Ofra Haza "Khay" Israel
In my book, Ofra Haza is a Eurovisionary, she is arguably the best known Israeli singer of all time, has a Grammy Award nomination, and a European hit with Im Nin'Alu. But I knew I wasn't able give Ms. Haza the justice she deserves.
So, for the first time, I'm turning over the blog to one of my closest friends, Jennifer Lopushok. Jennifer is a linguist, writer, religious scholar, and my personal reference for anything on the Near East. She's also an active blogger herself, her site The Beauty of Eclecticism, where she writes about whatever comes to her mind and Commonplace Margins, where she gives you a daily quote that inspires her.
Most importantly, she's also the person who introduced me to Ofra Haza and has an abiding love for both Haza herself and her music.
So without further ado, here's Jennifer on Ofra:
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Ofra Haza…the sound of the finger of God stirring the winds across the desert sands of Arabia. One of the most haunting voices of the 20th century. An international sensation who, like so many great performers, was taken from those she had hypnotized long before her time.
She was born in Israel, a Jewish woman with an incredible vocal gift. A modern Israeli she may have been, but her very existence revealed an ugly truth hidden within the political tapestry of her birthplace. Ofra Haza came from a family of Arab Jews. The Yemenite Jewish community is one of the largest and oldest on the Arabian peninsula, and though Ofra Haza was born in Tel Aviv, she sang in classical Gulf Arabic—so difficult even for other Arabs to master—with as much facility as she performed in Hebrew.
Many outside the Jewish community are unaware that the Jewish world is divided into two major groups (as well as by many other criteria that will go unexamined here). The majority "Ashkenazim" originated as a mix of Jewish expatriates to Eastern Europe, and native Eastern Europeans who, when monotheistic religions began to sweep through the area, bucked the trend of choosing Christianity and converted to Judaism. Those Jews who had managed to remain in or near Palestine after the Romans sacked Jerusalem, the people of whom those who romanticize "descendants of 12 desert tribes" are actually thinking, are now known as the "Sephardim". (The word is a variation on the Hebrew word for "Spanish," and originally referred only to Jews who had emigrated to the Iberian Peninsula, but in modern Judaism, it encompasses all "eastern" Jews.) As a Yemenite Jew, Ofra Haza fell firmly into the modern definition of a "Sephardi".
The core of the original Zionist movement and the first generations of Israelis in the modern state were not Sephardim, but Ashkenazim. Many were non-religious socialists, born and educated in industrialized European nations, and they have long considered their Sephardic co-religionists who dwell in and around Israel as a sort of "country cousin." The Sephardi’s role in Israeli film and other forms of media in the first decades of the modern nation-state was much the same as that African-American musicians and performers once filled in entertaining white Americans in minstrel shows. When Ofra Haza made the decision early in her career to bring the Yemeni Jewish folk music of her roots into modern Jewish pop culture, it was a labor of love. But whether or not she intended it to be, it was also a pointed political decision.
Nevertheless, Ofra Haza was not only deeply connected to her regional roots; she was also deeply Jewish. She represented her nation at the Eurovision Song Contest in 1983, achieving second place with the song, "Khay" (Life). The song "is revealed to be a metaphor for ‘the nation of Israel’ ([though it] is ambiguous as to whether this refers to the modern state or the global Jewish community) surviving various attempts at destroying it."She united the divided sections of Israeli society, and Jews around the world came to consider her the voice of her people, not least because she insisted on fusing numerous musical styles without apology. She performed versions of classic Jewish tunes, perhaps most prominent among them "Yerushalayim, Chel Zahav," ("Jerusalem, City of Gold"), that are beloved even now, more than a decade after her death.
She was born in Israel, a Jewish woman with an incredible vocal gift. A modern Israeli she may have been, but her very existence revealed an ugly truth hidden within the political tapestry of her birthplace. Ofra Haza came from a family of Arab Jews. The Yemenite Jewish community is one of the largest and oldest on the Arabian peninsula, and though Ofra Haza was born in Tel Aviv, she sang in classical Gulf Arabic—so difficult even for other Arabs to master—with as much facility as she performed in Hebrew.
Many outside the Jewish community are unaware that the Jewish world is divided into two major groups (as well as by many other criteria that will go unexamined here). The majority "Ashkenazim" originated as a mix of Jewish expatriates to Eastern Europe, and native Eastern Europeans who, when monotheistic religions began to sweep through the area, bucked the trend of choosing Christianity and converted to Judaism. Those Jews who had managed to remain in or near Palestine after the Romans sacked Jerusalem, the people of whom those who romanticize "descendants of 12 desert tribes" are actually thinking, are now known as the "Sephardim". (The word is a variation on the Hebrew word for "Spanish," and originally referred only to Jews who had emigrated to the Iberian Peninsula, but in modern Judaism, it encompasses all "eastern" Jews.) As a Yemenite Jew, Ofra Haza fell firmly into the modern definition of a "Sephardi".
The core of the original Zionist movement and the first generations of Israelis in the modern state were not Sephardim, but Ashkenazim. Many were non-religious socialists, born and educated in industrialized European nations, and they have long considered their Sephardic co-religionists who dwell in and around Israel as a sort of "country cousin." The Sephardi’s role in Israeli film and other forms of media in the first decades of the modern nation-state was much the same as that African-American musicians and performers once filled in entertaining white Americans in minstrel shows. When Ofra Haza made the decision early in her career to bring the Yemeni Jewish folk music of her roots into modern Jewish pop culture, it was a labor of love. But whether or not she intended it to be, it was also a pointed political decision.
Nevertheless, Ofra Haza was not only deeply connected to her regional roots; she was also deeply Jewish. She represented her nation at the Eurovision Song Contest in 1983, achieving second place with the song, "Khay" (Life). The song "is revealed to be a metaphor for ‘the nation of Israel’ ([though it] is ambiguous as to whether this refers to the modern state or the global Jewish community) surviving various attempts at destroying it."She united the divided sections of Israeli society, and Jews around the world came to consider her the voice of her people, not least because she insisted on fusing numerous musical styles without apology. She performed versions of classic Jewish tunes, perhaps most prominent among them "Yerushalayim, Chel Zahav," ("Jerusalem, City of Gold"), that are beloved even now, more than a decade after her death.
Ofra Haza "Yerushalayim, Chel Zahav"
