This picture, taken on Dec 12th at Don's Thursday session at Adath Israel, shows the session paying tribute to Becky Peretz in her last regular appearance at an Israeli dance session in the Philadelphia area. Becky is moving back to Israel. What better time, we thought, for this web site to chronicle this unique individual.

In this we have a bit of an advantage. One of our editors rode with Becky through New Jersey enroute to Hilulim 2012 right after Hurricane Sandy had made its appearance in the area. His brief remembrances of conversations in the car allowed us to delve a bit into Becky's background for this script understanding that no web script can give a complete picture of anyone. Now, we think through one recollection that we can pinpoint where Becky was born and that is Petach Tikva which is close to Tel Aviv. In addition, she told our editor that when growing up in another community she was always asked if she and the choreographer Avi Peretz were related since he grew up in that same community. As far as we know, Becky is not related to this choreographer but in looking at Avi Peretz's biography, this would be Bat Yam, Israel, somewhat below Tel Aviv.

Whether this is true or not, Becky arrives in the United States in the 1970's and eventually makes her way to State College, Pa. You may know this as the home of the Pennsylvania State University affectionately known as Penn State. Initially Becky joins the faculty there as a part time instructor of Yoga. Yoga is one of several passions of Becky and Becky's classes in Yoga are so popular that she ends up as a full time physical education instructor on the faculty.

After a while another of Becky's passions is passed on to students, a passion that we know very well in the various Israeli dance sessions in the Philadelphia area. Becky begins a Monday night Israeli dance session at Penn State geared to the student body. In this she is not alone. Other colleges throughout the country have similar dance classes including MIT and the University Of Penna whose Wednesday Israeli dance class we have documented on this web site. What may be unique per the Penn State class is that Becky is a faculty member whereas in other schools groups of students take the lead in running these types of classes. To the left is an article from the Daily Collegian, an independent publication serving the PSU student body, indicating Israel week with Becky's contribution that Monday (sometime in 1985) pertaining to Israeli dance. Whether or not the class began by popular demand from this occasion or had already been running, Becky continues to teach this class in addition to her scheduled Yoga classes. A recent picture of the HUB, where the classes were held, is shown adjacent to the article.

Budget cutbacks eventually affect the campus and Becky finds that her Yoga and Israeli dance classes suffer cutbacks and cancellations. Sometime in the early 90's Becky leaves the center of Pennsylvania for the west, Pittsburgh. While we cannot find any organized Yoga class featuring Becky as a teacher, she pursues her love of Israeli dancing by establishing an Israeli dance class at Beth El, a synagogue situated in a suburb of this city, Mt Lebanon. But, it is also in Pittsburgh that Becky pursues another of her passions: fabrics and especially fabrics that she can manipulate into women's clothing. Becky establishes her own line of clothes under the Shani label in 1993. Shani is the transliteration into English from Hebrew of the color Scarlet.

Through Shani, Becky establishes a reputation for expression of color throughout her line of clothing. But, it is in her hats and scarves that Becky really makes a statement. Here we see some of her hat and scarf creations as found on the Internet.

While running the Beth El Pittsburgh sessions, in association with Cherie Maharan's session at the Shadyside JYC, Becky would lead the Pittsburgh contingent to various Israeli dance workshops. At one particular yearly workshop, Becky was able to join her love for dance with her love for Yoga. She became the Yoga instructor at the yearly Hora Aviv dance workshop which took place between 2001 and 2009 at various locations around the Philadelphia area during Memorial day weekends. This website can personally attest to the benefits of a Yoga session led by Becky the morning after a long night of Israeli dancing. With a "Namaste" to end these morning Yoga classes, participants were ready for tackling the next 12 hours of Israeli dance instruction. Her tenure as the Hora Aviv yoga instructor ended with the demise of the camp after 2009. While we do not have any pictures of Becky or her Yoga class at any time at Hora Aviv through the years, we present some photographs taken during that final camp on Memorial Day weekend 2009 held at Wesley college in Dover, Delaware.

In 2010 Becky moved to the Princeton area to be near one of her daughters and grandchildren. Pittsburgh's loss was the Philadelphia area's gain as Becky became a regular at both the Thursday night and Sunday night sessions. From this Princeton area she continued going to various Israeli dance workshops. This web site has pictures of her at Toronto 2011 and Hilulim 2012. These pictures pertain to Toronto 2011 when she was one of five Philadelphia based dancers participating at this festival. Left to right is a group shot first of the Phila based dancers and then with several others who had come up to Canada from the United States.

In the case of Hilulim, in November 2012, we do have some pictures presented here of Becky doing a partner dance. By her nature it seemed clear to this web site that Becky generally enjoyed partner dancing better than circle dancing (or at least what we have seen in the Philadelphia sessions that she frequented). No doubt, a similar situation was occurring during that weekend of the camp. And for Hililim, she did have plenty of opportunity to do many partner sets as dancing went through the night.

Of course it was always possible to run into Becky as she was dealing with her other passion, the Shani fashion line. This web site covered one such incident when Becky was a vendor at the Germantown Arts and Crafts fair on November 24th, 2010 taking place at the Germantown Jewish Centre. The Art fair was an all day event utilizing the facility's Marcus auditorium which meant that the weekly Sunday Morning Israeli dance session had been moved into the Tenim canteen for that day. This web site decided to follow several Israeli dancers as they went from dancing in the morning to browsing the fair in the afternoon. Who was in the first booth we happened by? None other than Becky! So, we were able to see first hand the aesthetics of her designs that you can read about on the web. You can see the hats in the background in some of these pictures taken that afternoon. Of course, this being an Israeli dance site, you also have pictures of Becky and some of the local Israeli dancers.

And while we are commenting on Becky's fashions, we should indicate that it is common for the Arts and Fair events where she vends to award mentions as to the presentation of the vendors. Competition is in several categories and is very competitive. This pamphlet represents the winners of the 2012 Allentown Art festival which takes place annually during the second weekend in June in the Buffalo, NY area. As we see here, for the festival in 2012, Becky was the second place winner under the Creative Crafts(soft) category right bottom. You can find references to other such placements for Becky and her Shani line of clothes although specific web listings of winners by the underlying organizer, in this case the Allentown Village Society, are difficult to isolate and display.

And so, this leads us to the night of Dec 12th, 2013 when Becky said goodbye to 34 years of accomplishments in this country to return to Israel. Thanks to Rich Janis (pictured top right with Becky), who has been Becky's dance partner for some time, a celebration was held at Adaph Israel that night. Rich brought some food (as did Becky) and took these pictures and the group picture shown at the top of this script. How better to celebrate Becky's accomplishments than a night of Israeli dance. And so we say thank you, Becky, for being you and bringing your passions along with you to enrich all of us. We hope you find similar success as you return to Israel.