In Tel Aviv, Naomi Shemer sits and ponders her latest creation. For her, It was
a miracle which began on Hay 15, 1967. Some 3500 people had crowded into Nation
Hall In modern Jerusalem to attend the annual song festival commemorating
Israeli Independence Day.
For two months she wrote nothing at all. But as She went about her daily
activities, she thought about the Jerusalem she had known as a girl. She
remembered how her Polish parents spoke of their own birthplace of Vilna as
"the Jerusalem of the Diaspora" - as If every other city could only be second
best. She remembered the colors, the sounds, the silent mood of Jerusalem, her
childhood visits to biblical places, closed forever to her since 1948. She
thought, too, of a story from the Talmud in which the wife of the great Rabbi
Akiva lived in poverty for years so that her husband might pursue his studies.
When Rabbi Akiva became a famous and learned man, he rewarded his wife with a
"Jerusalem of gold," a gold brooch hammered out In the Shape of the ancient
city, to be worn as a symbol of her devotion.
Naomi Shemer took the Talmudic phrase, "Yerushala'im shcl zahdz," "Jerusalem
made of gold," and used it as the title for her song. It was to be a song of
nostalgia, an intimate regret for a city she had personally lost. "Jerusalem of
gold, of copper and of light," went the refrain: then quoting from the medieval
Hebrew writer, Yehuda Halevi, she continued, "Let me be a violin for all your
songs..." For the first time in modern song, she referred to the "ancient wall"
which Jerusalem "carries around her heart," and talked of the sights. Of the
old city, sights Jews of today would never see:
The water cisterns are dry,
Thc marketplace is empty.
We cannot visit our temple in the ancient city,
Where winds wall in the rocky
Caves.
Over the mountains.
We cannot go to the Dead Sea
By way of Jericho.
Your name burns my lips like a seraphim's kiss,
Let me not forget thee, 0 Jerusalem of gold!
At Nation Hall in Jerusalem, it was already close to midnight when the song was
sung. Fourteen other melodies had already been performed to full orchestral
accompaniment and polite applause. Then a young girl, discovered by the
composer herself only a few days before, and unknown to the general audience,
walked out on stage. Her only accompaniment was her guitar. As she sang
"Yerushalalim Sbel Zahav." the audience grew hushed. When the girl finished
there was a second of silence, then earsplitting applause for nearly seven
minutes. Naomi Shemerts personal sense of loss, it turned out, was every
Israeli's. "Jerusalem of Gold" had to be played once more, by popular demand.
This time - the second time the song had ever been performed - the entire
audience joined in the refrain.
On the same night that the Jewish audience was singing of s Jerusalem they
would never see, Gamal Abdel Nasser was moving his troops into the Sinai
Peninsula. In the days after Naomi Shemerts song was premiered, the soldiers of
Israel began to leave their homes and prepare for battle. They took with them
almost no personal belongings, but somehow - as the song was played over and
over on the radio during the early days of mobilization - they took the song.
Then the telephone calls and letters began. Soldiers wrote to toil Naomi Shemer
how they sang her song in the fields during the evening. Perforrors called to
ask if they might begin and end their programs for the military with her song,
since the soldiers inevitably requested St. A high member of the armed forces
called to Invite miss Shemer to sing her song for the troops stationed around
Jerusalem. Although she does not often perform, she accepted.
On Sunday, June 4, Naomi Shemer was called to one of the army's central command
posts, to be given a new troop-entertainment assignment. She was introduced to
some of the top military leaders in Israel, including Brig. Gen. Ezer Weitzman,
debuty to Maj. Gen. Itzhak Rabin, and Brig. Gen. Ariel Sharon, division
commander who was to lead one of the main thrusts of the Sinai campaign. Sharon
turned to her, and in his usual blunt fashion said, "It's important you should
come to sing for us." It was arranged for Naomi Shemer to go down to Sharon's
base in the Negev in Ezer weitzman's plane.
Late that afternoon the songwriter from Tel Aviv and the deputy commander of
Israel's armed forces few together to the encampment of Sharon's troops in the
south. Dinner that night consisted of tomatoes, cucumbers and eggs. Nobody
talked much. After dinner the young woman waited to be asked to sing, but she
was not. Manlly, Sharon's aide drew her aside. "The war will be tough," he
began. "And we have reason to believe it will be soon - very soon. We have
decided there will be no singing tonight." She said nothing. "Still," he added,
"you do not know how important it is to us to have your here. It's difficult to
exnlaln", ha continued, "but you Are aoet, a musician - and somhho wn wanted
someone with a soul to share this time with us."
Late that night, very late, the men moved out and, on Monday morning, radios
announced that war had broken out. Naomi Shemer set out to help in the only way
she knew. On Tuesday, she joined the troops outside Rafa, singing for them in
the evening. On Wednesday they moved to El Arish, where scattered infantry
fighting was still going on. She and several other entertainers were huddled
around a column built, ironically, by the Egyptians to commemorate their 1956
"victory" over the Israelis in Slnai.
Someone had a transistor radio. Suddenly an announcer broke into the music.
"The city of Jerusalem has been taken!" The program switched to Jerusalem
itself. Gunfire could be heard behind the announcer's voice, as he described
the paratroopers' block-by-block fight into the heart of the old city. Now some
of the troops were advancing toward the Wailing Wall, he said. Then, in the
background indistinctly at first, there was the sound of a song - or a hymn,
rather
- Sung by what sounded like hundreds of men, in hoarse voices, gasping for
breath between lines: "Yerushala'im shel zahav, veshel nechoshet veshel or Halo
lechol shiraich ani klnor." ("Jerusalem of gold, of copper and of light, let me
be a violin for all your songs!")
Naomi Shemer, crouched by the side of an Egyptian wall, listened to the
broadcast. She heard the announcer's description of the tanks and trucks coming
into the city, many of them plastered with banners reading, '1erushala'im shel
zahav." Tears ran down her cheeks. Then, in the middle of the sounds of battle
in El Arish and in Jerusalem, a very small, personal, professional thought
occurred to her: she would have to rewrite the second stanza of her song. There
was no longer any need for nostalgia: Jerusalem was theirs! Later that
evening, when the Israeli soldiers had gathered In their camp In the desert,
the young woman got up before them. "I shall sing for you a stanza I have Just
added to 'Jerusalem of Gold,' " she told them. "Because when I first wrote the
song, Jerusalem was just a beautiful dream for all of us. And now," she added,
"it belongs to us!" And as she soldiers listened, she sang:
We have come back now to the
Water cisterns.
Back to the marketplace.
The sound of the shofar is heard
From the Walling Wall in the ancient city.
And from the rocky caves in the mountains,
A thousand suns are rising.
We shall go now to the Dead Sea,
Go by way of Jericho!