By GREER FAY CASHMANGrapevine(photo credit: Wikicommons)
■ Israel's founding prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, often spoke of making the Negev bloom and flourish. Although he was talking about greenery, the Negev is now flourishing in a different way, as reported this week in Yediot Aharonot. In Sheizaf, a community of 11 families established in the upper Negev a year ago, there are seven pregnant women, leading Shmulik Reifman, head of the Upper Negev Regional Council, to remark that this is indeed proof that the Negev is flourishing and is an ideal place for young families.■ The next six months will be an extremely busy period for Lithuanian Ambassador Darius Degutis, who celebrated Lithuania’s taking over the rotating presidency of the EU Council with a dinner this week at his Tel Aviv residence, and who will celebrate his country’s National Day next week at a Tel Aviv hotel.But that’s not the end of it. On Wednesday of next week, he will attend the Tel Aviv Cinematheque’s screening of The Other Dream Team, a joint Lithuanian-American production released last year. The film tells the incredible story of the 1992 Lithuanian basketball team, whose athletes struggled under Soviet rule but became symbols of Lithuania’s independence and – with help from the Grateful Dead, which sponsored the team – triumphed at the Barcelona Olympics. Degutis will address the audience prior to the screening, as will Deputy Lithuanian Parliament Speaker Gediminas Kirkilas; legendary Lithuanian basketball star Sarinas Marculionis; and the film’s producer, Jon Weinbach. Lithuania has a lot of events lined up for the next six months. Stay tuned.■ Bulgaria, which is also a member of the European Union, is no less keen than Lithuania – or, for that matter, Croatia, which gained accession to the EU this week – to show off its cultural and sporting talents. At the Croatian National Day reception at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art last week, Bulgarian Ambassador Mihaylov Dimitar was deep in conversation with Shelly Hoshen, deputy chairwoman of the Tel Aviv Performing Arts Center. They were talking in Bulgarian, which happens to be Hoshen’s mother tongue, and were discussing the possibility of bringing the Bulgarian National Opera to Tel Aviv.When it was pointed out to Hoshen that Dimitar was fluent in Hebrew and that the conversation could have been conducted in that language so everyone could understand, she replied, “I know, but his Bulgarian is much better.”■ Givatayim Mayor Reuven Ben-Shahar was pleased this week to welcome back a veteran youth leader who used to head the Borochov branch of Hanoar Ha’oved V’halomed. Together with scores of youngsters who forfeited the first day of school vacation, Ben-Shahar welcomed said former youth leader, who has since progressed to more broad-ranging and influential roles in the development of the nation and now holds a position that only eight people have held before him in the 65 years of the nation’s independence. That position is the presidency, and his name is Shimon Peres.■ After taking time out to become chairman of the Jewish Agency and the World Zionist Organization, and after that a Kadima MK, Zev Bielski, the former long-term mayor of Ra’anana, is once again running for office and hopes to be back in the mayor’s seat after the upcoming municipal elections.Bielski was in the audience at a recent IDC Herzliya event at the home of Evelyn and Pierre Besnaiou, where IDC law alumna Dina Lakau spoke of how her mother had fled from Ethiopia, crossing the Sudan desert on foot while pregnant with Lakau’s brother. Now expecting her first child, Lakau is extremely proud of how far Ethiopian immigrants, including her own family, have come in Israel. While much remains to be done to integrate the Ethiopian community fully, it has made tremendous strides in medicine, the army, law, broadcasting, journalism, music and other professions.■ Boycotts notwithstanding, Jerusalem artist and archeologist Shirley Siegel opened an exhibition of drawings and paintings of Jerusalem this week at Lauderdale House, in London’s Highgate neighborhood. Siegel combines her love of history, nature and people to create works of art that depict scenes combining past and present, the eternal and the ephemeral.A 10th-generation Israeli on her mother’s side, Siegel grew up in Jerusalem. Her father is a Romanian Holocaust survivor. Both her parents devoted themselves to medicine and became surgeons. The family lived in the capital’s Old City until 1909, when her great-grandfather participated in the famous plot-purchasing lottery, obtaining land near Jaffa that later became the new city of Tel Aviv. Her family established the first matza factory in pre-state Israel.Siegel is currently creating the first Woman’s Art Museum in the Middle East, on premises that housed the original Bezalel School of Art. She has works in private collections in Israel and abroad, as well as a painting of women fighters on permanent display in the Irgun Zva’i Leumi Museum on the cusp of Tel Aviv-Jaffa. This painting has personal meaning for her, because her grandmother was involved with the IZL prior to and during the War of Independence.
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