Gala-Goers Giddy Over Feinstein, JNF

“I’m a Michael Feinstein groupie,” admitted Betty White, who first met Feinstein in 1988 in London, where they participated in a Royal Variety Performance for the Queen Mother.

The Golden Girl watched with amusement and understanding as those who shared her enthusiasm for the entertainer swarmed around him at a reception after the Jewish National Fund Gala ’93 Tuesday evening at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

“I hope you have a panoramic lens,” one eager patron told a photographer as her whole family tried to squeeze in front of the camera beside Feinstein.

Earlier, the singer’s cabaret act of love songs and lullabies, interspersed with humorous anecdotes about composers and writers such as the Gershwins and Irving Berlin, played as intimately to the 2,500 in the audience as it might have in a small supper club.

Organized by the women’s division of the JNF, the event, hosted by Ed Asner, also included a performance by the Israel Founders Orchestra of Morton Gould’s score for the TV series “The Holocaust” and Pat Boone singing “This Land Is Mine,” lyrics he wrote for Ernest Gold’s theme song for the movie “Exodus.”

Gold’s wife, Jan, accepted the “Tree of Life” award for her husband, who was unwell. Carol Lawrence premiered “Here We Are,” a new song with music by Joe Harnell and lyrics by Arthur Hamilton. “The lyrics are now being translated into Hebrew,” said Lawrence, “because we hope it’s going to be considered as a new national anthem for Israel.”

“This evening made me think of a line from the Psalm, ‘There will be a day when the trees in the forest will sing,’ ” mused Samuel Cohen, executive vice president of the Jewish National Fund of America, who said that, although it is clearly a difficult time for fund-raisers, his organization has been doing “exceedingly well”--perhaps partly because of heightened awareness of the importance of ecology.

“Many of the issues discussed at the Rio de Janeiro environmental summit were what the JNF has been doing for over 90 years,” said Joseph Hess, the national campaign chair for the organization, which has helped Israel by rehabilitating desert, irrigating land and planting trees.