Author: Kanayan Tamar

Bezjian: A Walk Through Dante’s Inferno

By Nigol Bezjian // January 12, 2014

Special to the Armenian Weekly

I was recently asked to help a journalist from a Prague-based radio
station do a report on the Syrian-Armenian refugees in Beirut. She
wanted to meet all sorts of folks – wealthy, poor, young and old – who
were trying to make a go of it with what was left from a fragmented
life. I took her to Bourj Hammoud – Little Armenia – where many of them
could be found, and to a restaurant serving the much-cherished Aleppo
cuisine.

An Aleppo street before the war in Syria.

We met one of the owners, a young, charming man with the freshly
acquired acuteness of a businessman. He quickly invited us to a table
and asked about our preferred drink from a list of American/global
soft drinks. We settled for cold bottled water with a local name,
though it was surely owned by some international conglomerate.

The journalist was originally from Stepanakert, the capital of the
Nagorno Karabagh Republic (NKR), which was born from a brutal war with
Azerbaijan that saw more than 30,000 killed on both sides. She had
been born in the midst of that war, during the unfolding of the Soviet
Union. And here she was covering a new war with its own displaced
Armenians.

While she was preparing her recording device, I had already begun to
engage this man, almost a third my age: Which neighborhood of Aleppo
was he from? How did he make it to Beirut safe and sound? What school
had he gone to?

His words took me back, step by step, to my youth in Aleppo.

He had attended the Haigazian kindergarten and elementary schools, and
the Karen Jeppe high school. When I told him that a generation ago, I
had lived in the same vicinity and had attended the same schools, a
sparkle shined in his eyes, followed by an unwilling smile of comfort:
He had at last met someone who could relate to his demolished past. It
was a moment of consolation between familiar strangers.

He asked when I had left our beloved Aleppo. During the 1973
Arab-Israeli War, I said, but didn’t hear his response as my mind was
spectacularly taken back to my own war and departure. I’m not sure how
the meeting with the young reporter took shape. I was fixated on the
notion that in this part of the world, every generation has had a war
and has felt its mark.

My generation witnessed the many internal upheavals that gave us
nothing but panic and fear every day, as coup d’états spread young
army conscripts like ants through our streets and alleys. Then we had
the 1967 Six-Day War with Israel, and the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when we
moved to Beirut and then the U.S., leaving my grandmother and aunts
behind. They, in turn, survived the Lebanese civil war, which began in
1975 and lasted 15 bloody years.

My grandmother had been a survivor of World War I, which gave us the
infamous Armenian Genocide. As a four-year-old, she was forced to walk
from her ancestral village in Sepastia through the scorching Syrian
desert of Der Zor, to the unwelcoming streets of Aleppo. All this,
with her younger brother, orphaned, thirsty, barefoot, and with hardly
any clothes on, witnessing horrors that made their generation
speechless for decades.

My father, who was born in Aleppo, lived through the wars of Syrian
independence from the French mandate, and then the internal wars over
control of the city among various armed groups, until it was time for
World War II. As a young man then, he joined the British Army. He was
first sent to Palestine, then Egypt, and eventually to Bologna to
fight to liberate Italy. He returned to Aleppo as a handsome,
war-experienced 19-year-old with limited knowledge of Italian, which
he had acquired from his girlfriends, and a mark of being westernized.

This same man, now with a wife and three boys, had to take up arms
again in the early 1960’s to defend Armenian neighborhoods when the
short-lived Egyptian-Syrian union was being dismantled.

`Every generation has his war in the Middle East,’ I heard myself
saying to no one in particular as I came back from my mental tour of
the past century.

The young restaurateur turned to me in a gentle move from the
reporter’s microphone, as if continuing his interview. `This is a
destiny we have, to live out wars and upheavals, genocides and
massacres in the Middle East. This century has been bloody for us, in
Egypt, Iran, Lebanon, Iraq, and Syria, where we settled after the
Turkish massacres and found a life from the start. Yet we have to deal
with being killed again and again. For a century now, we have not
found peace and calm,’ he said, sipping from his glass of a soft drink
overfilled with ice.

The ensuing, dense silence in noisy Bourj Hammoud was broken by his
conclusion, uttered in the humblest of voices: `Me and my other two
partners had a great life and spent every night in restaurants and
clubs in Aleppo, Damascus, Cairo, and Beirut. We were entertained as
if we were kings. Now in Beirut we work day and night to make our
customers feel like royals. This is the reversal of events, if you
survived at all. We are lucky and thankful, but thankful to whom and
why is what I do not know.’

