Grapevine: Making airwaves

By GREER FAY CASHMAN
Habimah Theater 521 (photo credit: Itsik Marom)
Habimah Theater 521
(photo credit: Itsik Marom)
* Veteran broadcaster Dan Kaner will receive a lifetime achievement award at the annual journalists conference in Eilat, which opens on November 10. Tal Berman and Aviad Kisos will receive the prize for the best radio current affairs show, for their morning program that is broadcast on FM99, and Rivka Michaeli will receive the radio prize for the best non-news-related talk show. Yaron Ashbel will be awarded best musical program on radio.
* DURING THE many years that Shelly Hoshen, founder of Yad B’Yad (Hand in Hand), a nonprofit that works on behalf of children at risk, served on the Tel Aviv Municipal Council, she made friends and important contacts in all sectors of Tel Aviv society. During this period, she was involved with the city’s cultural activities and was in close touch with all the theater companies. Thus it was quite easy to persuade Habimah Theater, despite its own fiscal problems, to put on a benefit performance of My Fair Lady in celebration of Yad B’Yad’s 30th anniversary. Starring Nathan Datner and Sari Cohen, the event attracted a large representation of the diplomatic community, businesspeople and cultural icons. All proceeds from the evening were earmarked for maintaining and expanding the programs in Yad B’Yad’s warm homes for at-risk children.
Hoshen, a Holocaust survivor who is well aware of childhood deprivation and abuse, created the organization in the belief that every child has a right to be heard, loved, nurtured and educated. Not all children, especially those from families in distress, enjoy these rights at home. So she established Yad B’Yad, which with the help of donors, volunteers and professionals, provides a warm, homelike environment for children. They are given hot meals, participate in enrichment programs, are taught democratic values and can speak freely to any of their mentors about anything that may be troubling them.
Among those who attended the benefit performance were businesswoman and patron of the arts Galia Albin, writer Guy Baram, dancer Ido Tadmor, actress Sandra Sadeh, President’s Office deputy director-general Yona Bartal and her husband, Dudi, and many other well-known personalities.
* DIVERSITY IS worth cultivating in family-controlled enterprises. Gal Nauer, an international architecture firm with studios in New York and Tel Aviv, was founded in 2000 by the architect of the same name, who happens to be the daughter of billionaire Yitzhak Tshuva. When Tshuva purchased New York City’s Plaza Hotel in 2004, he commissioned his daughter’s firm to be the lead architects in the restoration project. Tshuva later took on a Saudi partner, Prince Al-Waleed Bin Talal, who was unwilling to sell his stake. So last year, Tshuva, whose holdings were through his El-Ad real estate company, sold his Plaza shares to the Indian Sahara company, reaping a profit of $920 million.
On the local scene, Gal Nauer is also the designer for Tel Aviv’s Bavli Towers, a 44-story complex of six towers. One of the three partners in the project is El-Ad. But closer to home, namely Netanya, where Tshuva and his siblings spent their childhood in poverty and cramped conditions, Gal Nauer is designing a new hotel.
The Tshuva family is very closely linked to Netanya, and Tshuva provides hundreds of scholarships annually to Netanya Academic College, in addition to other donations.
* PEOPLE’S TALENTS are not always evident in their career choices. Some put their talents on the back burner, fearing that to develop them from a professional standpoint would not necessarily guarantee them a decent income. Kindergarten teacher Ella Marcus of Upper Nazareth, who is a talented lyricist and composer, decided not to pursue a career in music, perhaps because there were already too many out-of-work musicians among the Russian immigrant population. Instead, she adapted both her musical and theatrical talents to the education of young children, which in addition to her teaching kindergarten included establishing a children’s theater and writing songs for children.
This week, Marcus realized a dream when she went to Portugal to participate in the Festival of Children’s Song, along with musicians from many other countries. The children in her class gave her a good luck and farewell party last week.