Jerusalem stories at the Givatayim Theater

By GREER FAY CASHMAN
THE ANNUAL Storytelling Festival which traditionally takes place at the Givatayim Theater is this year celebrating its 15th anniversary with the usual plethora of themes and personalities. Theater director Yossi Alfi hosts many of the sessions himself, in addition to planning and organizing the event. One would imagine that Israel's fifth president, Jerusalem-born and raised Yitzhak Navon, would have been selected for the panel on stories about Jerusalem or that which will appear under the title of "Casa de Ladino," considering that Navon heads the National Authority for Ladino. Instead, Navon will appear opening night (October 15) in a session headlined "Between November 29 and the 5th of Iyar - a Fateful Half Year," in which he and educator, diplomat and politician Liova Eliav, lyricist, journalist, script writer and translator Haim Hefer, actor Shlomo Bar Shavit, arts and crafts promoter and lecturer Ruth Dayan and author Yitzhak Meir will each reminisce about where they were and what they did in that time frame. All are in their 80s or 90s as is singer Yisrael Yitzhaki, who, now in his mid-80s, is still going strong. The only people on stage well below that age will be Alfi and singer Shlomit Aharon. The sessions on Jerusalem and Ladino will be held on the same date, with master storyteller Avshalom Kor as moderator of the Jerusalem panel and Shimon Parnas - more commonly associated with all things Greek - as moderator of the Ladino panel. One of the Jerusalem panelists is Rabbi Israel Gellis, a well-known broadcaster and storyteller, who once told a beautiful story of a wedding that took place in the Old City of Jerusalem well over a century ago. The bride and bridegroom had met only once. She was very beautiful and he had a number of physical flaws. She had apparently given a great deal of thought to these flaws during the period between the meeting and the wedding date, and on the day of the wedding decided that she could not go through with it. Some messengers came to tell the bridegroom the unhappy news. He accepted the news without anger but asked to be allowed to meet with the reluctant bride for only a few minutes. If he could not convince her to marry him he said, he would simply walk away. Realizing the humiliation he would suffer, the bride agreed. When they met, he reminded her that marriages are made in heaven, and said that he had been privileged to glimpse his bride before they became earthly beings. She had a hunchback, and was cross-eyed and buck-toothed - but she had a sweet and gentle soul. He imagined how difficult life would be for her if people were to judge her merely by her appearance and entreated the Creator to exchange her physical attributes for his. The wish was granted and the baby girl born to the bride's mother was beautiful. The baby boy born to the groom's mother was far from physically attractive. On hearing the story, the bride promptly changed her mind and agreed to continue with the wedding. Gellis claimed to be a direct descendant of the union. The opening night marathon will also include a series of monologues in Yiddish by Israel Prize laureate Lia Koenig, who is equally at home on both the Yiddish and the Hebrew stage.
  • SOMEONE ELSE who is equally at home in Yiddish or Hebrew and is known to be a superb raconteur is Tel Aviv Chief Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, to whom Alfi has devoted a whole session on the second night of the festival in which Lau and relatives and friends of his will tell tales of Lau himself. Lau, an orphan who survived the Holocaust, was able to carry on his family tradition in Israel by becoming another link in the chain of a dynasty of rabbis, to which he added his own sons.
  • WHILE ON the subject of events taking place during the intermediate days of Succot, the English-speaking community of Jerusalem can take advantage of the fact that one of the Hol Hamoed events at Beit Avi Chai will be in English. On Sunday, October 19, Dr. Micha Goodman will discuss "These and Those," based on the disagreements between Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai and the relevance of such disagreements in today's generation. Admission is free, but subject to available space.
  • REGULAR EXERCISE is one of the ways in which to prevent a heart attack, and one of the exercises highly recommended by cardiologists is bicycling. To illustrate the point, several leading cardiologists from across the country came to Tel Aviv on the last Friday in September dressed in their hospital whites and surgical greens, and joined other cyclists on a bike ride along Rothschild Boulevard. Before the cyclists went out on their ride, Prof. Gadi Keren, president of the Israel Cardiologists Association, urged the public to avoid heart trouble by desisting from smoking, staying away from high cholesterol foods and getting plenty of exercise. By the way, bicyclists who like to ride long distances will be happy to know that the Jewish National Fund is currently in the final stages of completing a track between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
  • MOST JERUSALEM-oriented guide books for tourists mention the Western Wall, the Old City, the City of David, Mea She'arim, the Israel Museum, the Shrine of the Book, Yad Vashem and other monumental landmarks. They pay less attention to the city's parks and gardens. Anat Madmoni, who has a doctorate in afforestation, has written a book on 120 parks and gardens in Israel entitled Green Islands, and has singled out Jerusalem as a garden city. Madmoni writes that Jerusalem is the country's leading city for parks and gardens, not so much because of efforts by the city council, but largely as a result of private initiative. The legendary public parks and garden policies of Teddy Kollek gradually disappeared after he left office, she says, but many people who have an interest in the beautification of the city have continued to finance public parks and gardens as well as the gardens surrounding private homes and apartment complexes, which gives Jerusalem a floral edge over the rest of the country.