I had no words, no ideas, on how to soften his pain when teardrops
fell from his eyes, while he insisted that we choose anything from the
menu as his guests. Only someone who has experienced a walk through
Dante’s Inferno and come back alive could offer such generosity.

The journalist had to make another appointment to complete her
interview, this time without my presence, my personal interjections
and musings.

This is just one story of too many to be told, and so it goes…

12 years ago world bid farewell to famous Armenian: life and activity
of Henri Verneuil

16:59, 11 January, 2014

YEREVAN, JANUARY 11, ARMENPRESS: `Time does not exist and Henri is
always in our hearts…’ – the incomparable star of the world cinema
Claudia Cardinale, having played the main role in the movie `Mayrik’,
told about the famous French Armenian film director Henri Verneuil. On
the
occasion of the 12th death anniversary Armenpress reports about the
life and activity of the popular artist.

Director Henri Verneuil was born Ashot Malakyan of Armenian parentage
on October 15, 1920, in Rodosto, Turkey, and his family fled to France
and settled in Marseilles when he was a young child. He later
recounted his childhood experience in the novel `Mayrik’ (The Mother),
which he dedicated to his mother and the Armenian Genocide and made
into a 1991 film with the same name, which was followed by a sequel,
588 Rue Paradis, the following year.

Verneuil is the director of the video of the song `To you, Armenia’
devoted to the Spitak Earthquake of 1988 (lyrics by Charles Aznavour,
music by Diran Garvarentz).

Verneuil enrolled in 1943 at the Ecole Navale des Arts et Métiers at
Aix-en-Provence, where he studied engineering. He then pursued a
career in journalism, working as the editor-in-chief of the magazine
Horizon in 1944-1946 and as a film critic for a Marseilles radio
station. In 1947, he had an idea for a short film set in Marseilles
and proposed it to the famous comedian Fernandel. The comic liked it,
and thus began a long-lasting partnership which produced such popular
film hits as Forbidden Fruit, The Sheep Has Five Legs, and The Cow and
I.

Verneuil also had an important collaboration with Jean Gabin, starting
with Les Gens sans Importance in 1955 and continuing with A Monkey in
Winter, Any Number Can Win, and The Sicilian Clan in 1969. The
commercial success of those films was invaluable to the filmmaker, and
opened the door to a number
of big-budget international productions, including The 25th Hour, Guns
for San Sebastian (both starring Anthony Quinn), and Night Flight to
Moscow starring Yul Brynner and Henry Fonda. Ironically, however,
these projects did not turn out to be as successful as his French-made
action thrillers with Jean-Paul Belmondo: The Burglars, Night Caller,
and Les Morfalous. Verneuil received an honorary César award in 1996
for the body of his work. He died in January 2002.

Armenian showman survives traffic crash

12:28 – 11.01.14

Grisha Aghakhanyan, an Armenian showman and TV anchor, survived a
major car crash three days ago but wasn’t seriously affected.

Speaking to Tert.am, Aghakhanyan himself confirmed the report, saying
that he hasn’t suffered a serious health damage.

`It was a big crash, but everything is all right now. I am at home and
didn’t go to hospital,’ he told our correspondence

Aghakhanyan said his car was damaged in the accident, adding that he
is hopeful to solve the problem soon.

Armenian News – Tert.am

ARMENIE
Le cognac arménien goûté au Parlement britannique

Une opération de marketing du cognac arménien `Ararat` a eu lieu à la
Chambre des communes du parlement britannique a rapporté le bureau du
ministère arménien des Affaires étrangères.

La dégustation a été organisée par l’ambassade arménienne au
Royaume-Uni et l’administrateur général de groupe inter-Parlement
Arménie-Royaume-Uni John Whittingdale.

Selon ArmStat, la production de cognac a augmenté de 10,1% à 15,49
millions de litres en Arménie entre Janvier et Octobre 2013, par
rapport à la même période de l’année 2012.

dimanche 12 janvier 2014,
Stéphane ©armenews.com

Cross Map, Christian Post
Jan 11 2014

How God Changed Norita Erickson’s `heart of stone’ and Gave Her a Love
for the Turkish People

By Dan Wooding/Assist Ministries On January 11, 2014

Southern California-born Norita Erickson of Kardelen Mercy Teams
() is based in Ankara, Turkey, where she
works with Turkish people with disabilities, and. she has an
extraordinary story to tell.

