Allan Appel

18. The Rabbi of Casino Boulevard by Allan Appel (1986, 287 page hardcover, Read Mar 7-16)

Nothing serious here, it's totally frivolous and all that, except that I actually liked it.

Our rabbi, who is really a terrible rabbi and not a particularly good Jew, has found his niche in a small casino town in California. His congregation is all older and they all gamble seriously, but generally non-destructively. The rabbi doesn't gamble, isn't married, doesn't date and has come to be viewed as lucky.

Then he starts to date a non-Jewish Japanese girl. Some members find it terrible he is forming a relationship with a woman who isn't Jewish. Some find it terrible he's dating at all. And some relish it. And there is luck, and some perverse and quite entertaining reading of the Zohar, and eventually our rabbi finds himself in a real problem.

No worries about realistic stuff here, including dialogue and relationships. You wouldn't know he lives in a Christian country as the only characters are from the congregation or his Japanese girlfriend, or related to his girlfriend. Lots of other problems. But that's not the point. Three and half stars, where the half star means it was fun.

2015
https://www.librarything.com/topic/185746#5105149… (más)

fun video of 'Brigadoon' - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCF2UNGCMCM

NYT obit - Evan M. Frankel, 90, a Crusader Against L.I. Development, Is Dead
By GLENN FOWLER
Published: April 19, 1991

Evan M. Frankel, a Manhattan builder who became one of the largest landowners in East Hampton, L.I., where he fought steadfastly for half a century to preserve the Island's South Fork from development, died on Wednesday at his home in East Hampton. He was 90 years old.

He died of heart failure, said a friend, Edward Bleier.

Mr. Frankel first saw East Hampton when he surveyed it for construction of radar stations in World War II. Shortly afterward he converted a carriage house and 15 acres into an estate, Brigadoon, which gained wide renown for its arboretum, landscaping and outdoor sculpture gardens, including works by Henry Moore and other prominent artists. Control of New Building

A self-described "supreme egotist," Mr. Frankel crusaded to protect what he called "the world's prettiest village" from the wave of new construction that swept Long Island in the postwar years. He rehabilitated existing commercial structures to avoid their replacement, particularly along Newtown Lane and Montauk Highway. He converted the houses, barns and stable of a potato farm into boutiques, while retaining their original appearance.

He made it a practice to sell land or buildings only to buyers who agreed to build and plant traditionally or to dedicate open space to the Nature Conservancy or land banks.

Mr. Frankel was born in a part of Galicia that is now Poland and was brought as a child to Manhattan's Lower East Side. He helped support his family, which included nine brothers and sisters, by selling shoelaces and chewing gum in the subway and on ferryboats. He enrolled at Columbia College to study to be an architect, but quit to become a partner in Ross-Frankel Inc., a designer and builder of stores and offices during the Depression and afterward.

In Manhattan Mr. Frankel built and owned several East Side apartment buildings and assembled the Avenue of the Americas blockfront on which the New York Hilton now stands.

His architectural flair manifested itself in East Hampton, where he placed his swimming pool in the space below what had been the cellar of the burned-out main house on the property. Waterfalls, sculpture and gardens around the old foundation made the site a much-photographed location for layouts in design and architectural publications.

Mr. Frankel was also a longtime investor in Broadway musicals and was co-producer of the film version of Gian Carlo Menotti's folk opera "The Medium." He was co-founder with the philanthropist Jacob M. Kaplan of the Jewish Center of the Hamptons and was its longtime chairman. He commissioned the architect Norman Jaffe to design the center's new building, a wood and glass structure set in a grove of trees, and it won several architectural awards as an example of contemporary religious design.

A lifelong bachelor, Mr. Frankel is survived by many nephews, nieces and their children and grandchildren.… (más)