New place for poetry Following major changes on the local neighborhood council and in the Lev Ha’ir Community Center, due to financial difficulties the Place for Poetry project, born and nurtured there for the past six years, is moving to the Musrara Photography School. “Although photography and poetry are different arts, art is still art,” explained Dr. Gilad Meiri, founder and co-director of the poetry group. Last week, the group hosted an evening at Café Avram in the Clal Center to launch the group’s third poetry review. “It is not adieu, since we are staying in Jerusalem,” said Meiri at the end of the poetry reading evening, “but it is certainly the end and the beginning of something.” What will happen to the popular One Square Meter poetry festival, which took place at Lev Ha’ir every summer, remains unclear.
Yad Vashem in Russian Guided tours in Russian of the museum at Yad Vashem have attracted hundreds of new and not so new olim from the former Soviet Union, thanks to a generous grant from the Genesis Foundation, created by a Jewish Russian philanthropist. These immigrants prefer to hear about this dark period in their mother tongue, even if they speak fluent Hebrew. “It is hard to face both the heavy story of the Holocaust and the use of a language we sometimes do not completely master,” explained a 17-year-old student from Holon. “I speak Hebrew with my friends and have no difficulty, but for this I felt I needed Russian. I don’t know why exactly,” he said.The Yad Vashem tours are part of a three-month course offered to any Israeli from the FSU who wants to learn more about the Holocaust. The first course started in December and will end on February 20. The organizers are already planning the next one, which will take place in the spring.
Warming their hearths As of next week, many Jerusalem seniors will receive a special grant of NIS 400 to pay for heating costs. Through a special donation from the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews and with the collaboration of the municipality’s welfare department, 4,000 volunteers will distribute the money – a total of NIS 7 million – on February 16 to 16,000 needy residents so that no elderly person who can’t afford to pay for heat will remain in a cold apartment. Among the volunteers will be the soccer players of the Beitar Jerusalem team