Grapevine: Discussing diverse Diasporas

French Ambassador Christophe Bigot will be addressing several hundred women at an International Women’s Day symposium at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque.

French Ambassador Bigot with President Peres 370 (photo credit: Olivier Fitoussi)
French Ambassador Bigot with President Peres 370
(photo credit: Olivier Fitoussi)
AMONG THE lecturers at a conference on Hungarian and Jewish Diasporas taking place on March 4 will be Hungarian historian Prof. Ignac Romics and other leading Hungarian and Israeli scholars, such as Pal Hatos. Hatos is the director of Hungary’s Balassi Institute, which held a similar conference in May 2011, paving the way for the Israeli conference that is being held at Tel Aviv University. The lectures presented at Balassi were translated into English and were compiled into a book, which will be available at the conference at TAU.
FRENCH AMBASSADOR Christophe Bigot will be addressing several hundred women at an International Women’s Day symposium at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque on March 7. The event, entitled Challenges for Women in Politics, is being organized by the French Embassy together with the French Institute and Ken, a Hebrew acronym for Women Power, which spells the word “yes.”
Only two female politicians are listed on the program – MK Gila Gamliel, a deputy minister on the Status of Women under the aegis of the Prime Minister’s Office, and rookie MK Yael German, who resigned from her position as mayor of Herzliya to run for Knesset on the Yesh Atid ticket.
CONFERENCES ON specialized subjects are not usually open to the public.
However, with Israel placing the emphasis that it does on brain research, coupled with the launch of International Brain Awareness Week, the Israel Society for Neuroscience, headed by Prof. Esty Shohami, is inviting the public to attend the opening session of its conference in the Bar-Shira Auditorium of the Naftali Building on the Tel Aviv University campus.
PURIM WAS not exactly a happy time for rock artist Rami Fortis. Last week, in the middle of a performance at the Barby Club in Tel Aviv, Fortis suddenly left the stage. A few minutes later, Barby proprietor Shaul Mizrahi announced that Fortis was unable to continue. Not long afterwards, a Magen David Adom ambulance arrived, and the singer was treated by paramedics before being whisked away.
IT’S AMAZING how many young people who come to Israel to serve in the IDF as lone soldiers are keen to join combat units. Among the rookies who arrived last year and asked to join the Golani Brigade were childhood friends David Aaron and David Cohen, who hail from New York and have done everything together since they were in kindergarten. At the end of last week, after completing their training period, the two, together with hundreds of other 18-year-olds, received their brown berets.
The parents of the two friends came from the Big Apple to watch the induction ceremony, which took place in the Galilee at the monument for Golani soldiers who fell in battle. Although their parents are naturally concerned for their safety and would have preferred them not to defer their university studies, they couldn’t help but be proud of the fact that their sons had chosen at so young an age to make a meaningful contribution to Israel’s security.
SEVERAL OF Israel’s musical talents of the future are being featured in Musicians of Tomorrow recitals throughout Israel and other parts of the world. They are supported by the Association for Encouraging Excellence of Young Musicians, which is arranging its second Pessah Musical Soiree to be held on March 27 at the Herzliya Pituah home of Bettina Blanga. The program will include works by Schubert and Mozart, as well as popular Israeli music and jazz recitals. There will also be a strictly kosher-for-Passover supper.
While there is no charge for the event, organizers hope that members of the audience will choose to give donations to enable the talented young performers to continue with their musical studies and look forward to becoming acclaimed musicians.

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The Musicians of Tomorrow is a nonprofit organization founded in 2006 in the Galilee by maestro Maxim Vengerov and Dr. Anna Rosnovky, who retired from the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, where she was first violinist. The aim was to find and nurture the musical talents of very young children living in poor socioeconomic areas of the North of Israel.
Now in its seventh year, the project has blossomed, and children aged six to 16 have performed in Vienna, London, Montreal, Geneva, Kazakhstan and Bulgaria, winning top prizes in international competitions. They have also played before President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and have made numerous Israeli TV appearances. An award-winning documentary film titled The Violinists featuring their lives has been shown worldwide. The older children are now being prepared for academia and to help teach the younger ones.