What’s sauce for the goose is obviously not sauce for the gander.
Even though he would not be the first man to head the Knesset Committee for the Advancement of the Status of Women, there has been a hue and cry of protest within the Knesset and beyond in opposition to the appointment of Yisrael Beytenu MK Oded Forer as the committee’s chairman. The status of women, their rights to equal opportunities and equal pay and their need to be protected from violence is not a party or a gender issue. It is a social issue.Today, there are many hi-tech areas in which more human resources are needed. If women are getting less pay than men for doing the same job, why should they bother to fill the void? This applies to other areas of work as well. Do women who object to Forer honestly believe he is unable to adequately present this argument in the quest for change? The very women who are objecting are the ones who call for women to be included in all-male executive committees “because women bring a different perspective to the table.” Well, so do men in an all-female enclave.
■ EVERY SUMMER, popular hassidic (ultra-Orthodox) singer Avraham Fried comes to Israel from America for a series of concerts, the largest and most important of which are in the Sultan’s Pool in Jerusalem.
He intends to be back this coming August and is already advertising in religious publications with a sign that says ‘Tradition is tradition.’ Hopefully, these will be live concerts and not Zoom events.
Over the past couple of months, entertainers have appeared on the stages of empty concert halls – which must be a terrible sensation – but standing on the stage of an empty Sultan’s Pool would be even more agonizing, especially to someone who invariably attracts a full house.
■ WHILE THE debate is still going on about closure of schools, sizes of classes, wearing of masks in schools, maintaining social distance and the possible absence of summer camps, the Australia-Arava partnership is going ahead with summer camps and is looking for Australians in the 18-24 age group who are living in Israel and have leadership experience in working with primary school-aged children. The camps will take place from July 9 to August 6. The successful applicants will receive a generous stipend, free accommodation, a food allowance and tours and activities in the area.
Applications close on June 20. Applicants should write to arava@zfa.com.au■ THE BEGIN Heritage Center in Jerusalem has resumed its lecture series on the prime ministers of Israel, beginning naturally with Daniel Gordis, who authored a comprehensive biography of Menachem Begin.
The series will explore the decision-making challenges confronting Israel’s various prime ministers, and lectures will be delivered by leading political experts, academics and biographers.
The lecture on Begin will take place online at 8:30 p.m. on June 17.
This will be followed on June 24 with a lecture on Yitzhak Rabin. Next, on July 1, (a very propitious date so far), will be Yitzhak Shamir, with Shimon Peres on July 8, and Ariel Sharon on July 15. It will be interesting to see whether the series will also include Ehud Olmert and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The address for registration and receipt of link to the Zoom meeting on Begin is: https://lp.vp4.me/mxt4■ FOR PEOPLE who prefer something a little lighter, yet nonetheless serious and who are interested in fashion, Liras Cohen Mordechai, the founder of Fashionating by Liri, a social enterprise dedicated to telling Israel’s fashion history up to the present time while supporting and empowering Israeli designers, will be interviewing Sharon Tal, who revived Israel’s iconic fashion house Maskit, and is its head designer.
After three years in London working with Alexander McQueen and heading his embroidery department, Tal, who had previously worked for Lanvin in Paris, returned home to ensure that the child that she was waiting to give birth to would be a sabra.
Much as she was looking forward to motherhood, she also wanted to keep her hand in with high fashion – but she didn’t particularly want to work for someone else.
Her husband Nir suggested she contact Ruth Dayan, who was the founder of Maskit, to get her opinion on reviving the company which had been dormant for twenty years, but whose reputation had lingered.
Dayan was more than enthusiastic – and all the rest is history.
Ruth Dayan, now 103 years old, and then aged 96, was so keen on the project that she accompanied Tal to Russia for a showing. Maskit’s opening revival show in Israel was in March 2014, just over a week after Dayan’s 97th birthday.
In the interim, Maskit has regained both its image for uniqueness, and its following.
Tal is a walking advertisement for her own eye-catching designs, which are mostly all about shape. Maskit has become so popular in Israel and abroad that Tal is frequently on the local and international lecture circuit.
For people not familiar with Tal or with Maskit, this will be an opportunity for an introduction. The program is scheduled for June 15 at 9 p.m.
Registration is at: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZcldOGpqDwqG9zRSD6dQRrQ2w3L6p4naoEXAfter registering, participants will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
■ THERE HAVE been increasing reports of heightened incidents of antisemitism and other forms of racism in academic institutions. Many of the antisemitic incidents, which to a large extent are essentially anti-Zionist or anti-Israel, are instigated by Palestinian students and/or faculty members. But there are many incidents which do not derive from these sources and pose ever greater challenges to organizations and individuals that are fighting antisemitism on campus.
On June 28, Jerusalem Post columnist Prof. Gil Troy will join fellow academics Rudy Rochman and Andrew Pessin in a Zoom revelation titled “Unmasked: The Anti-Israel Movement in Academia.” The event, at 12:30 p.m. EDT, is co-sponsored by Honest Reporting Canada and Hasbara Fellowship Canada and can be accessed at: zoom.us/j/92391098899 ■ REGARDLESS OF what she does that may temporarily offend some sectors of Israeli society, nothing sticks to supermodel Bar Refaeli, who last week celebrated her 35th birthday.
Other than for a short break during her adolescence, Refaeli has been modeling since she was a baby, has also been a successful actress and television hostess and has run several business enterprises.
Last week, she was sentenced to community service for tax evasion, while Mama Tzipi, who is Refaeli’s business manager, took the rap for jail time at Neve Tirza Women’s Prison.
Few women in the world are as consistently close to their mothers as Refaeli is to her mother Tzipi, herself a former model, and still glamorous at 65. Mother and daughter bear so striking a resemblance to each other that they sometimes look like sisters.
While she doesn’t outwardly give the impression of the stereotype Jewish mother and has three sons in addition to Bar, Tzipi Refaeli’s devotion to her daughter totally conforms to that of the stereotype Jewish mother, especially her willingness to pay the toughest part of the price for Bar’s taxation misdemeanors, in going to prison for 16 months, though it’s doubtful that she will serve the full sentence.
Tzipi Refaeli has always been protective of her daughter. Although Bar made her international reputation by modeling sexy swimwear, on the home front, even though she was well developed as an adolescent, her mother would not allow her to model sexy swimwear until she was in her late teens, and even then, many of the shows in which she appeared were held around the pool in the Refaeli family home in Hod Hasharon.
When it was time for Bar to join the army, Tzipi arranged a fictitious marriage with a family friend so that Bar could be exempt from army service.
Though temporarily deprived of a glamorous lifestyle, Tzipi Refaeli may follow the examples of some other well known personalities who have spent time in prison. She may become a model prisoner, and thus have her sentence reduced by several months. She may decide to write a book, or she could do something more constructive.
When Arye Deri was in prison, he taught illiterates how to read.
Bar Refaeli’s community service could include working in a hospital laundry, taking care of senior citizens in nursing homes, serving the needy in soup kitchens, cleaning toilets in public facilities, and any number of other menial tasks.
In the past, Refaeli has been engaged in volunteer work related to children facing life threatening illnesses, environmental campaigns, animal welfare, civil marriage and gay rights.
But there’s a difference in doing something voluntarily, and having to carry out a court-imposed sentence. At this stage, it’s still too early to tell whether mother or daughter got the short end of the stick.
The impact that Refaeli has had world wide, can to some extent be estimated in the volume of reports of her sentence in leading international publications.
In a sense it was preferable to reading about annexation and the occupation – and certainly a change from reading about coronavirus statistics.
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