Naomi Shemer’s Archive Reveals a Softer Side
Crossposted from Haaretz
The 17 cartons that held Naomi Shemer’s private archive contained a small black telephone book and tucked in its pages was a note in which the popular songwriter jotted down an extra stanza to “Jerusalem of Gold” at the end of the Six Day War: Just four lines in all, plus numerous erasures and doubts. The first line was changed from “The wells are ours” to “are ours” and added “We returned to.” This very tiny adjustment, just one word in Hebrew, still reflects the national (and individual ) mood of the time.
There is no mention of Shemer’s use of a Basque song, a theft that came to light only years later, and there is none in the archive, or at least none the family agreed to publicize.
The note is just an appetizer. Shemer’s archive, recently moved to the National Library in Jerusalem, contains hundreds of recordings, drafts and personal letters, which reveal her character as far more complex than the tough image she liked to project.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO