Miri Aloni: "I couldn't sing in the hospital. Every time I tried - the tears would choke me" - voila! culture

Miri Aloni (Photo: Ezra Patel)

Miri Aloni's "Song for the Eve of the Holiday", one of the most wonderful songs in the history of Israeli music, will soon mark the one-year anniversary of the moment it was revealed to the world at the singer and chorus festival that took place on the evening of Independence Day, May 7, 1973, at the Nation Buildings in Jerusalem.

The song was composed by Jacob Hollander, and was written by Tirza Ether in remembrance of her father, the poet Natan Alterman, who passed away three years earlier.

But his lead singer also had a significant role in the creation.

"Hanoch Hasson, who was then the producer of the Zemer and Pizmon festival, approached me with this song that included the melody of Jacob Hollander and other words," Miri Aloni recalls in a conversation with Walla!

culture.

"I told him: 'I like the song, it has beautiful lyrics, but I don't connect with them.' Wrote a poem in memory of her father. The relationship between them was strong. It's a poem of pain and longing for her father, Natan Alterman, who was a Tel Avivian bohemian character. Besides being a great poet, he was a very well-known Tel Avivian figure. She wrote 'Shir for a Holiday Eve' About the fact that the city is celebrating and 'you are not with it'. After the festival I sang this song to soldiers, when I was no longer a soldier. I went around Sinai and the Rama and appeared to the soldiers under fire. When I perform the 'Song for a holiday evening', I say that I dedicate it to all of them that they will not be with us on the eve of the holiday"

"People don't know that what will save them is giving to others."

Miri Aloni (Photo: Reuven Castro)

"In the first months after the amputation, I tried to sing and the tears would choke me. It's not tears of frustration. It's because I couldn't sing. I've never been a person who cries about himself in the part of 'Why did this happen to me?'. I never cried about myself , but when I tried to sing then - the tears choked my throat"

I remembered your wonderful "song for a holiday evening" at the beginning of September 2021, a few days before Rosh Hashanah Eve, when you were hospitalized in Ichilov due to a severe infection in your right leg, which led to its amputation.

As in the song written by Tirza Ether, outside there was a festive atmosphere of a holiday eve, and inside there was great pain and difficulty.

"Interesting, I didn't make this composition. When I think about it now, it was my 'song for the eve of the holiday' in 2021. The rehabilitation lasted six months. Even when I was in the hospital, after almost four months, Avi Shushan, a relative, came to me The public of the hospital, and said to me, 'Listen, we are doing Hanukkah here in the foyer of the hospital, where there is a piano, maybe you can come down from the room and sing us one Hanukkah song? So I said to him: Listen, I can't sing. All these first months I was Trying to sing and the tears would choke me. It's not tears of frustration. It's because I couldn't sing. Look, I've never been a person who cries at himself in the 'why did this happen to me?'. I've never cried at myself, but when I tried So to sing - the tears would choke my throat. Then I discovered that singing and crying come from the same place in the soul, and when I tried to sing - I couldn't, and then the crying and the pain came out."

"My father told me, let's do one song for us. I agreed, but I told him: listen, it's your responsibility. I might not succeed. I also told the audience that I might not succeed in singing, and that if I don't succeed in singing then they will sing in my place. Then he came My pianist, Maxim Svetlov, I've been with him for over 20 years, he played this wonderful piano there, and I started singing and I didn't stop for an hour. I just didn't stop. It burst out of me like a volcano. It was a crowd of patients and people who came to visit Among all the people who approached me after the performance, one woman approached me, told me she had cancer and added: 'I just got out of a chemotherapy session. Normally after this chemotherapy injection I can't move. And today, thanks to you, I danced.' It was the most exciting thing. This is the essence of Judaism, giving. People don't know that what will save them is giving to others."

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Miri Aloni: "The amputation saved my life. If I had delayed a day - I would have died"

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At the age of 73, a year and a half after her right leg was amputated from the knee down, Miri Aloni is active in the field of culture with an enormous and impressive intensity, which is hard to find even in young and energetic artists.

