Veteran actress Dvora Kedar dies at 98
Israeli actress Dvora Kedar, beloved by generations of movie and theatergoers, passed away at age 98 on Wednesday morning.
The scene-stealing Kedar often played tough but lovable mothers and grandmothers and she continued acting until she was well into her 90s, winning an Ophir Award for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of Mrs. Halperin, a wisecracking seen-itall assistant to a diva-like actress in the movie,
Birds, in 2015. It was her final film appearance and a meaty role for Kedar, in which she got to play opposite the Who’s Who of veteran Israeli actors, among them Gila Almagor, Miryam Zohar, Oded Teomi and Aliza Rosen.
But she is probably best known to Israelis of a certain age as Benji’s mother in the
Eskimo Limon (Lemon Popsicle) comedy series and she appeared in seven of these movies in the 1970s and 1980s. She also acted in the Oscar-nominated film by Menahem Golan, Operation Thunderbolt, which told the story of the Entebbe rescue.
Yftach Katzur, who played her son in the Eskimo Limon series, told Mako, “Dvora embodied the character of the ultimate Polish woman... but she was not like that [in real life]... She created an iconic character.”
Born in Lithuania in 1924, she came to Israel as a young child and studied acting at the studio of the Habima Theater. In 1949, she joined the Cameri Theater, where she starred in many plays, including classics, such as Garcia Lorca’s Blood Wedding and Arthur Miller’s After the
In the 2000s, she returned to the Habima Theater and performed in dozens of productions. The Habima Theater announced that a memorial ceremony would be held in the theater.*