Rank and File

FOLK ARCANA: Everyone knows John Denver's classic song about West Virginia, yet most don't know that Denver had never been there when they wrote the song. "They actually wrote it after looking at a post card," said Larry Fogel, who together with his wife Mindy will perform songs from the 60s and 70s later this month in Jerusalem. "Our entire show is filled up with stories like these," explained Fogel, who moved here from Florida at the age of 12. "When Paul McCartney writes a song, he usually creates the music first and then writes the lyrics," adds Mindy, who was born in New York. "So when he writes the music, he puts in filler words where later the real lyrics will be. Most of his filler words are food items - the filler for 'Yesterday' was 'scrambled eggs.'" Larry & Mindy are performing on November 19 at AACI headquarters. For more information call (02) 561 7151. (Raphael Ahren)

S SAY YES TO LAUGHS: Life in Israel is tough, says Betsy Lewis Yizraeli, the chairwoman of the Haifa English Theatre, adding that her only goal is to counterbalance the daily stress and make her audience feel good. That's why the theater chose to perform Tom and Jack Sharkey's "Just Say Yes!" "It's a comedy all about the joys and the difficulties involved in living a life based on the power of positive thinking," the Washington, D.C., native explained, adding that in the theater's 29th year, both veteran immigrants, such as Murray Rosovsky, appear on stage as well as new immigrants who are performing for the first time in Israel. Rebecca Dekanu, for example, who moved here recently from Oregon, will start her army service next month. Directed by Ruth Willner, "Just Say Yes!" will open next Saturday. For tickets call (054) 539 8196. Jerusalemites, too, will get a chance to laugh when the Center Stage Theater performs Shakespeare's "The Comedy of Errors," which will premiere this Thursday. The play, directed by Michael Feldman, tells the story of two sets of identical twins that were accidentally separated at birth. For more information call (02) 561 9165, ext 5. (Raphael Ahren)

S AN OBAMAVERSARY VISIT: Exactly one year after Barack Obama was elected president, his wife's cousin Wednesday visited the Jewish Agency absorption center in Mevasseret Zion. Rabbi Capers Funnye, Michelle Obama's first cousin once removed and the leader of the mostly African-American Beth Shalom B'nai Zaken Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation of Chicago, was in Israel for the first time - a guest of AIPAC. At the center, he received a briefing about Ethiopian aliyah and visited the mock mini market where immigrants are learning to integrate into Israel life. Funnye, who converted the Judaism some ago and later became a rabbi, said he was moved to see how Israel integrates immigrants from all over the world and especially from Ethiopia. According to a Jewish Agency spokesman, Funnye promised he would tell his cousin about his impressions of the center and of Yad Vashem, which he also visited. (Raphael Ahren)

S LAST CHANCE FOR JUSTICE: Prominent Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff will return from Jerusalem next week to his native New York to attend the launching of a new book about his most recent drive to bring Nazis and their collaborators to justice, which has earned him death threats and considerable hostility by several European governments over the years. "Contrary to common perception, the problem in many cases is not finding the guilty or evidence against them, but finding the political will on the part of government of countries where crimes were committed to bring the guilty to justice," said Zuroff, 61, who heads the Israel branch of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Zuroff will launch "Operation Last Chance: One Mans Quest to Bring Nazi Criminals to Justice" at the New York Tolerance Center on November 9, the 71st anniversary of the Kristallnacht pogroms and seven years after initiating Operation Last Chance - a public campaign to locate and bring to justice the worst suspected Shoah criminals before ill health or death spare them from potential punishment. (Cnaan Liphshiz)

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