Norita is from an Armenian background and during what was called the
“Armenian Genocide”, an estimated 1 and 1.5 million of her people were
slaughtered or exiled by Ottoman soldiers and mercenaries, so she had
every reason to not feel any warmth towards the Turks.

But, after struggling with un-forgiveness and unbelief for a period in
her life, she said that God changed her “heart of stone” and gave her
a deep love for the Turkish peoples. She has lived there since 1987
with her husband, Ken.

Norita, who was born in Los Angeles to Armenian parents, moved with
her husband to Amsterdam, Holland, in 1979 to work with Youth With A
Mission. They wanted to serve Muslim guest workers and refugees who
had fled there to escape the problems in their home countries.

In an interview for my Front Page Radio program, she said, “While we
were there, we had our hearts broken for all the people who moved to
Western Europe from the Middle East and North Africa, and who had no
clue or idea who Jesus was, or that He loved them or died for them.
They included Berbers, Turks, Kurds, Iranians and Afghans.”

But really, the Turks were the last people on her mind when they first
began their ministry in Amsterdam, as the “Armenian Genocide” was
still on her mind.

“All of my forefathers came from Cilicia, in the southern part of
Turkey,” she said. “There was an Armenian nation there for hundreds of
years and, in the latter half of the nineteenth century and early part
of the twentieth century, as the Ottoman Empire [sometimes referred to
as the Turkish Empire or simply Turkey], began to disintegrate, this
Christian minority was decimated.

“It was the first known ethnic cleansing of the twentieth century.
Over a million and a half Armenians disappeared — moved out of their
homes towns and villages and led to Northern Syria where, today, we’re
experiencing so much violence and evil. My grandfather was a pastor
who had been revived in the latter half of the nineteenth century and
he trained as a protestant minister and was a teacher.

“The Lord spoke to him in the early nineteen-hundreds — 1914 or so —
and said, ‘You’re not going to die,’ and gave him a scripture from
Psalm 118 that he took to mean that he would not die. Although he went
through very many trials and tribulations, it’s quite miraculous how
he, and my family survived. All my great grandparents did not survive
however. They were killed in 1915.”

Why were the Armenians so hated?

Norita replied, “I believe that it was the political issue at the time
as there were Armenians who wanted to create their own nation state.
They were siding with foreign powers such as the British who had
troops in the disintegrating Ottoman Empire. So nationalism was on the
move — both Turkish, Russian and Armenian — and it was an
opportunity to wipe these people out and therefore take their land.”

I then asked her what she and Ken discovered when they first arrived
in Amsterdam.

She replied, “We had our hearts broken one Easter when we went to the
national outdoor Easter celebration and discovered a man pouring over
a little leaflet that had scripture and hymns in it. He looked
puzzled, so we walked up to him and I asked him, ‘Do you know what
this is?’ and he said, ‘No’. He explained he was from Egypt and so we
told him that we were celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ. He
then said, ‘Who’? And when we heard that, we knew the Lord had was
telling us that He wanted us to tell people like this Egyptian who
Jesus is.

“We prayed, and sought the Lord about this, and the specific people
group that we were to minister to, and shortly afterwards my husband
came to me and said, ‘I believe God is calling us to the Turks’. And I
said, ‘No, He’s not Ken. He could never call us to the Turks. They’re
under a blood curse. They’ve never admitted to the genocide, and they
killed all my great grandparents. They’re scary people. I could never
go there.’

“But Ken would not give up and said that we should keep on praying
until we ‘got on the same page’. So we prayed and every day. I got on
my knees, cried out to God and I said, ‘Show my husband that he’s
missed Your will and show him that he’s wrong’. But at the end of that
month, he came back to me with a testimony that he’d heard of a Turk
who had found new life in Jesus and who had stood up at a meeting in
Germany and asked for forgiveness for what his people had done to the
Armenians.

