INTERVIEWS

David Asper had saved the world ---at least by Talmudic standards For according to the rabbinical teachings, one who saves even a single life is considered as if he had saved an entire world. Although Asper couldn't save the life of murder and rape victim Gail Miller, he did save the life of the wrongly convicted man who had served 23 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit.

It is hard to believe that the sub-zero temperatures of Winnipeg, Canada could nurture and produce someone as warm, lovely and vivacious as Gail Asper. The middle child and only daughter of Babs and Izzy Asper is the complete opposite of what anyone might expect her to be. She is devoid of all pretense or snobbery and seems oblivious to the fact that she is the daughter of a billionaire.

The last thing Leon Asper wanted his youngest son Israel to become was a lawyer. Leon and his wife Cecilia were both classical musicians who had fled to Manitoba, Canada in the 1920s to escape the pogroms of their native Ukraine. They had witnessed during the Great Depression how people used to pay their lawyers with bags of potatoes.

If eyes were a window to the soul then one can't help but feel like a Peeping Tom when looking into Leonard Asper's inviting, intense clear blue eyes. His eyes are uniquely engaging, but they are also unyielding. They make it difficult to tell if you have reached his personal inner sanctum orhardly made it past the door.

They say that behind every great man there is a great woman. Indeed, behind Israel Asper, chairman of CanWest Global Communications Corp., there is a great woman. But what makes his wife greater than most Jewish wives is that she refuses to take credit for her husband's accomplishments.

Israel’s hippest and “hottest” former ambassador to the United States, Danny Ayalon, could easily adopt the chorus from Bon Jovi’s recent hit song “Who Says You Can’t Go Home?” as the anthem for his new mission: to revitalize immigration of Diaspora Jewry to the State of Israel.

Michael Bar-Zohar is an Israeli historian, novelist and politician.

Perhaps the blue and white pushke (charity box) Kenneth Bialkin remembers seeing in his grandparents’ house has had more influence over him than he might have imagined. Through a slit that measured as narrow as the hope of Europe’s Jews during WWII, dimes and dollars, prayers and dreams were pushed into that tin box.

History can provide mankind with many great answers, but it is truly the great questions that can direct the course of history. Wolf Blitzer asked one such question over two decades ago and redirected not only his own career, but also the course that peace would take between Arabs and Jews in the Middle East.

Cupid’s bow has pierced the core of the city. Storefront windows abound with heart- shaped mobiles and chocolates packaged in red velvet boxes. Long-stemmed roses overfill the buckets lining the street corner markets. Flower delivery men scurry across town, their faces hidden behind big bouquets.

His soft, kind eyes are as luring as a sky blue pool on a steamy, summer day. You want to jump in—you want to luxuriate in the kindness they extend. But the warning sign soon becomes apparent: "Private property, no trespassers allowed.” If eyes are supposed to be the windows to the soul, Michael Bolton has drawn the shutters.

Most politicians, with self-puffery, are prone to broadcasting all the great causes that they live for; some declare with bravado, like George W. Bush, what they are ready to kill for. But few care to share, as does senatorial candidate Cory Booker, what they are ready to die for.