Along the Milky Way

Only once during this interview does Chava Alberstein find it difficult to speak directly and openly, or is reluctant to do so. It happens when she is asked why she hasn't performed in Israel all these years - from the end of the 1990s until that same festive performance at the Noga Theater in Jaffa two-and-a-half months ago, after which she embarked on a round of concerts here and abroad that refuses to come to an end, due to pressure from the public. "I have no answer," she says. "I have no answer as to why I came back, just as I have no answer as to why I stopped."

But there must be some reason.

"No," she says, laughing. "There really isn't ... I really can't answer that question. These are internal things that happen inside you: a desire to do one thing, a desire to do something else, a desire not to do anything. Not everything is subject to explanation and profound analysis. These are very intimate things between you and yourself."

So avoiding performances had nothing to do with political protest, as many believed? Is that a baseless, irrelevant idea?

"Everything is relevant. I imagine that everything is relevant. One of the nice things about silence or inactivity is that they are open to many interpretations. Speech is unambiguous; silence has many aspects, which you yourself discover over time."

An 'Oy' of pleasure

Chava Alberstein is actually happy to cite one motive for returning to the stage, which she says was of great importance. It is related to "Shvil hehalav" ("Milky Way"), an album of lullabies that she is now putting out. "When I worked on the CD I was in contact with many young people, 20- and 30-somethings, and I was surprised to discover how curious they are about my work. That was very flattering to me and gave me a desire to return to the young people, to perform in front of them. Some of them haven't had an opportunity to see me in performance, so here, now they do."

"Milky Way" was originally supposed to be the direct continuation of "Lemele," the wonderful album of Yiddish songs that Alberstein recorded early last year. "After 'Lemele' I felt that an album of lullabies in Yiddish was in order. When I told people about the idea, they emitted such an 'Oy' of pleasure that I understood how moved people are by the idea of lullabies. And then I thought: Wait a minute, recording lullabies in Yiddish is such an obvious thing. There's a kind of softness, warmth, sentimentality about Yiddish. Anyone who doesn't understand the language thinks that every song is a lullaby. It's much more interesting to try to take this temperament and bring it to Hebrew.

"In recent years Hebrew has become somewhat rigid, sarcastic. The songs of recent years, both the melodies and the lyrics, have something technical about them, a kind of technical sentimentality, an industry of sentimentality. It's not really moving, it's a kind of game: I pretend that I touch you and you pretend to be moved. Something unnatural, lacking innocence. I was searching for this innocence, and maybe deep inside I'm afraid that adults have lost the ability to relate to this sort of temperament. With children it happens in the most natural way."

Alberstein herself has two grandchildren, Itai, 4, and Yael, 1-year-old. "This fact certainly contributed to my desire to become involved with lullabies," she explains. "I don't recall such an outburst of love, not even when I was a mother. How a little creature can occupy your thoughts 24 hours a day." Does she sing to them a lot? "Of course, what do you think? I sing and chatter all the time."

When she began work on her latest album Alberstein knew immediately that she was not interested in lullabies of the type she calls "songs of the complaining mother" - "depressing, frightening lullabies in which the mother pours out her heart and tells the child, 'Father has left home, there's no money, what will we do, but sleep, sleep'" ... I wanted songs of another type: lullabies of a mother who feels sufficiently strong and confident to calm her child. This is not to say that there won't be war or that there won't be an earthquake. I looked for things that were clean, not frightening, and not full of wisecracks either. Something aesthetic."

She found what she wanted in the poems of Adula, the name used by Sabina Messeg in her poems for children. "It was as though I had sent out vibrations to the world, saying: 'World, I need you.' Sabina simply called and asked if by any chance I wanted poems. I didn't know her personally, but I had read poems by her to my daughter when she was little. She is really a poet - not one of those 'aunties' who also writes poems. So I asked if she had lullabies, and she said, 'Lots.' And they were exactly what I was looking for. That simplicity: 'I'm in bed / the bed is in the room / the room is in the house / everything is all right.' I fell in love with the poems, and the melodies flowed."

The songs in the album, which are interwoven with passages that are read out, take place in the children's room at bedtime, and alternately reflect the awareness of the child and of the mother. Alberstein calls the scene of these events "a protected space": "This concept came into my head, apparently because of the last war. One of the amazing things in our word laundering is that we take expressions that have depth and content, and use them for military purposes, for campaigns of conquest. Defensive Shield, Autumn Wind, Rainbow. In Israeli discourse a protected space is a geographical location, but a protected space is also something spiritual - a space where the outside world and its ills can't hurt you.

"You can create this space in music, in words. It's a space that embraces you, consoles you, distances you. A space that is something to hold on to. We leave here, we come in there, and all this at a time when the surrounding world is in a state of disintegration and destruction. When I sang the songs, I actually saw this space - which for the child is a thing of utmost importance - before my eyes. And incidentally, it is always important to mention that not all children have a home and a room with a bed. We have to appreciate what we have."

Not a prophet

Alberstein not only composed the music to the songs in the album: For the first time in her career she also arranged all of them: "A real lullaby should not be arranged at all, the mother sings and that's it. Even I when I sing to my grandchildren, I don't run to bring my guitar. That's why I wanted the arrangements to be minimal."