“And when I heard that testimony, God broke my heart. I began to weep
and I sensed the Lord speaking to me and say, ‘If I love them, how can
you not’? I knew that at that point I needed to cry tears of
repentance because I had put God in a little box. I had thought these
people were under a blood curse, that they could not be saved so I had
reasoned “Why would God call us to an impossible task?” And instead
the Lord showed me that nothing is impossible with Him and that He
loved them. So I repented of my hard heart and I asked him to give me
a heart of forgiveness, and within a very short time that’s what I
got. I started to talk to Turkish people in the city and just fell in
love with them. I found that I had so much in common with them. My
upbringing in an Armenian-American home had a lot that was in common
with the Eastern culture of Turks.”

During their seven years with Youth With A Mission in Amsterdam, the
couple took a year off during that time to go to Turkey to learn the
language and the culture.

“We lived in a village and it was very difficult,” said Norita. “I got
hepatitis and I had a baby girl to look after as well. I thought this
was a crazy thing and I would never come back here. When we got back
to Amsterdam, we could speak Turkish and then, we providentially met a
fundamentalist Muslim who had found Christ. I just happened to go to
his workplace and found him.”

She said that he was working at a sewing machine and when he heard
Norita share about God and knew that she was a Christian, he felt he
had to come and talk to her and her husband.

“He told me that he had ‘seen Jesus’ and that he had read the New
Testament. Through that relationship that we developed, we learned
about how village people understand Christ and the message of the
Gospel. For him, baptism was the once-for-all ‘ablution’. He was
‘washed’ by the Messiah.”

Then finally, in 1987, God led them to return to Turkey, and so with
their, by now, two children, they moved to Ankara, the capital city,
where Ken got a job teaching in a school, and she settled down to
being a housewife.

“I started English language book store in an upscale mall where we
were also able to sell Bibles in many different languages. And all
during this time from year to year seeking the Lord on where we should
go from there,” she said.

It wasn’t long before Norita discovered what God had planned for her:
help children and teenagers with special needs.

“I discovered that in that entire region, not just in Turkey, but
throughout the Middle East, North Africa, and all the way up through
Central Asia, that if you’re born with a disability or you end up with
a disability through an accident or sickness, you are considered
cursed,” she said. “Children are thrown away, hidden away, because the
families are afraid that they’ll be identified and stigmatized as
cursed. And if you’re cursed, nobody wants to marry your children, and
if you’re cursed you’re the rejected. You’re the pariahs of society.

“Turkey is a country of 75,000,000 people and 99% of the population is
Islamic, some more strongly Islamic, while others are more moderate.
But 17% of the Turkish population and that might include some
Christian minorities too, has a disability. That’s a very high
percentage. Part of it is also a belief in fate. In many Islamic
countries, they believe that God has written your whole life on your
forehead and nothing you can do will change it. So you don’t mess with
fate because that’s what God has given you as the test for your life.
We have discovered that this worldview is quite strong and
imprisoning.”

Soon, she said, her husband changed jobs and began making “appropriate
technology wheelchairs.”

Norita went on to say, “My husband was busy doing this, but I had no
interest as I was doing other things. I really didn’t understand what
it meant to serve the disabled until 1997 when I went into a state-run
institution and was shocked to find 400 children who had been sent
away to live in this place. They were tied in their beds, covered in
their vomit and bodily filth, and were screaming, as there did not
appear to be anyone there to care for them. No one appeared to know
what to do with them; the attitude of the care givers was that these
children were ‘cursed’ and they too were ‘cursed’ having to work in
such a place and so they would just do a little as was needed until
the little ones died.

“I was shocked and I ran out of that place and I cried out to God. I
was angry. I said, ‘How could You show this to me? I wish I didn’t
know what I just saw’. It was overwhelming – just like going into a
concentration camp. The Lord didn’t answer me at that point. But two
weeks later, I got sick and I was up in the middle of the might
praying; moaning and groaning, saying, ‘I wish my mom were here to
look after me and make me some chicken soup. Then, all of a sudden, I
became enveloped in a black cloud of isolation. I felt so lonely. I
started to cry and I heard the Holy Spirit saying, ‘You are weeping my
tears for these children.’

“And all of a sudden, I had a vision of a garden with trees and
animals and flowers and children sitting up and some standing up and
there were some adults there, laughing and enjoying the sunlight. The
Lord spoke to me and said, ‘I want you to do that.’ I was confused and
told Him that I didn’t know anything about helping disabled kids and I
was just a Bible teacher and child worker. However, the Lord convinced
me that He was in this, so within a very few days, I called another of
my Turkish friends who knew Jesus and asked this friend if she would
come out to the institution and said, ‘God has got something in mind
for us out at this institution. So that was the inception of Kardelen
Mercy Teams.”

