Celebrity Grapevine

Controversial feminist and electronic media personality Merav Michaeli joins Radio 99.

By GREER FAY CASHMAN
Ran Eliran 88 (photo credit: Courtesy)
Ran Eliran 88
(photo credit: Courtesy)
AFTER MORE than six decades of documenting the Holocaust, new information continues to surface. Tzipi Pines, the director of the Cameri Theater, discovered two years ago while surfing through the Yad Vashem archives on the Internet that she had an 11-year-old sister, Malka, who perished in Auschwitz. Who could she turn to with questions? Her parents have died. There are no aunts and uncles. But Pines, who was born in Israel, has an older sister, Genia, who survived Auschwitz and lives in Sweden. Pines called her and demanded to know why this secret was kept from her. "You never asked," Genia replied. The information became public last week in a feature published by Yediot Aharonot in which people from the world of entertainment wrote letters to dead relatives who had either been killed in the Holocaust, or had survived, but had not been properly understood by their relatives during their lifetime. In her letter, Pines explains that as a sabra child, she never understood why on Holocaust Remembrance Day her father always disappeared from the house and her mother spent the day weeping. Now there's no one, not even her surviving sister Genia, who can answer all the questions that she has about Malka. CONTROVERSIAL FEMINIST and electronic media personality Merav Michaeli has joined Radio 99. Michaeli is the granddaughter of the much maligned Rudolf Kastner, who in an arrangement with Adolf Eichmann was able to save the lives of 700 Hungarian Jews during the World War II. But Kastner was accused in Israel of collaboration with the Nazis and was assassinated by a Holocaust survivor before his name was cleared. Michaeli will replace Gal Gabai, who is on maternity leave, and together with Linoi Bar-Gefen will co-present the current affairs program Here and Now, which is broadcast from 7 to 9 a.m. ONE OF Israel's most beloved living composers of popular songs is Nahum Heiman, who in addition to composing his own music has made it his life's work to collect recordings and information about Israeli composers, lyricists and performers who are long forgotten, but whose work should be preserved. Heiman, who recently edited a collection of port and sea songs, was in charge of the entertainment at the farewell party for the outgoing CEO of the Tel Aviv Port, Orna Angel, who said that seven years in the job had taught her the true meaning of challenge. The event was attended by Tel Aviv-Jaffa Mayor Ron Huldai, several prominent figures from the Tel Aviv Municipality, MK Orit Noked, as well as people who have business interests in the Tel Aviv Port, including Gimmel Yafit, the queen of commercials. With nostalgia in the air, entertainment was provided by veteran singer-guitarist Israel Gurion and the legendary Ran Eliran, who came from the US especially for the occasion. BYE-BYE Estee, Hello Bar. After two years as the presenter for Fox fashions, Estee Ginzberg and Fox are parting company by mutual consent. Ginzberg, then 16, generated a media storm when she succeeded Yael Bar-Zohar, who had been the Fox presenter for four years. Bar-Zohar stepped out of the picture when she felt that she had gone as far as she could go with Fox. Soon after Ginzberg's photographs began appearing in the press, head-hunters for the international fashion glossies began to track her down. Ginzberg has now been succeeded by yet another blonde who is already internationally famous. Bar Refaeli, who has signed a three-year contract for which she will receive close to a million dollars, is due to begin shooting the new Fox collection in September. BETS ARE on in Netanya as to whether Jacko Eisenberg, one of the former winners of the A Star is Born competition will appear in any of the Independence Day performances sponsored by the Netanya Municipality. Eisenberg earned the ire of a lot of people when he made denigrating remarks about the IDF, especially in view of the fact that he never served. After contrite apologies, he gradually won his way back to the entertainment circuit. Possibly because too many entertainment personalities have evaded army service, organizations directly and indirectly associated with the IDF put a ban on such people appearing in any of their programs. Netanya Mayor, Miriam Feierberg explained that the Union of Local Authorities had issued strict instructions that shirkers of service in the IDF were not to be employed for municipal events. However she did promise to speak to Eisenberg, and now it remains to be seen if she can find a way around the problem.