Grapevine: Tribute screening

By GREER FAY CASHMAN
Shlomo Gronich (photo credit: GILAD AVIDAN/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS)
Shlomo Gronich
(photo credit: GILAD AVIDAN/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS)
 ■ IT’S NOT often that a documentary film attracts a full house, but that’s what Australian filmmaker Monique Schwarz, who has been living in Jerusalem for many years, achieved when she held the Israeli premiere of her film Beyond Paranoia at the Jerusalem Cinematheque last week. The positive response she earned was similar to that which she received in Australia when she and co-producer Benzion Tidhar showed the film there last year.
The film, which chronicles the history of anti-Semitism in its different guises, was 10 years in the making, partly because many of the individuals and organizations approached for funding did not see the connection between anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism and anti-Israel propaganda.
The screening was a memorial tribute to Prof. Robert Wistrich, the head of the Hebrew University’s Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism, who died last year. Schwarz, the daughter of Holocaust survivors, found him to be highly inspirational while making the film.
Another world-renowned expert on anti-Semitism who was in the film and also a member of the audience was child Holocaust survivor Manfred Gerstenfeld, an Israeli author and former chairman of the Steering Committee of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs who founded and directed the center’s Post-Holocaust and Anti-Semitism program.
■ THE MALKI Foundation is selling Purim cards and tickets for the Fifth Annual Rainbow of Music Concert, which will take place on March 30 at the Rebecca Crown Auditorium of the Jerusalem Theater. The event, which includes hassidic, cantorial, pop, Broadway and operatic songs featuring Chaim Adler, Shlomo Gronich, Yitzhak Meir and Colin Schachat, is also celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Ramatayim Men’s Choir, directed by Richard Shavei Zion, with musical accompaniment by the David Ichelwitz band, Raymond Goldstein and Aviva Stanislawski.
The Malki Foundation was established in memory of teenager Malki Roth who lost her life in a terrorist attack in Jerusalem. The Malki Foundation empowers families to provide home care for children with disabilities. Malki cared for her severely disabled younger sister, and her parents, aware of Malki’s devotion to her sister, decided that the most fitting memorial would be a means of helping other families with children with disabilities to look after them at home.
■ EMUNAH B’SIMCHA, the Emunah group that provides needy newlyweds with gift packages containing the basics with which start a home, is hosting a screening of the second part of The Prime Ministers, based on the best-selling book by the late Yehuda Avner, who was a veteran member of the Foreign Ministry and who worked as adviser and speechwriter for several prime ministers and accompanied them on their travels in Israel and abroad.
Avner kept copious notes about high-level meetings, which subsequently appeared in his unique and engaging writings in The Jerusalem Post while he was in the course of compiling his book. The screening will be held at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center in the evening of Wednesday, March 16.
■ PRIME MINISTER Benjamin Netanyahu’s lightning visit to Berlin last week caused chaos. According to an I24 report, streets were blocked, a film festival premiere was relocated, at least 17 bus routes were disrupted, and traffic congestion was insufferable. Of course this is nothing new to Jerusalemites who live near the Prime Minister’s Residence, and it has become increasingly worse in recent weeks with pedestrians denied short-cut access from Keren Hayesod Street to Aza Road or to Balfour Street. The ban also applies to senior and disabled citizens, but is occasionally lifted, depending on who is on duty. Berliners now know what it’s like to live in Jerusalem.
■ THE NINTH annual memorial evening in memory of Rose Stark will take place under the auspices of the Department of English and the Holocaust Studies Center at the Michlalah Jerusalem College in Bayit Vegan. This year’s event is also in memory of the Michlala’s founder, Rabbi Yehuda Cooperman. The speaker will be Rabbi Stewart Weiss, whose topic will be “Maintaining Faith After Fire.”
In addition, there will a panel discussion with participants including four generations of the Hershkowitz family headed by Sandy Hershkowitz, who was a child Holocaust survivor, plus Linda Holtz, Dovi Holtz, and Yotam Holtz.
There will also be a screening of selections from the film The Journey of the Federman Family. The event begins on Tuesday, March 1 at 5:45 p.m. and there will be separate seating for men and women.