Norita explained that Kardelen is the Turkish word for a snowdrop
flower. “In Turkey snowdrops are the first flower to emerge at the end
of winter when they respond to the spring sunlight.

“I saw these children, and our ministry, like this. These children are
hidden away, but they respond to the sunlight of God’s love as we
bring it into their homes and into these institutions,” she said.

“From 1997, we worked for 12 years as volunteers in the state run
institution and we went in five days a week, from nine to five, and
during that time, we brought in over a million dollars’ worth of goods
and services to these neglected children.

“Our view was that we loved everybody there and modeled God’s heart
for every human being, and in that process, several of the physically
handicapped young people came to the Lord. Many of them are with the
Lord today. Some of them I got out of the institution; one is now part
of my staff in Ankara, and we’re working in another two places with
care providers.

“Then, four years ago, we moved out of the institution and into the
community. We now have Kardelen Mercy Teams and our brief is to go to
the families who are most likely to send their children away to an
institution. We learned in the very beginning of our ministry that
there was a waiting list of 3,000 families to get their kids into that
hell-hole, and we decided to go the families and love on them and show
them they can work with their kids and show them that they are not
cursed. So that is what we do now.”

Norita said that one of the ways they do this is through birthday parties.

“We tell them that it is good that they have been born and we share
with the parents that they are blessed to have such children,” she
said. “In so doing, we break the stigma on them, as they often do not
have any relationship with their neighbors because they’re considered
cursed. We come in with balloons and a cake and do all kinds of fun
things. Sometimes we also bring along a specially-designed wheelchair
for the child, and we also bring diapers or food packages, and in the
winter, we also bring coal to heat their homes.

“When we provided these things, we see that people are changed. They
respond to us because we pray; we sing the Lord’s Prayer over them.
These are all Muslim people, but they have a heart beating and they
have a need to know the Lord just like anybody else.”

Norita then revealed that she has just released a book about the first
12 years of their ministry called “Cry Out,” which, she said,
“features the lessons that God showed us, the miracles He performed,
and the opposition we experienced.”

World Market Intelligence
WMI Company News
January 10, 2014 Friday

Russian NSD and Central Depository of Armenia to Strengthen Cooperation

The parties agreed to expand bilateral cooperation for the creation of
an efficient and reliable system of record keeping for trans-border
securities settlements.

According to the memorandum, the depositories intend to establish
close business relations and to organize the exchange of information
regarding securities received for servicing and changes in the
documents regulating the record keeping systems’ operations. The
parties also plan to exchange information regarding the technologies,
standards and development plans they use and their participation in
projects, working groups and other events of interest for both
depositories. In addition, the parties plan to conduct bilateral
consultations on all spheres of cooperation.

Eddie Astanin, Chairman of the Executive Board, NSD, commenting on the
development, said: “Development of strategic partnerships with central
securities depositories of the CIS countries is one of NSD’s
priorities as Russia’s central securities depository. Our joint work
in the Association of Eurasian Central Securities Depositories
contributes to it. We are sure that cooperation between Russia’s and
Armenia’s central securities depositories will have a positive impact
on the development of our countries’ financial markets. The signed
memorandum will allow us to facilitate access to information about
securities serviced by the Russian and Armenian CSDs. This will
improve our markets’ transparency for investors in both our
countries.”

Vahan Stepanyan, CEO, CDA, added: “We highly value expansion of our
cooperation with AECSD and, particularly, NSD, in the area of
cross-border settlement and securities account keeping, as well as
information exchange. We believe that the Memorandum will contribute
to strengthening of not only cooperation between the two depositories,
but will also increasing cross-border trading and investment flow
between our countries. Meanwhile, availability of material information
on securities and issuers to local and foreign investors will
facilitate investment decision making.”

In October 2011, the depositories signed an agreement on opening and
maintaining the NSD’s nominee account with CDA. This allowed NSD
clients to use safekeeping and record keeping services, as well as
settlement services, on Armenian issuers’ securities.

The Forward
January 10, 2014

The Secret Jewish History of Cher: 9 Reasons Why the Entertainer Is
Honorary Member of Tribe

By Seth Rogovoy
Published January 06, 2014, issue of January 10, 2014.

