Israel Gurion and me

Sometimes dreams do come true. Every summer, when I was growing up in Canada, my parents would send me to "Camp Massad", a Hebrew-speaking summer camp near Winnipeg. My fondest memory of the camp is learning Israeli songs (I still have the mimeographed "shirron" dating back to the early '60s), among them "Erev Shel Shoshanim", written by Moshe Dor. In 1976 I married Shulamit Sapir, a marvelous Israeli writer (click the link to see her poems in Hebrew and English), and several years later met Moshe Dor himself. The song "Erev Shel Shoshanim" was popularized by the duet called "The Dudaim", Benny Amdursky (now deceased) and Israel Gurion. Several years ago, I met Israel Gurion, through Rinat Emanuel, the singer who performed in a cabaret of my wife's poetry. Israel is one great guy, and I have since performed "Autumn Leaves" with him on several occasions. But the biggest thrill for me was singing "Erev Shel Shoshanim" with him in 2006 at the Givatayim Theatre, at the storytellers' festival organized by Yossi Alfi. The sound wasn't too great (you can judge for yourselves), but singing "Erev Shel Shoshanim" with Israel Gurion is a dream come true. Enjoy the links!!!

Rose, Rosen, Rosenberg

This morning I met with my good friend Jehudi and his wife, Iris. I don't get to see them that often as they live in Germany, so any opportunity to sit down with them and catch up is welcome.

Jehudi has recently launched an international program called the 'good rose' which entails handing a lovely little rose to someone as a gesture of goodwill, appreciation, peace and love.

Jehudi has given out thousands of these roses (he makes them in the Far East), and is now making them available worldwide at cost to promote world friendship. I am one of his many friends helping out in this worthy project.

During our coffee, he suddenly blurted out "Rose, Rosen, Rosenberg". As it happens, another friend of his, Sam Rosen, is also involved in the 'good rose' project. But what Jehudi didn't know is that this is the second Rose, Rosen, Rosenberg team in my life.

The first was back in grade 1 (Hillel Academy, Ottawa, 1957), when I joined my fellow classmates Dave (David) Rose and Frankie (Frank) Rosen to form an invincible soccer trio. All through grades one and two, whenever the three of us played on the same side, the rival team was doomed. We passed, we shot, we scored! We were seven-year old soccer terrors.

Our success and fame, alas, were short-lived. In the third grade, a new Israeli pupil, Naftali Malamud, joined our class. At recess, he showed us what any eight-year-old Israeli boy can do – play real Soccer! He nimbly outfooted us at every turn and put the Rose-Rosen-Rosenberg trio to terrible shame. Our only recourse was going back to playing Canadian football (we never did teach Naftali the rule…).