Ofra Haza - The Queen of Israel

It's February 23, 2000 when Israeli radio stations broadcast the news of Ofra Haza's death, plunging an entire community into despair and abruptly shattering the dream of all those who had found in her voice a chance at redemption and the ideal vehicle for overcoming the political, cultural and religious barriers that have always separated East and West, tradition and innovation, freedom and isolation, anguish and hope.

Her music managed to speak the language of those unafraid to look beyond that wall, instead reaching out without suspicion toward unfamiliar worlds which, by her own admission, she herself knew almost nothing about: "I knew almost nothing," she revealed, "and from the little I could see, I wasn't even fascinated by it."

Singer, voice actress and actress, Ofra Haza proved to be a well-rounded artist and an example of musical eclecticism, moving from the traditional folk-style singing of her early years to the electronic-tinged pop typical of the late Eighties, rich in nuances and influences inherited from an almost boundless cultural background. Through many bright moments and few shadows, her career spanned thirty years across every genre and form, aided also by numerous collaborations with prestigious artists both within and beyond the music world, yet never losing sight of her own cultural identity and her devotion to her Yemenite-Jewish origins. Her voice as the most magnificent means of expression for that distant, mystical, arcane part of the world, and her songs as a chance for exchange and a way to break down borders: this was the essence of Ofra Haza's mission, difficult to fully grasp for those of us on this side, whose ears are little inclined to confront and accept artistic approaches that run along paths opposite to our conventional and limited way of understanding music.

Throughout her journey, the Queen of Israel - as she was nicknamed by those who loved her - tried in her own way to narrow the gap between these opposing worlds, without giving in to the temptations of the Western record industry, but simply attempting to export in music the scents, colours and sounds typical of that part of the world where her roots were irrevocably planted, in love as she was with her own origins, with the lands where she grew up and continued to live, and with the customs and traditions of her people. A unique and unmistakable voice, her mezzo-soprano, wide-ranging and practically flawless, allowed her to embrace a vast array of different styles with disarming ease and rare interpretive gifts; it's no coincidence that she remains the only diva to achieve worldwide resonance while singing in a language other than English. Few have managed to follow in her footsteps, among the most deserving certainly the Israeli Noa and the Egyptian-Belgian Natacha Atlas.

A poor childhood, the theatre troupe and Yemenite songs

Born on November 19, 1957 in the poor Hatikva neighborhood south of Tel Aviv, she was the youngest of nine children, seven girls and two boys. Her parents initially registered her at the civil registry office as Bat-Sheva, which in Hebrew means "the seventh daughter", but her older sisters didn't like the name, so they decided to rename her Ofra: her mother and father agreed, and when she turned six they officially changed her name at the Ministry of the Interior. From that day on she would be known to everyone as Ofra Haza. Her surname came from the small Yemeni village of "El Haz", from where years earlier her family, banished for being Jewish and isolated in the desert, had been airlifted to safety in Israel. After a period of settling in between Atlit, Haifa and Hadera, Ofra finally put down roots in Tel Aviv.

Her father Yefet started working as a municipal employee, while her mother Shoshanah was a former singer of traditional Yemeni music, who continued performing at weddings, Bar Mitzvahs and other community gatherings; it was precisely by listening to her that little Ofra discovered, at a very young age, her love of music. She spent all her time singing in front of the mirror, asking her family to give her auditions, "and so we promised her that we'd do everything we could to make her a singer, since it was her only wish and she literally drove us crazy doing it from morning to night", recalls Shuli, one of her sisters.

She was discovered in the small choir at Uziel School, where she studied, and at 12 she joined her neighborhood's theater company: there she met the man who would remain her manager for almost thirty years, Bezalel Aloni, at the time a young man putting together shows with a strong protest edge, aimed especially at involving immigrants, with politically charged material against the discrimination suffered by the various Arab populations transplanted to Israel. Bezalel asked the girl to sing. "Back then I adored Edna Lev, an Israeli singer", Ofra recalled, "so I started humming 'Im Tashuv'/('If You Come Back'), but Bezalel stopped me, saying: 'You have a magnificent voice, but don't try to imitate Edna, sing in your own natural style'". Between the two of them it was instant artistic love at first sight.

