Nostalgia Sunday – Singing About Women

November 13, 2011 - 10:16 PM by

Last Friday, groups of women in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa and Beersheva, got together for an unusual purpose: to sing in public. The gatherings were organized to protest the trend towards gender separation in the public areas of religious Jewish neighborhoods — once limited to the synagogue it has now extended to buses and sidewalks — and its effect of late on the Israel Defense Forces. The halachic ruling forbidding men hearing the female singing voice took center stage this past summer when nine religious IDF cadets walked out on a performance by two male and two female singers. The cadets were subsequently punished but the issue remains on the table.

Tel Aviv resident Hila Bunyovich-Hoffman decided to take some creative action and, via Facebook and her blog, organized a street protest for women to sing public on 11.11.11. Initially, the event — Women’s Protest, Women Sing Out Loud — was only supposed to take place in Tel Aviv, but groups quickly formed in Jerusalem, Haifa and Beersheva.

A downloadable songbook was made available with backing from sponsors: the Masorti movement, which is affiliated with the Conservative Judaism movement; Noam, the Masorti youth movement; the Israel Religious Action Center (IRAC), the public and legal advocacy arm of the Reform Movement in Israel; Be Free Israel, a nonpartisan movement working on behalf of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state; and Israel Hollaback, the local branch of a world movement that uses technology to end gender-oriented and sex-oriented street harassment.

I attended the Tel Aviv event which was, in a word, mellow — more a sing-a-long, less a protest. The song selection was interesting; the once separate worlds of Israeli soft-rockers like Yehudit Ravitz came alongside Mizrahi singers like the late Ofra Haza. Now, 30 years down the road, both of their songs were sung with equal measures of fondness.

HaYalda Hakhi Yafa BaGan - Yehudit Ravitz

Shir HaFreha – Ofra Haza

This oldie, Yeshnan Banot (alternately translated as “There are girls” and “Some girls”) was given a new lease on life in the 90s by Israel’s favorite Eurovision entry, Dana International.

Yeshnan Banot – Lahakat HaNahal

Once song that was missed out: Eifo Hen, HaBahurot HaHen (“Where are they, those girls?). Written in 1966 and sung by Yehoram Gaon, it praised the women of the early pioneering days while simultaneously putting down their daughters — “Once they rode horses on high… / These days, they ride their husbands”, “Once they read Pushkin… These days, they get straight to business” — and so on and so on. Nontheless, the song had enough kitsch appeal to spawn a Dance version by girl group Sarafan.

Eifo Hen, HaBahurot HaHen – Yehoram Gaon

Eifo Hen, HaBahurot HaHen – Sarafan

Also missing: a raft of songs that would have Hollaback Israel hollering back for reinforcements from abroad. These include Jacky Mekaiten’s Shir HaMe’antezet (Song of the Tease), Ahavat Poalei Binyan (Construction Workers Love), and the infamous Kshe’at Omeret Lo (When You Say No) which begs the musical question: When you say ‘no’, what exactly do you mean?

Written in 1962, lyricist Dan Almagor revisited the song in 1992 to add a new verse: “When she says ‘no’, what does she mean? / She means exactly that, when she says ‘no’”. In a way, this shamefully sexist musical lyric became its antithesis. It is also a perennial hipster favorite: Kshe’at Omeret Lo was revived in the mid-90s by drag queen quartet Bnot Pessia, and was recently deconstructed by funk-rockers HaGroovatron.

Kshe’At Omeret Lo – HaGroovatron

Tags: • Category: Art, Blogging, Entertainment, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, News, Nostalgia Sunday, Pop Culture, Religion, Social Justice, tv 

Comments

3 Comments on Nostalgia Sunday – Singing About Women

  1. Judith Ronat on Wed, Nov 16th 2011 7:22 PM

    2. At the Women’s Sing in Tel Aviv, an announcement was made about a follow-up event. But I didn’t get the date and location.
    Could someone inform me (and others also) when and where?

  2. Israel’s Gender Wars: A Week of Changes – The Sisterhood – Forward.com » Simple Women on Thu, Nov 17th 2011 10:52 AM

    3. [...] events weren’t loud or angry. Participant Rachel Neiman described the Tel Aviv event as, “in a word, mellow — more a sing-a-long, less a [...]

  3. Nostalgia Sunday – Kol Israel archive open to all | ISRAELITY on Sun, Feb 5th 2012 11:01 PM

    4. [...] by Yemenite immigrants (the song was later made famous in a dance-trance version by the late great Ofra Haza), and of course, no Israeli musicological collection would be complete without accordion renditions [...]

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