Chava Alberstein talks about love of Yiddish, autobiography at fest

Singer-songwriter Chava Alberstein, considered one of the foremost voices in the Israeli national soundtrack, spoke about and read from her autobiography, “Canaan Alley,” during the final night of the Metula Poetry Festival, held on Thursday in Jerusalem for the second time after war damage in Israel’s northernmost town.

Alberstein, 78, accompanied by her editor, Haim Weiss, and musician Yair Dallal, was relaxed and comfortable with the sold-out audience in the Mishkenot Sha’ananim auditorium.

Dallal punctuated the conversation with songs from Alberstein’s past, sometimes accompanied by the singer as well

Alberstein noted at the end of the evening that “it’s easier to sing for two hours than to speak for one hour.”

The mostly older audience laughed in appreciation.

“It’s still the same Chava,” said Weiss. “It’s Chava the singer, sitting on a box” — a reference to earlier wars when she would perform for the troops –“and singing songs and people listening to her.”

“Canaan Alley,” Alberstein’s book, 226 pages in all, is named after the Kiryat Bialik street where Alberstein grew up, where her family settled after emigrating from Poland when Alberstein was three years old.

Alberstein and Weiss spoke extensively about her first language, Yiddish, the songs she sang in Yiddish, taught by her mother, and the resistance she faced singing in the language, which for many in Israel bore the stigma of exile.

“I loved Yiddish songs,” said Alberstein. “I saw that there was life in those lyrics. I wanted to respect my environment where Yiddish was spoken.”

As she grew up and discovered her voice, Alberstein learned the early Israeli folksongs and understood that she was expected to perform those songs, and not the Yiddish tunes of her childhood.

“Israelis didn’t know Yiddish,” she said.

Alberstein told of arriving at a kibbutz to perform, where the coordinator asked her, “You’re not going to sing in Yiddish, right?”

Singing in Yiddish was seen as a kind of stain, said Alberstein, but one that she learned to handle, as she would often perform most of her songs in Hebrew and a few in Yiddish.

“It took me time to figure it out, but I never stopped; Yiddish is part of my identity,” said Alberstein.

Alberstein and her husband, filmmaker Nadav Levitan, eventually produced the 1995 documentary film on 20th-century Yiddish poets, “Too Early to Be Quiet, Too Late to Sing.”

Alberstein then set some of the poems to music with the American band The Klezmatics, which became the album “The Well.”

The singer spoke about her early days in the Israeli music scene, surrounded by luminaries such as Matti Caspi, Naomi Shemer and Dan Ben-Amos, and her sense that she didn’t quite belong in the Tel Aviv scene.

“I felt like a tourist from another land,” she said.

Alberstein told of going to her very first audition, at age 14, at a Haifa contest for talented teenagers.

She went with her mother, and after singing her first song — which wasn’t in Yiddish — the three judges — “Jewish Agency types dressed in blue shirts,” said Alberstein — asked her to sing something “more Israeli.”

Alberstein has recorded more than 60 albums during the decades of her long career. She spoke about her first meeting with Simon Schmidt, a physically imposing American record executive from Columbia Records, which had set up its first office in Israel.

Alberstein recalled that she went to the meeting with her brother and that Schmidt sat behind a huge desk, in an office building set near the Holon dunes.

“I felt like we were in America,” she said.

She signed with Columbia, and Schmidt immediately sent her on a photo shoot for her album cover with fashion photographer Peter Herzog.

Alberstein had no idea who Herzog was, and when he told her to do her makeup, all Alberstein had was a black eyeliner in her bag.

“I was very young and youth is the best makeup,” said Alberstein.

Always known for her activism for human rights and Arab-Israeli unity, Alberstein spoke briefly about the difficult period in which the country finds itself, referring somewhat obliquely to the contempt of the government for its citizens, but not making specific mention of the ongoing war or the 48 remaining hostages held in Gaza.

Toward the end of the evening, Alberstein spoke about five new songs she recently put to music in a new EP, some of them inspired by the words of the Israeli poet, Amira Hagani.

“Touch the light, touch the truth, don’t be afraid, you’ll be complete,” said Alberstein.