In the months of February and March alone, Aloni was photographed for a new film called "Novigod";

recorded three songs, two of which are protest songs against the coup;

She sang at demonstrations - from Tel Hai to Kiryat Ono;

Appeared together at the "Kobe's Lobby" fundraiser show where all proceeds will be donated to protest organizations in the legal revolution;

staged the show "Celebrating Life on One Leg", at the "Sounds of Winter" festival;

She was a guest at Sheigetz's concert at Hangar 11;

Appeared at the Shish Collar award ceremony for excellence in film and television;

participated in a tribute show to Yair Rosenblum;

And on Sunday you will participate in a show for Susie Miller's 70th birthday.

And this is a partial list.

When I express my admiration to her for her hard work, Aloni responds with a smile: "It was worth taking off a leg for that. Yes, I recovered. I'm alive. They took off my leg,

Even on one leg, Miri Aloni kicks more in her work than most artists in Israel.

In recent weeks, as mentioned, she recorded two protest songs against the coup d'état.

Two weeks ago she released "This Will Not Pass", written and composed by Kobi Luria and musically arranged and produced by Moshe Yosef.

The song opens with the words: "It won't go away! It won't go away!/ We'll stop it, it won't go away!/ It won't go away! It won't help!/ We won't let them shut down the light!/ Whoever thought of breaking with a flash of legislation/ the spirit Our public - they have no idea! / You forgot that the country is not only yours / The country is also ours - and we will fight for that!".

Aloni says: "I sing 'You have forgotten that the country is not only yours', and I mean those who try to abolish democracy. Those who sit and pull the reins and want to change everything in a flash."

"I am pained by what is happening in our country. But the word hope is engraved on our national anthem. Without hope we would not have lasted two thousand years of exile. Hope sustains us and me. My hope comes from the encouraging protest. As Kobi Luria accurately wrote in the song: 'After two thousand Years, we returned to Zion,/ and Imber then wrote us there in the anthem:/ To be a free people, maybe it's stupid for you/ But for us a free people is the main clause!'' Jews have always been the scapegoat in exile. Now that we finally have a state, we will not give up About our freedom. There is a consciousness of freedom. Democracy equals freedom. We all deserve rights. This consciousness is inherent not only in human nature but also in the nature of every living being. And Kobi wrote beautifully: 'You have forgotten that the people are strong'. And the people really will not let this happen."

"Yes, I recovered. I'm alive."

Miri Aloni (Photo: Shuka Cohen)

"We are in a terrible situation. I see and participate in the hundreds of thousands of demonstrations in the streets, because suddenly everything starts to be questioned. It's terribly scary. I don't understand how it doesn't scare those who try to scare us. How it doesn't scare those who undermine our cohesion in this way , Netanyahu and his partners"

Aloni recorded another protest song with Ofira Gluska last month.

This is a cover version of the song "Et Hiroti", originally performed by Chava Elberstein, written and composed by George Mostaki and translated by Yoram Teharlev.

The performance of the two, who were the stars of the Nahal band, includes the original melody with new lyrics by Yoel Riffle. The song includes, among other things, the lines: "You're my dearest friend, you're an eye-catcher/ You will not be robbed by the people of Sharara, not even by politicians." , and also: "This is my anger that does not depend on anything, not on a bloc, interest, or bargaining/ She will overcome all manifestations of tyranny, and there is no debate about that." The

"We are in a horrible situation. Horrible. We are a small country, surrounded by enemies, that fights for its existence every day, hour by hour. After 75 years, we are still in doubt, and all the while terrorism scares us and dominates our lives. We need to protect it, I am a scion of the Hashemer family And I grew up aware that we need to protect ourselves. We need to build a country here, and be strong. And the situation now is terrifying. I see and participate in the hundreds of thousands of demonstrations in the streets, because suddenly everything starts to be questioned. It's terribly scary. I don't understand how it's not scary The one who tries to scare us. How does that not scare the one who undermines our cohesion in this way, Netanyahu and his partners."

"Just as Christians have before the era and after the era, so my life is divided into 'before the murder of Rabin' and 'after the murder of Rabin.' I have the country.

I think that the great rift in the nation began to crack with Rabin's murder.

The crack then came to light.

