Grapevine: Don’t believe the hype

POSTERS IN and around Rehavia last week announced that there would be a happening on Aza Street on Friday, June 29.

By GREER FAY CASHMAN
Rehavia_521 (photo credit: Shmuel Bar-Am)
Rehavia_521
(photo credit: Shmuel Bar-Am)
■ POSTERS IN and around Rehavia last week announced that there would be a happening on Aza Street on Friday, June 29.
Well, it wasn’t quite. In the morning, there was very little to distinguish it from any other Friday.
By noon, there were several futons set out on the sidewalk outside the Restobar, and a live band started playing. Farther along the street, three stores had transformed themselves into temporary flea markets, with one of them selling a lot of old phonograph records that in some cases may have been collector’s items.
Just a few buildings before the Aza-Metudela intersection, there were some signs pointing to an apartment block in which there was going to be a play called The Doors. The production by the Mahshehoo (Something) company was actually a musical comedy written and directed by Mirit Yanay, with versatile performers Nir Landa, Ezer Kalmovich, Yael Gidoni and Michal Mesika, who sing, act and dance. It won an award at the Bat Yam Festival. The group hails from Tel Aviv but is currently located in Kiryat Hayovel, where it is producing street theater for the entertainment of the local community. This time, they were not in the street but on a rooftop.
The clever scenery in the play consists of frames on wheels, with a different-colored door on each frame. The tenants, who are diverse in age, background and gender, have one thing in common: They want social justice for their neighborhood, and they interact with the audience to figure out exactly what it is they want. For a short one-act production, it was extremely effective and certainly worth the walk in the hot sun plus the traipse up the stairs.
At the intersection of Metudela, canned music blared from the Metudela ice-cream parlor. The eateries on either side of it were quite full, with patrons of one of them spilling out onto the sidewalk. The eateries across the road were also well populated.
On the corner of Aza and Ha’ari, which is the extension of Metudela, representatives of Chabad Rehavia were doing a roaring trade in getting young men to put on tefillin. They were also handing out Shabbat candles to passing women.
There were crowds of people in the street, but not enough entertainment to fulfill the promises in the poster.
■ ANOTHER JERUSALEM landmark is about to bite the dust.
Beni Fish Restaurant on Mesilat Yesharim Street will be closed down to make way for the construction of a hotel. The restaurant, established 45 years ago by Beni Rosenzweig, was a favorite with tourists and locals alike.
It was briefly closed several months ago but quickly reopened in response to popular demand. The restaurant, with its enormous fish tanks and photographs of sea creatures, was a source of fascination for first-time visitors. Prices were reasonable, helpings were generous, and service was fast and polite. Politicians and other public figures including Yitzhak Navon, Yitzhak Rabin and Teddy Kollek were frequent diners.
Rosenzweig was getting tired of the business as long as five years ago but continued running the restaurant while the Mesilat Yesharim company was waiting for the green light from the relevant authorities to build a hotel in its place. The permit came through last week, and if all goes according to plan, a seven-story hotel will be erected on the site.
Two midtown residential projects currently under construction by Africa Israel include boutique hotels. The first is on Harav Kook Street, adjacent to Ticho House. The second is in the Russian Compound, where several bars and nightclubs were torn down to make way for the luxury complex.
■ THEY WILL not be the only hotels under construction. The 223-room Jerusalem Waldorf Astoria, with 30 adjacent private residences and a host of luxury amenities, is in the process of completion and due to open soon. Four of the residences have been purchased by American Eagle president Jay Schottenstein as a family getaway for himself and his three sons.
Not far from the Waldorf Astoria, the former Dan Pearl Hotel is to be gutted, and a new hotel will be built in its place. The hotel, which faces the Jaffa Gate, was purchased by billionaire Claude Dray, a leading figure in the French Jewish community. He intended to renovate it but was murdered in Paris in October last year. One of his daughters wanted to carry out his wishes and applied to the municipality for the right to construct additional floors. But given the proximity of the hotel to the walls of the Old City, her request was denied on the grounds that nothing should be allowed to dwarf the historic site. So she decided to gut the existing building and to start again from scratch.
In the years when the Dan Pearl did function, there were constant complaints about the banquet facilities. The serpentine shape of the banquet hall prevented guests at one end from seeing those at the other.
■ AMONG THE many milestone anniversaries being celebrated this summer is the return to Jerusalem 50 years ago of Yossele Schumacher who, at eight years old, was the key character in what was arguably the most highly publicized child kidnapping affair in Israel.
His parents had brought him from Russia to Jerusalem; but because they were suffering from economic distress, they put him in the care of his maternal grandparents, Breslav Hassidim who educated the child to be haredi. However, Schumacher’s parents were secular, and when they decided that they could not cope in Israel and wanted to return to Russia, they went to claim him.
Fearful that he would lose all vestige of his Jewishness in Russia, the grandparents smuggled him out of Jerusalem, and then had him smuggled out of Israel to Europe and then to the United States. The case was reported worldwide. It took police authorities around the world quite a while to track him down.
When he was brought back to Israel, he was under the impression that he was going to the Etz Haim Yeshiva. But his parents had other plans for him, and his grandparents could no longer interfere. The parents stayed in Israel, but Schumacher was given a secular upbringing.
Five years ago Schumacher, who now lives in Samaria, went to New York to meet the haredi family that had cared for him as a child. They were shocked to see that he was no longer observant, a factor that caused them to think that everything they had done for him had been in vain. But, nonetheless, they made him welcome.
■ THE TRIO of singers who last Friday night performed a medley of Shabbat songs in the lobby leading to the main dining room at the Mamilla Hotel had two admirers who stayed long after other the guests had gone inside to eat.
Particularly noticeable because they were standing alone were Gila Almagor, the first lady of the Israeli stage and screen; and her husband, theater director Ya’acov Agmon.
The Jerusalem Film Festival had not yet begun but the couple, who live in Tel Aviv, were already in town.
■ NATIVE JERUSALEMITE Nahum Wissmann is the new president of the Jerusalem Chamber of Commerce.
Wissmann, 75, who chairs the Shomrat Hazorea division of the veteran Wissmann Group furniture company, will focus his efforts on increasing membership in the chamber, enhancing the chamber’s image and forming stronger bonds between the chamber, government offices, the Jerusalem Municipality and the residents of the capital. It’s a double celebration for Wissmann. His company, which was started by his late father, is celebrating its 80th anniversary this year.