In the beginning, there was Cher. And the Lord saw that Cher was good,
and so He made Madonna. And Britney. And Gaga. And Miley. And then,
exhausted, spent, and depressed about twerking, He went back to the
drawing board and breathed new life into Cher… again.

We’re on the verge of yet another Cher comeback – these happen roughly
once per decade. Last fall, she released her first album in 11 years,
`Closer to the Truth,’ and this year she hits the road for `Dressed to
Kill,’ her first United States arena tour in eight years. It begins in
March and is scheduled to run through July, but will in all likelihood
continue well into the rest of the year and span other continents.

Cher has always been a master of invention and reinvention. Her career
spans the worlds of pop music, TV and film; she’s been a star as
one-half of the famous duo Sonny and Cher (both on the pop charts and
on TV), and one of the most successful solo female recording artists
of the past five decades (she’s the only artist to have a No. 1 hit in
every decade since the 1960s). But more than that, Cher is that rare
creature – a celebrity whose fame transcends her artistic and
commercial accomplishments (and failures) and in some way becomes her
greatest pop culture achievement.

While Cher is of mixed ethnicity, with a mother of Irish, English and
German descent and an Armenian father (she was born Cherilyn
Sarkisian), she is probably most often thought to be Native American.
She’s part Cherokee on her mother’s side, and she played up that
heritage in costume and in song quite a bit in the 1970s.

While Cher has no Jewish background, many of the key people in her
life – friends, boyfriends and collaborators – have been Jews. Her
somewhat exotic ancestry, her distinctive looks, and her assertive
independence have on occasion resulted in her taking on roles both in
her work and in life that are expressive of her affinity with Jewish
people and Jewish causes.

1) As is well known, in the 20th century the Armenian people and the
Jews shared a tragic history, both victims of attempted genocide. And
rounding out the Jewish, Christian and Muslim quarters of Jerusalem’s
Old City is the Armenian Quarter, where there has been a continuous
Armenian presence dating back to well before there were even such
things as Christians and Muslims, to say nothing of quarters named
after them.

2) Most Native American peoples came to this continent via the
Beringian land bridge from Siberia. Recent DNA evidence suggests that
many of those very early immigrants originally hailed from the Middle
East and Europe. Given the many Native American traditions, rituals,
beliefs and legends that mirror those of Judaism, some speculate that
some or all of these peoples were actually descendants of the Ten Lost
Tribes of Israel.

3). Much of the iconography of Cher’s solo hits of the 1970s was
inspired by her Armenian and Cherokee heritage, as well as her tough
upbringing, perhaps nowhere more successfully than in the hit song,
`Gypsies, Tramps & Thieves’ – her first solo No. 1 hit record – a
portrayal of life lived in the social margins. Gypsies, of course,
have long been cultural and historical cousins to Jews, living lives
in parallel, and sharing exile and diaspora, musical and professional
affinities, and common enemies among Nazis and other European
right-wing nationalists.

4) From her beginnings as a backup vocalist working for Jewish pop
impresario Phil Spector (on hit songs including the Ronettes’ `Be My
Baby’ and the Righteous Brothers’ `You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin”),
Cher has enjoyed great success singing the works of such great Jewish
songwriters as Bob Dylan, Burt Bacharach and Hal David, and her most
important hitmaker of the last three decades, Diane Warren. She’s
recorded more songs by Warren and Dylan than any other songwriter.

5) Among Cher’s many boyfriends, a few great loves of her life stand
out – Jewish music mogul David Geffen (before he came out as gay);
Chaim Witz, the Israeli-born rock bassist and vocalist better known as
Gene Simmons of the rock band Kiss; and Robert Camilletti, 18 years
her junior, who, although not Jewish, was known as `the bagel boy’ for
his stint working in a bagel bakery. While dating Simmons, Cher got
her first up close and personal experience of anti-Semitism when the
two were apartment hunting and a realtor confided to her that she
couldn’t show them certain luxury apartments because they were in
buildings where the co-op boards would have turned down Simmons for
being Jewish. Cher also famously attended a seder at Simmons’s
mother’s house on Long Island, during which she had to stand the
entire time because she’d just had her tukhes surgically nipped and
tucked.

6) While her marriage to rock singer and famous heroin addict Gregg
Allman was short-lived, it did produce a son named Elijah, as in the
Hebrew prophet. Elijah joined the family business; his first guitar
was a gift from `Uncle Gene’ Simmons.