One of the surprising instruments that are heard in the album is the qanun, a type of zither, which in one of the songs performs the melody together with Alberstein's singing. "That's one of the things that I like about Eastern music - that the orchestra plays with the singer," she says. "There's something noble about that, like a painter with a brush who completes the painting with one stroke. It's not overdone, and it suits a lullaby. I also knew that I wanted a lot of recorders, so that there would be a kind of tribute to the shepherds' songs of Emanuel Zamir and Matityahu Shalem that I love so much. Such heartwarming songs, so Israeli, if I can say that. I no longer know what is 'Israeli.'"

Does she think that children born in the 21st century will be able to relate to lullabies that have echoes of old Hebrew songs and Yiddish melodies? "I have no doubt. Recently a mother grabbed me in a children's store, pointed to her baby who was crawling on the floor, and told me that she had bought 'Lemele' for her, and that the baby listens to it in the car and is happy. Music is such an emotional, spontaneous thing and, as opposed to adults, children don't care whether or not something is fashionable. If they like it, they like it. Of course the parents have a critical role in the sense of exposing the child to certain things and filtering out others."

A year ago Alberstein strongly criticized television programs such as "A Star is Born" (the Israeli equivalent of "American Idol"), but she says she's far from being an apocalyptic prophet. "I'm not one of those who is afraid that the end of the world has arrived and that emptiness will dominate everything," she explains. "Look how much wonderful music there is in Israel in areas where there is presumably no chance of commercial success: jazz, ancient classical music. Suddenly young people are studying opera. So is this the end of the world? It's not. We mustn't be afraid, as the Hasidim say. Just don't be afraid.

"The danger of shallowness and superficiality was always there; it's not a malady of recent years. The elite, the people who wanted to educate and to make others listen, have always had to struggle. What I most dislike is the semi-intellectuals, the semi-intelligent, those who try to find favor with both sides - to be ingratiating to the populist things and to preserve their cultural dignity. When I don't like something - and usually what I don't like, oy vey, becomes a smash hit - I don't say: 'Look, it's legitimate.' Of course, it's legitimate. The fact is that it happens. But don't expect me to defend it. I defend my culture, I believe that it has an audience, it has ears."

What is your culture?

"One with rich Hebrew, content, observations of the world, attention to the world. Not everything is about me. Most of the songs today are 'I love you, you love me, I left you, you left me.' Why not expand our sights? It's possible. There's no end to things."

'Not a robot'

This feeling - of there being an infinite number of materials, and that it's important to create as much as possible - has been the reason why the recent period has been one of the most productive in Alberstein's career: During the past four years she has issued four albums. "I really don't understand the artists who take a 10-year break between one recording and the next," she says.

Because of the endless work in the studio, she didn't count the seven years during which she stopped performing in Israel as a slowdown, and certainly not as a time when she disappeared. That is why she was surprised at the enthusiastic responses to her return to the stage. "I didn't think they'd throw tomatoes, but I didn't imagine that the response would be so favorable. I thought that people would be less surprised and excited, that they would accept me as a matter of course. I was happy to discover that I was mistaken." Not that there is a standing ovation every time she appears onstage, as happened at her debut performance, "but there is always a certain excitement and joy, and I'm very flattered. Like a good Jew, I tell myself that it can't go on forever."

How did you decide which songs to sing at the performances, from your huge repertoire?

"After 40 years of performing you have experience, feelings that guide you in your work. And I also wanted to convey the feeling and the subjects and the temperament that reflect who I am today. I didn't need biting songs like 'Had gadya' [an anti-war song]. The feeling is of something more relaxed, less ironic, less cynical, less critical. But it's possible that two months from now, that will change."

What do you think about the claim that you sing too many new songs at the expense of the old favorites?

"I have nothing to say. That's what attracts me. That's my mood. It's very difficult to satisfy everyone, and I have a feeling that if the evening consisted only of the good old songs and nostalgia, people would leave dissatisfied. Didn't anything happen during all those years? Don't I change and renew myself? Not everything is nostalgia for what was. That's how it is with me: When the whole business of the beautiful and forgotten Land of Israel starts to become too saccharine - I run away a little.

"And there's another thing. I've lost my ability to distinguish between old and new in my repertoire. It's already happened that someone came up to me and asked: 'You'll sing old songs like 'London,'" won't you?' And that same day another man came up to me and asked: 'You'll sing new songs like 'London,' won't you?' I go according to what I enjoy, and if there's a song to which I feel I can bring something new, I'll choose it. I'm not a robot."

Lovers of the old songs are likely to raise an eyebrow in light of one of the projects in which Alberstein is involved at the moment: a joint effort with the gifted producer and arranger Avi Leibovitz. The two met when Alberstein acceded to the request of singer Sha'anan Streett, of the hip-hop group Hadag Nahash, and recorded a duet with him that will be featured in his new album, after years of refusing offers to collaborate with other singers. Leibovitz produced Streett's album and Alberstein says she was turned on by the way he thinks. "I fell in love with his grooves," she explains. "He takes me to other places, entirely different from lullabies, a kind of gentle and intriguing combination of jazz and hip-hop."

Chava Alberstein - doing hip-hop?

"Why not? It's possible. We're only in the initial stages of work, and I don't know how it will sound. But this sound interests me very much. I'm throwing myself into it. Whatever will be, will be. I'm not afraid."