Grapevine: The Wedding Show

By GREER FAY CASHMAN
BOTH THE bride and groom are celebrities in their own rights, and several members of the bride's family are also celebrities - but it was one of the guests who captured the spotlight at the marriage in Jerusalem of art gallery co-proprietor Amalia Dayan, 33, to New York investor and art collector Adam Lindemann, 44. The media were so busy tracking actress Uma Thurman, who flew in for the wedding, that it paid relatively scant attention to the bride and groom, who are frequently mentioned in New York gossip columns, art magazines and real estate ramblings. Both have been married before. In the bride's family, it seems that divorce is almost hereditary. Her grandparents Ruth and Moshe Dayan were divorced, her parents Aharona (nee Melkind) and Assi Dayan were divorced and she, too, was divorced after a brief marriage to Klei Zemer heir Ro'i Brenner. Before becoming an art dealer in New York, the bride was a fashion model. Before that, while still a teenager, she appeared in Michal Bat Adam's film A Boy Takes a Girl. After completing her art history degree at Tel Aviv University, Amalia Dayan worked at the Tirosh Auction House. She moved to New York in 1997 and worked as director of the Gagasian Gallery before entering into partnership with Stefania Bortolami, who had also worked for Larry Gagasian. Their Bortolami Dayan Gallery is located in Chelsea. The groom was previously married in 1989 to socialite Elizabeth Ashley Graham, whose father was a fifth-generation owner of the Graham Gallery that was founded in New York in 1857. Like his first wife, Lindemann is a scion of old money, but a shrewd entrepreneur in his own right. He has his own investment firm, Lindemann Capital Partners, and his various business interests include Mega Communications, a 20-station Spanish language radio network that he founded just under a decade ago. Lindemann entered into his first marriage in a civil ceremony. The second time around, the ceremony was in accordance with Halacha and was performed by Rabbi Benny Lau. ONE OF the most veteran participants in the Zionist Congress and the Jewish Agency Assembly, held over the past two weeks, was Charlotte Jacobson, 92, the feisty former national president of Hadassah Women's Zionist Organization of America. Jacobson has made more than 100 visits to Israel since attending her first Zionist Congress in 1951, which she attended "by accident"; someone dropped out of the Hadassah delegation that was headed by the legendary Rose Halprin, who was as famous for her hats as for her leadership. It was an extremely emotional congress, said Jacobson, because so many of the delegates were Holocaust survivors who found themselves in Jerusalem deciding the future of the Jewish people with giants of the day such as David Ben-Gurion and Moshe Sharett. Jacobson, who was Hadassah's 13th national president, serving from 1964-68, came to Jerusalem in 1967 to receive the keys to Hadassah's Mount Scopus Hospital from the Israeli Army. Access to the hospital had been blocked since the War of Independence in 1948. She subsequently supervised the rebuilding of the hospital as well as the construction of the Sharett Oncology Institute in Ein Kerem. ALSO WITH the Hadassah delegation was National Board Member Leah Reicin, the national chair for Youth Aliya. Reicin recently prepared a project based on some dozen past national presidents of the organization. The one on Rose Halprin contains a wonderful vignette about a meeting that she had with Menachem Begin, who said to her: "When the British put a price on my head, you were deciding which hat to put on yours." SMOKERS AMONG members of the World Zionist Organization may have to curtail their puffs. One of the surprise gifts that prominent lawyer Amos Hausner received for his birthday was to be named attorney of the WZO. Hausner is chairman of the Israel Council for the Prevention of Smoking, and the country's most veteran and energetic anti-tobacco activist. Attorney to the WZO is a voluntary position, but it does carry clout. Hausner was informed of his new post at the end of last week at the conclusion of the Zionist Congress. The post seems to have a genetic component, as his father, the late Knesset member and attorney-general Gideon Hausner, prosecutor in the Eichmann trial, served in the same capacity decades earlier. WZO staffers who smoke in the corridors may not be able to do so in the future, as Hausner will surely insist they observe the regulations. ISRAEL HAS almost become a regular commute for Sheila Kurtzer, the wife of former US ambassador Daniel Kurtzer. She visited twice in June and anticipates coming back next week. During her most recent visit, she took a small group of friends to Jerusalem's Old City to tour the tunnels under the Western Wall. Afterwards they lunched at Kohinoor, the restaurant that belongs to Kurtzer's good friend Reena Pushkarna. Kurtzer has a particular fondness for Kohinoor, the only kosher eatery in the Pushkarna's restaurant chain; she and her husband are religiously observant, and could not eat the regular fare at Pushkarna's other establishments. EVERY AMBASSADOR tries to do something to make the celebration of his country's national day special. One of the differences at the festivities hosted by Slovenian Ambassador Iztok Jarc and his wife Helena was that she delighted the guests by singing her own country's national anthem as well as that of Israel. The other difference was somewhat sinful - a chocolate fountain featuring tiered cascades of Belgian chocolate, the aroma of which wafted into the street and assailed everyone's nostrils before they reached the front door. Jarc, in welcoming his guests, said he was happy to see the ambassadors of the republics that were once part of Yugoslavia and are now independent. Among the ambassadors of the former Yugoslavia was Miodrag Isakov, the ambassador of Serbia who had presented his credentials to President Moshe Katsav earlier in the day. Serbia parted company from Montenegro only a month ago. The two, as a federation, were the last link to Yugoslavia. JAPANESE PRIME Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who is due to visit Israel in July, is currently in the US as a guest of President George Bush, who is scheduled to take him on a tour of Graceland today. Koizumi is a keen fan of Elvis Presley, and continues to have his hair styled in a manner similar to Presley's. The somewhat unorthodox Koizumi made international headlines last year when he greeted actor Richard Gere in Japan with the words "Shall we dance," and promptly entered into a ballroom dance with Gere, who was in Japan to promote his film Shall We Dance. Koizumi was originally scheduled to visit Israel in January, but the visit was deferred due to the illness of then-prime minister Ariel Sharon. Koizumi will meet with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as well as with Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority. He will not meet with members of the Hamas government.