Grapevine: David Lavi – the other ‘Star’

Fans Lavi, one of the finalists in last season’s A Star is Born have a wonderful YouTube selection of his performances.

By GREER FAY CASHMAN
Singer Ahinoam Nini poses with David Lavi (photo credit: Ronen Akerman)
Singer Ahinoam Nini poses with David Lavi
(photo credit: Ronen Akerman)
■ Fans of David Lavi, one of the finalists in last season’s A Star is Born – he came in second to Hagit Yassu – have a wonderful YouTube selection of his performances. His consolation prize was that Ahinoam Nini personally invited him to the concert she gave last week in Tel Aviv. Nini and Lavi have been friends since they appeared together in the movie The Golden Pomegranate, based on his grandmother’s book The Pomegranate Pendant. His grandmother is Australian native Dvora Waysman, a longtime internationally syndicated journalist and an occasional contributor to the Post.
The Golden Pomegranate, which recently had its Down Under premier in Sydney (although Waysman is from Melbourne), marked Nini’s film debut. Lavi had a nonspeaking role, and Waysman also had a cameo part in the movie, “but if you blinked, you missed me,” she says.
Like many other entertainers, Lavi has been singing to protesting demonstrators.
■ As hot and humid as it is, the country’s fashion houses have already begun to issue press releases about their new fall/winter collections.
But Castro’s Gabi and Eti Rotter will, as always, present the first mega show of the season this coming Sunday night at the Tel Aviv Fairgrounds. The Castro fashion show is usually in the morning, but this time around it has a new twist in that the whole country can watch it in real time.
Aside from the hundreds of people, including many celebrities, who’ve been invited to the fairgrounds, the show will be live-streamed on HOT, YouTube and Facebook from 9 p.m.
The 50 models participating in the show will be led by Castro presenters Gal Gadot and Yonatan Wagman. This is actually the second time Castro is showing its collection via the Internet, but it will be the first time the show will have such wide live exposure.
There’s another indirect Castro link with HOT. The Rotters’ daughter-in-law, actress and fashion model Rotem Sela, will host a new fashion show on HOT with the aim of finding the most promising stylist. Viewers will see the pregnant Sela gradually growing as the program progresses. One of the pleasant changes in modern life is that expectant mothers in the entertainment and modeling industries do not have to take time out or move behind the scenes when their conditions become obvious. Today it’s quite acceptable for female television anchors to keep broadcasting until they have to go into labor.
■ “Flotilla" has become an unsavory word in Israel, but the Young Leadership of World Mizrachi, in collaboration with Yavneh Olami and with the support of World Bnei Akiva and Young Israel, is working to make it kosher – at least for this coming Sunday, when the public is invited to board the Blue & White Flotilla. It will sail from Ashkelon Marina to Ashdod Marina in a demonstration of solidarity with Gilad Schalit and with Israel, as well as a salute to the Israel Navy.
■ Among the Tel Aviv celebrities who perform secular wedding ceremonies is violinist and comedian Nansi Brandis, who last week cemented the marriage of billionaire Meshulam Riklis, 87, and Tali Sinai, 52, who was previously married to singer Arik Sinai. The couple said their I-dos in Las Vegas more than a year ago, but decided to get married again in Israel where the Istanbul- born Riklis grew up, although he made his fortune in the United States.
A resident in the US since 1947, Riklis has frequently commuted between there and Israel and has investments here. Many years ago, in an interview with this writer, he was asked exactly how much he was worth.
“What difference does it make?” he replied.
“I can wear only one pair of shoes at a time.”
■ In the many years in which he was Channel 2’s “man in the North,” radio and television broadcaster Menachem Horowitz often used to get himself into some sticky situations, which he seemed to enjoy. Now that he’s living in the Center of the country and working on a program about economizing, he’s still getting into the heart of every situation. Thus, with lots of weddings coming up in the not-too-distant future, he decided to investigate the establishments specializing in Henna parties, which are traditional among non-Ashkenazi Jewish communities of the Middle East.
Most of the establishments specializing in Henna parties are operated by people of Moroccan background. Among those that Horowitz investigated was Marakesh, run by Mali Petito, who arranged the party for Hila and Gili Babai at the Fogata Banquet Halls in Rishon Lezion.
Because the event was being televised by Horowitz’s crew, Petito insisted that he, too, get dressed up in an authentic Moroccan costume. Even though it wasn’t Purim, Horowitz needed no prodding.