7) Cher’s early mentors in her film career were Jewish directors Mike
Nichols (`Silkwood’) and Peter Bogdanovich (`Mask’), both of whom
directed her in award-winning roles that helped establish her as a
serious actress. Cher portrayed Jewish women in two dramatic roles: In
the 1990 film `Mermaids,’ she played Winona Ryder’s Jewish mother,
Mrs. Flax, and in the 1999 Franco Zeffirelli movie `Tea with
Mussolini,’ Cher played the film’s hero, Elsa Morganthal
Strauss-Armistan, a young Jewish-American widow and singer who saves a
group of expatriate Englishwomen from Italian fascists.

8) In a rare venture into contemporary politics in the 2012
presidential campaign, Cher used her considerable social media
presence on Twitter to defend Barack Obama against charges that he was
an anti-Israeli Muslim, even quoting Ehud Barak and Shimon Peres to
the effect that Obama was a true friend of Israel.

9) Cher kind of looks like my cousin Rachel.

Seth Rogovoy is a longtime contributor to the Forward, where he has
recently explored the kabbalistic underpinnings of such pop culture
figures as David Bowie, James Bond, and Aerosmith.

Renowned conductor Aram Gharabekian passed away aged 58

23:17 11.01.2014

Renowned conductor Aram Gharabekian passed away in the US today at the
age of 58, the Armenian Ministry of Culture informs.

Aram Gharabekian was born in 1955 in Boston. He graduated from the New
England Conservatory with a Master’s degree in Composition, and
continued his postgraduate studies in Musical Phenomenology at Mainz
University in Germany. He studied conducting with Franco Ferrara in
Italy, and was one of a few pupils of the legendary conductor Sergiu
Celibidache. He was also granted a fellowship to study composition
and conducting under Jacob Druckman and Leonard Bernstein at
Tanglewood Music Center.

>From 1997 until 2010 Mr. Gharabekian served as Music Director of the
National Chamber Orchestra of Armenia, leading this acclaimed ensemble
on tours to Greece, the United Arab Emirates, Cyprus, Switzerland,
England, Russia, Lebanon, Georgia, Germany, France, Canada and the U.S

Mr. Gharabekian was formerly the Principal Guest Conductor of the
Ukrainian Radio & Television Symphony Orchestra in Kiev. Following a
critically acclaimed guest appearance with the Ukrainian National
Symphony Orchestra in 1991, Mr. Gharabekian was invited by the
Ukrainian Minister of Culture to assume the position of Artistic
Advisor and Conductor.

During his tenure with that orchestra he conducted performances in
Kiev and on tour throughout Ukraine, and successfully regenerated its
artistic and organizational capacity. During his eight years as Music
Director of Boston’s SinfoNova Orchestra, Mr. Gharabekian won national
recognition for his innovative and enterprising programming, as well
as his critically acclaimed performances in major American venues,
including Carnegie Hall, the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and Boston’s
Symphony Hall and Jordan Hall.

As a guest conductor, Mr. Gharabekian has been the Principal Guest
Conductor of the Zagreb Philharmonic, and appeared with the
Sinfonietta München in Germany and Italy. He has also led the
Ukrainian National Symphony, the Ukrainian State Opera and Ballet of
Kiev, the West Ukrainian Philharmonic in Lvov, the Armenian
Philharmonic, and returned to America to conduct the Shreveport
Symphony and the Fresno Philharmonic.

Mr. Gharabekian’s concert recordings have been broadcast on National
Public Radio, and he has made numerous recordings for Ukrainian,
Croatian and Armenian Radio and Television, Boston’s WBZ-Television,
WBUR, WGBH and WCRB FM radio stations in Boston, WNYC FM in New York,
the Voice of America in Washington, and Bayerischer Rundfunk in
Munich. The recipient of the 1989 Lucien Wulsin Performance Award for
the best concert performance aired on America’s National Public Radio,
Mr. Gharabekian was also awarded the 1988 American Society of
Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) Award for Adventuresome
Programming. He was twice honored by the Harvard Musical
Association’s `Best Performance Award’ and his performances have been
singled out as `Best of 1985, 1989, 1990 and 1991³ by the Boston
Globe. He is the recipient of the Presidential Medal for his
contributions to the arts in Armenia.

Former Israeli PM Ariel Sharon dies at 85

January 11, 2014 – 19:20 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net – Former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has died
aged 85 after spending eight years in a coma following a stroke,
according to BBC News.

