Grapevine: Barkat's potential competitors

TWO FORMER government ministers, who at the beginning of the week were both members of Kadima, are being courted by the Right.

By GREER FAY CASHMAN
Nir Barkat east jerusalem 521 (photo credit: Kobe Gideon/ Flash90)
Nir Barkat east jerusalem 521
(photo credit: Kobe Gideon/ Flash90)
TWO FORMER government ministers, who at the beginning of the week were both members of Kadima, are being courted by the Right on the one hand and the Left on the other to stand against Mayor Nir Barkat in the upcoming mayoral elections.
Tzachi Hanegbi, who masterminded a failed group break-away from Kadima with the aim of a return to Likud, seems to be the only member of Kadima about to recross the line. He also appears to be the Likud’s great hope for mayor and, if he chooses to run, will have the backing of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. His decision may in part depend on whether he is made a minister after Matan Vilna’i leaves to take up his post as ambassador to China.
People on the Left are wooing Dalia Itzik, who was deputy mayor under Teddy Kollek. Itzik was the first female Knesset Speaker, and the first woman to serve as acting president of the state. If she runs for mayor and wins, she will be Jerusalem’s first woman mayor, though it’s unlikely that she would be accepted in haredi circles. Either way, Barkat will find it tougher than running a marathon.
Another name mentioned as a possible mayoral candidate is Kadima MK Nachman Shai.
Hanegbi and Shai, if they decide to run, have a minor problem.
Even though they live in the 02 telephone zone, they do not live in Jerusalem proper but in Mevaseret. Itzik, who was born in Jerusalem, continues to live in the capital.
■ VISITS TO museums are often awesome experiences.
Benjamin Lerner was strolling through the Israel Museum’s exhibition of “A World Apart Next Door,” which offers a glimpse of different facets of hassidic life, when he came upon an object that had belonged to his forebears. It was a spice box designed in a unique manner that was familiar to members of his family.
The base of the spice box has three legs. Engraved on one is the name of Lerner’s grandfather Pinchas Ben Chana Lerner. On the second leg is engraved the name of his great-grandfather Shlomo Mayer Bar-Nad ben Pesya Priva. On the third leg is the word “Tzvas,” or Tzvat, as it is pronounced in modern Hebrew.
Whoever translated or transliterated the Bar-Nad referred to on the second leg transliterated it as Brand which, according to Lerner, is a mistake. Bar-Nad is an acronym for the Son of Naftali Dovid, who was Lerner’s great-great-grandfather. The surname Brand is not a branch on the family tree.
■ STUDENTS FROM the Reut High School in Jerusalem spent part of their summer vacation period at the Jewish Cemetery in Czestochowa, Poland, cleaning up rubble and undergrowth and deciphering gravestone inscriptions. They worked under the supervision of Dina Winer, who brought her first group of students to Czestochowa five years ago and has been returning annually ever since.
Yiftach Eitan, one of the participants in the group, had a more personal interest than his fellow students in working in the cemetery. His grandmother Gutka Cieciura is buried there.
The students are part of the Gidonim project in which young people from all over the country participate in the effort to restore dignity to Jewish cemeteries in Poland. Non-Jewish Poles are involved in similar projects, for which they receive recognition from the Warsaw-headquartered Federation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland. The Federation often initiates similar projects. It also acts as a liaison between local authorities and Jewish and non-Jewish organizations and individuals interested in cleaning up cemeteries, renovating synagogues, establishing monuments or plaques in memory of lost Jewish communities, and various cultural events that remind Poles of contemporary Jewish history and of the Jewish heritage that all but disappeared during World War II.
Jewish life is gradually experiencing a resurgence in Poland, and Polish Jews are beginning to take an active part in Jewish life.