Israeli old timers are doing it for themselves

September 21, 2011 - 8:55 AM by David

Hanna Maron in a scene from her current play 'The Baggage Packer'.

It must be something in the water, or all that good, healthy Israeli chopped salad, but it seems that Israelis are keeping active longer and longer.

The obvious example is President Shimon Peres, who at age 88, is still working action-packed days, meeting heads of state and having no business being so energetic.

But two additional elderly sightings point to a trend. Veteran actress Hanna Maron has just been named by the Guinness World Records folks as having the “longest career as a theatrical actress.” The 87-year-old German born thespian began her career at age four, and now, the first lady of Israeli theater is acting in the Cameri Theater’s production of the play “The Baggage Packer.”

Before fleeing Germany with her family in 1933 for Palestine, she appeared in Fritz Lang’s M. By 1945, she had joined the Cameri, achieving star status as Mika in Moshe Shamir’s He Walked in the Fields. In 1970, she was aboard an El Al plane that was hijacked by terrorists, and following injuries during the attack, she lost a leg. It didn’t prevent her from continuing her acting career, starring in films like Aunt Clara (1977), The Vulture (1981) and Dead End Street (1982). Her son told AP this week that Maron was “amused and flattered” by the Guinness record.

Another Guinness record in the making perhaps is in at the hands of Alexander Zvielli, surely the oldest working journalist in Israel, and perhaps the world.

Zvielli, who celebrated his 90th birthday this year and recently received his new Government Press Office card, continues to come to work at The Jerusalem Post on a daily basis in the archives department.

According to the paper’s Greer Fay Cashman, Zvielli has worked for the Post for almost 66 years and knows its history and the history of the nation in encyclopedic detail.

Between Peres, Maron and Zvielli, those of us with a few more years to go have something to look forward to.

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