He was a giant of Israel’s military and political scene, but courted
controversy throughout his long career.

The head of the Sheba Medical Centre near Tel Aviv said Sharon had
died on Saturday, Jan 11 afternoon of heart failure.

PM Benjamin Netanyahu said he was a great warrior but a senior
Palestinian said his path was war and aggression.

Sharon fought in Israel’s war of independence in 1948, and from that
point until he slipped into a coma in 2006 it seemed there was hardly
a moment of national drama in which he did not play a role, BBC says.

The 85-year-old became PM in 2001 and in 2005 completed a unilateral
withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, barely a year before he suffered a
massive stroke.

His health had declined for the past week and a half, Sheba Medical
Centre Director Professor Shlomo Noy told reporters.

Aram Sargsyan advises Serzh Sargsyan to take the example of Vladimir Putin

January 11 2014

Last year-end, as expected, the road map of Armenia’s accession to the
Customs Union was approved. The document has not yet been published,
ruling party’s political figures are not even familiar with it, and
therefore, no one wants to make analysis or express views about the
sequence of moves, their logic, and trend. Even people who in
principle consider the political decision on accession to the Customs
Union acceptable. In the conversation with Aravot.am, the Leader of
the Democratic Party of Armenia, Aram Sargsyan, opined in this regard
that supposedly the road map should include technical issues in
compliance with appropriate documentation base elaborated by the CU
founding members, regarding the execution o obligations by the
Armenian side. To our question of whether, in your opinion, the
document, however, should be made public so that the public understand
the steps in sequence and logic, have the notion about expected
results, Aram Sargsyan responded as follows, `Generally, I think that
the authorities were obliged to present the rationale of their
political decision, including the characteristics and advantages. And
this should be done not only in the form of official message, but over
TV and speeches in detail, perhaps, via wide-scale press conferences
or being in touch with the people. This is the rule, after making such
a big and important decision people need to know what future is
expected to them, what kind of success can be expected to be able to
keep people within the country.’ With regard to transparency, our
interlocutor brings the example of the President of the Russian
Federation. We were interested to know of what `concealing’,
non-public practice of RA authorities in the EU Association process
and now in CU accession process hints at. Aram Sargsyan thinks that
the people in the administration system of Armenia either are not
familiar with the management theory in general, or it is their style,
they allegedly have received the majority vote of the public, which
they consider appropriately to conduct. `We know what we’re doing, and
your intelligence is not enough to understand what we are doing: we
will do, you will see. This is it.’ The DPA leader considers the
second option more likely. Democratic Party, in the near future, will
not only require from the authorities to act transparently, but will
introduce its own approaches to the actions, with various political
actions. Aram Sargsyan, to put it mildly, does not consider it a
normal phenomenon that not the President of the Republic, but an
expert is presenting an opinion about the CU accession, since the
differences between the weights of the opinions are obvious.
Especially since there are no broad public debates, there are separate
opinions voice from time to time. `Today, we have the unprecedented
emigration in Armenia, I’m not taking the 90’s, there were other
conditions there, and people are leaving because they really do not
see the prospect or are unable to handle other problems in their
lives. Now, people who are even more or less secured are leaving the
country. In any case, the reasons for migration are not explored and
the government does not seem to hurry,’ says our interlocutor, adding
that willy-nilly you begin to think that it is done for the
complaining mass to leave and the authorities followed by their
imagination are able to manage more easily. `There are hundreds of
questions that have no answers at this time. Even we can draw the
following conclusions from the findings published by the State
Statistic Service that the country is simply bleeding.’ Aram Sargsyan
makes a reference to the existing lines near the Russian migration
agencies in Armenia within `Compatriots’ program. People, whom they
accept now to submit the papers, are invited to come in the end of
May. `Now, imagine how large the number of emigrants is. Under these
conditions, the current government has no right to put the head
resting on the cushion and sleep, they cannot say anymore that we know
what we’re doing. And we see the result of your deeds. At least once a
month, the President of Armenia should come up with broadcast, present
his and the government’s plans, and show results.’ In fact, Aram
Sargsyan believes that Russia’s former Ambassador gave the correct
answer to the Prime Minister of Armenia by saying, take a good care of
your people, let them not go and instead of putting the blame on us,
decide on how to do to keep your people in your country.

Nelly Grigoryan
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