A very Bikel birthday

Koret Foundation President Tad Taube was serenaded in the company boardroom by Broadway star Theodore Bikel in honor of his 75th birthday. Bikel, who is a board member of Taube’s Foundation for Jewish Life and Culture, sent videotaped birthday greetings to the tune of “If I Were a Rich Man” (Bikel played Tevye in the traveling production of “Fiddler on the Roof”).

Susan Wolfe reports that the celebration took place at the Koret Foundation’s April board meeting where Taube was toasted and Board Chair Susan Koret announced a new grant that will bring klezmer musician Michael Alpert to the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco next year as the Taube scholar-in-residence.

Rabbi Sydney Mintz turned auctioneer when she and Randy Maycock led a successful — and very rowdy — auction at Brandeis Hillel Day School’s 2006 spring event, “A Night to Remember.”

Event chairs Dana Blum and Michelle Lerman, auction chair Suzanne Felson and Fay Ginzburg, BHDS director of institutional advancement, spent months gathering the items that raised $275,000 for financial assistance, the arts and Israel education at the school’s two campuses.

The event honored Laura Heller Lauder for her extraordinary contributions to the day-school movement. Among the sponsors of the evening were Nancy and Stephen Grand, Mimi and Art Gauss, Diane and Howard Zack, Fran and Bobby Lent, Eve Bernstein and Alex Gersznowicz, Barbara and Richard Rosenberg, Varda and Irving Rabin, and Roselyn Swig.

Six degrees of separation

Architect Irit Axelrod flew in from Israel to be Kelny Deneby’s guest at Jewish Vocational Services’ Strictly Business lunch last week. At her table was Rachel Carlton, of Chip Conley’s Joie de Vivre Hospitality. Casual chat revealed that Axelrod’s Israeli colleague Oren Bronstein is a partner/designer for Conley’s hotels. And architect Eileen Pereira, who designed the JVS offices on Bush Street, won the event’s door prize, which was donated by Conley. P.S. This info was delivered by JVS’s Sarah Pizer-Bush.