She didn’t look a bit like the British Forces’ sweetheart, Vera Lynn - and a good job, too!
Israeli songbird Yaffa Yarkoni, who achieved fame by entertaining Israel’s war-time troops, was an icon of an entirely different calibre.
Not only did Yarkoni disdain her title as “the songstress of the wars” but was most hurt by those who claimed she had built her career on Israel’s military conflicts.
Indeed at the height of the second Palestinian intifada in 2002, Yarkoni scandalised many Israelis when during an interview on Army Radio she criticised the military and expressed empathy for the Palestinians, declaring: “We are a nation that went through the Holocaust. How can we do things like this to another nation?” She then described Israel as “leaderless.” Some even branded her a traitor and one organisation cancelled a planned gala concert in her honour.
Many of her songs became integral to Israeli people’s lives. Here I post the English translation to Hafinjan (The Coffee Pot song) that she warbles in the video clip above. I chose it because Hafinjan was a youth club favourite when I was a kid. Aye, me!
And a ‘finjan’? Well depending on your source, it is either “literally translated from Arabic as ’cup’ and it is understood that it is specifically a coffee cup (http://thefinjan.net/)” or ”in the Levant, a small coffee cup without a handle, such as is held in a cup or stand called a zarf.”
I must thank EBay for this image of an “Antique Copper Bronze Finjan Coffee Pot with three cups 1930s” – so ending with a pot and cups to match!
Readers able to share further light on the issue are invited to share a (free) cuppa coffee or tea with me at the nearest Aroma outlet!
THE COFFEE POT
The cool wind blows,
We'll add a chip to the campfire,
And thus in scarlet
It will rise in the flames like a sacrifice.
The fire flickers,
Its song rises up
The coffee pot spins, spins around.
The fire will whisper to the chip,
Our faces grow so red by the fire
If more fuel is prepared for us
From every broken branch stub in the garden,
Every tree and log
Will sing so softly
The coffee pot spins, spins around.
msniw
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