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Hello and welcome to the National Library in Givat Ram in Jerusalem,
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the place in which a large portion of our cultural treasures, if not all, are stored.
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Allow me to tell you three things you didn't know about...
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Naomi Shemer.
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The archive of the poet and composer Naomi Shemer was donated to the National Library in 2010 by her family.
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Leafing through the archive teaches that a song,
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even if it is an inalienable asset that belongs to us all,
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does not burst into the world as a finished product
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there are updates, adaptations, and changes here and there.
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For example, take this draft of Lu Yehi
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a song that Naomi Shemer wrote during the Yom Kippur War
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Originally, as this small deletion testifies,
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Naomi Shemer intended that this song be sung to the tune of the Beatles' "Let It Be."
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Naomi Shemer said: "I thought that Israel deserves to have its own "Let It Be."
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However, later on,
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when her husband, a poet in his own right, Mordechai Horowitz,
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read the words of the song,
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and identified the great latent potential within them,
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He said to her: "Naomi. these words deserve their own tune."
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And so Naomi Shemer adjusted the words here and there, and also composed a new tune.
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Today, we don't sing "Lu Yehi" (sung in the tune of the Beatles),
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but rather, the adapted tune that we know,
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in the version that Chava Alberstein and the "Gashash" made famous.
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Naomi Shemer's most famous song is of course
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Jerusalem of Gold.
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The song was written after being commissioned by Teddy Kollek, Mayor of Jerusalem,
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a little before the reunification of Jerusalem in 1967.
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As such, it was written about the divided Jerusalem.
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However, during the Six Day War,
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Naomi Shemer stayed with the members of the Nahal Entertainment Troops in Al-Arish, in Northern Sinai.
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They heard a broken radio broadcast, apparently, in my father's voice, about the reunification of Jerusalem.
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An emotional Naomi Shemer, took out her personal diary, that I hold here in my hand,
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a diary from the (Hebrew) year 5727,
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and on the pages of the diary, she scribbled the fourth verse of Jerusalem of Gold.
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Here are the emotional words,
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and next to them, even the phone number of an acquaintance, Willy Elias.
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The song "Jerusalem of Gold" turned very quickly into a sort of second anthem.
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Yet, in typical Naomi Shemer fashion, it also incited a war.
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Allow me to read you a paragraph from a letter that tells us about this war,
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taken from the Naomi Shemer Archives at the Music Department of the National Library.
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The letter was written by Yitzchak Bayer from the shop "Bayer Music Needs" in Haifa, in Beit HaKranot.
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"Ladies and gentlemen", Mr Bayer writes
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The typewriter was created not only to write clearly,
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but also to allow writing multiple copies.
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The person guilty of this kind of strange writing is of course Mrs. Naomi Shemer.
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And what is her crime?
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It's very simple.
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It is that she excited our country with her new song "Jerusalem of Gold."
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Our business was paralyzed for two weeks.
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Afterwards, it started to pick up a little.
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Yesterday, a few customers appeared, and what do they demand?
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The music for "Jerusalem of Gold".
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And what can poor me do?
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People are actually screaming at me,
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""Why aren't you making sure that they are printed?" And, "Maybe it's already been printed?"
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In short, tomorrow, Sunday, I am really scared of opening our shop without the music of the aforementioned song.
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What will I do?
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I think I'll send my wife by herself to be in the shop, in the hope that they will not dare hit a woman.
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Mr. Bayer begs Naomi Shemer, and anyone else, to print the music as quickly as possible,
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at least 50 copies for the shop.
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And ends "I urgently request that you do this quickly,
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so that innocent blood is not shed; that is, my blood."
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Respectfully, Yitzchak Bayer.
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All these items, and more wonderful wonders,
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can be found here, in the National Library.
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You are always welcome.