This nation has always been Israel and Judah, it has always been more or less cut in two."

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"Just as Christians have before the era and after the era, my life is divided into before Rabin's murder and after."

Aloni (Photo: Reuven Castro)

At the rally in support of peace and against violence on November 4, 1995, at the end of which Yigal Amir murdered Rabin, you performed "Song for peace" with Rabin.

Other first-rate artists, such as Shlomo Artzi and Shalom Hanoch, refused to perform at the same rally.

Unlike you, even today there are great artists whose voices we haven't heard at all or we've heard only faintly expressing themselves about what's happening.

"I, like all my artist friends, still make a living from this profession. I once said that it's a shame that artists have to make a living from their art, because it often causes them to do things that they are not satisfied with or don't really like. Art, apart from being an artist's personal expression, It is a social mirror. Art does not change a situation, it only presents a mirror in front of reality. So with all due respect to the great creators, with all due respect to satire, it is just an exhaust, an exhaust pipe for the gases that accumulate inside us. This is not what will change. What will change is the protest, what is happening in the streets".

"What is happening is simply frightening and depressing. People who are at the top of the defense system and maintaining our security, who saved and are saving the country and we cannot do without them, the most elite people there are, such as pilots who risk their lives for us, say the wisest sentence: we are not ready anymore To fulfill this unwritten contract, which we drafted and signed on our own initiative, ours with the state, for the sake of the state. We are no longer ready to fulfill this contract, under these conditions. I can completely understand that."

"God forbid. Although reality made me live for three and a half years, when I was almost 50 years old. But I never had dreams of actually living abroad.

I am a scion of the generation of idealists.

I say humorously - the generation that dried the roads and paved the swamps.

And I continue."

"With all due respect to the creators, what will change is the protest, what happens in the streets."

Miri Aloni (Photo: Reuven Castro)

"One of the things that torments me the most is that I had to stop taking care of my husband out of necessity and reality separated us and he spent the last year of his life in a nursing home in Kfar Saba, in places where it is forbidden to go, because there it is a one-way street"

Last June, the producer and actor Shmuel Omani, to whom Aloni was married from 1984 until his last day, passed away.

They gave birth to two sons, who in their youth were sent to a boarding school in Tel Aviv.

After the couple tried to return them to their home, they got into a conflict with welfare, at the height of which Omani was convicted of threats, insulting a public servant and contempt of court.

On the day of his death, Aloni wrote on her Facebook page: "It is with great pain that I announce here that today my beloved Molik Omni, handsome, a man among men, my friend in life for the past 40 years and the father of our two sons, passed away, passed into a world that is all good. His soul is in heaven. Shoulder bread Shoulder to shoulder with Meir Herzion, actor, director, man of the book, man of truth, honest as a ruler."

This week, Aloni tells us: "The difference between us was 16 years, and in the last few years I really fed him, took care of him and did all the medical procedures he underwent, from open heart surgery to eye surgeries. I just didn't leave him, until the day before they took me to the hospital I was I was close to him and took care of him. There was this moment in the hospital, when they brought us together, and I said to him: 'You know, I can't continue to take care of you anymore.' He spent the last part of his life in a nursing home in Kfar Saba, in places where it is forbidden to go, because there it is a one-way street. I light a soul candle every day, and I have a big picture of him on the wall."

"I just didn't leave him."

Miri Aloni and her husband Shmulik Omni, who passed away last year (photo: screenshot, Facebook)

After all the peaks you have conquered, what other dreams do you have?

"I hope I can continue to record new songs, and I also hope to continue acting. Today, the younger generation knows me mainly thanks to the role given to me by the genius Adir Miller. When I often meet with young people, they ask me to say 'Adir', in the voice of Adir's mother. When they Hearing this 'awesome', they roll over with laughter. This week I had the last shooting night for a feature film called 'Novigood', by a young screenwriter and director named Anat Eisenberg, a new film in the genre of short films, 20 minutes long. There are three actresses , and I play there a woman who is older than my current age, she is 85 years old and I am 73 today, so the make-up artist had to make me older. So I hope to continue to move, make people laugh and be happy. Because it is really a great privilege to be given, this ability."

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