Todd, in Acapulco, Guerrero, Mexico, on February 2, 1957.  They had one daughter, Elizabeth "Liza" Frances (b. August 6, 1957).Todd was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to Chaim Goldbogen (an Orthodox rabbi), and Sophia Hellerman, both of whom were Polish Jewish immigrants. He was one of nine children in a poor family, the youngest son, and his siblings nicknamed him "Tod" (pronounced "Toat" in German) to mimic his difficulty pronouncing the word "coat." It was from this that his name was derived.  Taylor converted to Judaism.  

 His death in a plane crash on March 22, 1958, left Taylor devastated. She was comforted by Todd's and her friend, singer Eddie Fisher, with whom she soon began an affair. As Fisher was still married to actress Debbie Reynolds, the affair resulted in a public scandal, with Taylor being branded a "homewrecker." Taylor and Fisher were married at the Temple Beth Sholom in Las Vegas on May 12, 1959; she later stated that she married him only due to her grief.

Gal Gadot is the 2nd Cleopatra.

Gal Gadot-Varsano (née Gadot; Hebrew: גל גדות Hebrew pronunciation:  born 30 April 1985) is an Israeli actress and model. She was crowned Miss Israel 2004 and represented her country at the Miss Universe 2004 pageant. She then served in the Israel Defense Forces for two years as a combat fitness instructor, whereafter she began studying at IDC Herzliya while building her modeling and acting careers.  

Prior to her birth, her parents had Hebraized their surname from "Greenstein" to "Gadot". Her father is Michael Gadot, an engineer, and her mother is Irit (née Weiss), a physical education teacher.

 Gadot's father is a sixth-generation Sabra. Her maternal grandparents were born in 20th-century Europe; her grandfather survived the Holocaust following his imprisonment at the Auschwitz concentration camp during Nazi Germany's occupation of Czechoslovakia, while her grandmother managed to escape the continent before the outbreak of World War II.  Gadot has stated that she was brought up in a "very Jewish, Israeli family environment".

Marble bust believed to be of Cleopatra VII, Altes Museum, Berlin

Cleopatra's history was that she was a descendant of its founder Ptolemy I Soter, a Macedonian Greek general and companion of Alexander the Great, a Greek of Macedonia.                             

     Nefertiti (c. 1370 – c. 1330 BC) was a queen of the 18th Dynasty of Ancient Egypt, the great royal wife of Pharaoh Akhenaten. Nefertiti and her husband were known for their radical overhaul of state religious policy, in which they promoted the earliest known form of monotheism, Atenism, centered on the sun disc and its direct connection to the royal household.  Moses was born about the same time,  1391 BCE and died 1271 BCE.                                    

Let's face it;  it's hard to have equal beauty of Elizabeth Taylor or Gal Gadot except in my view of past's Queen Nefertiti of Egypt.  She was the great beauty of any day in time.  

Resource: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Taylor

Elizabeth Taylor as the Jewish Rebekah in 1194 England's Ivanhoe

Nadene Goldfoot
Elizabeth Taylor played the part of the Jewish Rebekah of 1194 in England.  Jews have been in England since The Roman days.  Rome had taken Jerusalem in 70 CE, and probably that instigated Jewish migration as far as England.   They stood out in countries and were never treated as equals.  It's known that Jews entered England in 1066 with William the Conqueror and were expulsed in 1290 by King Edward I "Longshanks", who was 6'2" tall.  ."This not only generated revenues through royal appropriation of Jewish loans and property, but it also gave Edward the political capital to negotiate a substantial lay subsidy in the 1290 Parliament."

"Merchants had a special status in the system as did Jews. Jews were declared to be direct subjects of the King,  unlike the rest of the population. This had advantages for Jews, in that they were not tied to any particular lord, but were subject to the whims of the king. Every successive King formally reviewed a royal charter granting Jews the right to remain in England. Jews did not enjoy any of the guarantees of Magna Carta  of 1215."

"Economically, Jews played a key role in the country. The church at the time strictly forbade the lending of money for profit. This created a vacuum in the economy of Europe that only Jews were able to fill.  Canon law was not considered to apply to Jews, and Judaism permits loans with interests between Jews and non-Jews).  As a consequence, some Jews made large amounts of money. Taking advantage of their unique status as his direct subjects, the King could appropriate Jewish assets in the form of taxation. He levied heavy taxes on Jews at will without having to summon Parliament.  The Jewish community acted as a kind of giant monetary filter: Jews collected interest on money lent to the people which the King could take at his pleasure."  Jews did this as they were not allowed to own land.

I just watched the 1952 film, Ivanhoe, which takes place in 1194 during the failure of the 3rd Crusade.  Elizabeth Taylor played the part of the Jewish girl, Rebekah, daughter of a Jewish doctor who saves Ivanhoe when other doctors would have bled him to death after he had been injured.  Elizabeth's curvaceous figure reminded me so much of the Israeli girls I saw in Israel from 1980-1985.  Israeli girls are as curvaceous as Elizabeth was; tiny-waisted but fully endowed in other places.  In the arena scene where Ivanhoe has to fight with a hatchet another to keep Rebecca from being killed shows her figure in a white dress, the only one in this scene.  Her long black hair accents the whiteness.  She is beautiful.  I only hope our original Rebekah was just as lovely.  Robert Taylor plays the part of Ivanhoe and Joan Fontaine is the Royalty that loves him.

Ivanhoe, originally written by Sir Walter Scott in 1820, is about 12th Century England.  The good guy in the story is King Richard the Lionheart, King of England who was in the Crusades in Jerusalem fighting and probably slaughtering both Arabs and Jews.  The Crusaders were known to kill any Jews found as they went through Europe on their way to Jerusalem as well.  He vanished on his way back home to England.

His Saxon knight, Wilfred of Ivanhoe, searches for him and finds he is being held by  Leopold of Austria for ransom.  The bad guy in the story is King Richard's brother, Prince John, knows about the kidnapping but doesn't tell anyone as he wants the chance to rule in his stead.  Ivanhoe returns to his father and beloved (Joan Fontaine) and wants his father to help get the ransom money of 150,000 marks in silver, but he refuses as the king is a Norman and is so mad that he tells his son to leave..

To get the ransom, our hero, Ivanhoe will turn to the Jews for the money, Isaac of York and his daughter.  The wicked King John wants Elizabeth Taylor burned at the stake as a witch.  How he could believe that with her wearing this sexy long white dress and looking so beautiful shows how hard hearted a man he is.  Though Richard will get back his throne, somehow,   King Edward, who went on the 9th Crusade to Jerusalem,  will have wicked thoughts about Jews to force them all to leave England only 100 years later and would not be asked back for 350 years.

The irony is that Jews were expelled from England over problems with usury.  They were invited back with the hope that they could help speed things up for the recovery of the country which had suffered from major civil wars.  A double irony is that Elizabeth converted to Judaism after marrying a Jewish man.

Reseource: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_England
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanhoe
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanhoe_(1952_film)
http://www.amazon.com/Ivanhoe-Joan-Fontaine/dp/B0006B2A6U/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1357507093&sr=1-1&keywords=ivanhoe+1952
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edict_of_Expulsion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_I_of_England