During that period, Ofra and the other members of the company (the Shechunat Hatikvah Workshop Theater) recorded four albums together: the first, Ahava Rishona (in English "First Love"), came out in 1974, followed in 1976 by Vehutz Mizeh Hakol Beseder ("Aside From That All Is Ok"), in 1977 by Atik Noshan ("Ancient Old") and finally in 1979 by Shir HaShirim Besha'Hashu'im (translated as "Song Of Songs With Fun").

These are a series of brief traditional-music pieces, all characterized by lyrics voicing grievance and discontent over the marginalization and injustices inflicted on her people, with words that were often also revised and updated according to the political situation of the moment.

Ofra immediately stood out for her extraordinary vocal talent, which placed her a cut above the other cast members, and she became a major draw for the company; at the same time she was sent to compete in all the country's most important singing contests, already earning recognition and widespread affection at that young age.

After a roughly two-year break during which she did military service (compulsory in Israel for men and women alike), she returned to her more familiar stages and was already ready to take the big step as a solo artist: she signed a contract with the Phonocall label, and in 1980 her first official solo album came out, Al Ahavot Shelanu ("Our Love"), whose main tracks "Hageshem"/"The Rain", "Shir Ahava L'hayyal"/"Love Song For The Soldier" and "Kmo Tzipor"/"Like a Bird" immediately got heavy airplay on local radio. Among these, one in particular stands out as one of her long-running signature songs, "Shir Af'Recha", or "The Bimbo Song" (written for the soundtrack of the film "Schlager", in which Ofra also played a leading role), which was initially boycotted for its risqué content: "Bimbo", in fact, has a double meaning: in English it refers to "an attractive woman of loose morals", while in Germany, during the twentieth century, the same term was often used, with racist connotations, to refer to "a person of African descent". Nevertheless, the song was later accepted and brought her a first taste of tangible fame in her home country, especially among younger audiences, thanks to its playful lyrics about a young woman's attempts to push past the limits imposed by a closed, conservative society.

Close on its heels came Bo Nedaber' ("Let's Talk"), from 1981, which contains the two singles "Tfila"/"Prayer" and "Simanim Shel Ohavim"/"Lovers Signs" and follows the same themes as the previous album, and Pituyim (or "Temptations", featuring the hit "Gabriel") from 1982, whose final version was also shaped by Polish composer Tzvika Pick and writer Nurit Hirsch, both of Jewish origin and well-known figures in the local scene. Finally, also in 1982, came Li-yeladim ("Songs For Children", thirty short lessons for children, some of the lyrics drawn from the Bible).

These three works are still fairly immature, marked by short, melodic songs intended for the whole family. Most of the lyrics were written by her mentor Bezalel, who had by then set aside the provocations and the rebellious ambitions that had marked the youthful works of the old theater company. Haza was now instead trying to tackle themes relevant to ordinary people, regardless of age, gender or religion.

The albums of this early phase mark, step by step, a slow path of artistic growth, blending Eastern rhythms, local folklore and danceable grooves. Each one went gold at home, and Ofra was named "Singer of the Year" every year from 1980 to 1984. Her fame soon crossed Israel's borders, earning her unanimous praise and acclaim throughout the Middle East. A first major leap came in 1983, when she took part in the Eurovision Song Contest, finishing in second place performing "Chai"/"Alive". The contest, for the record, was won by the Luxembourg entry, but Ofra's performance carried a symbolic weight of primary importance, both because that edition was held in the very city of Munich that not long before had witnessed firsthand the tragic events of the 1972 Olympics, with the massacre of athletes and journalists from the Israeli delegation (not to mention, of course, the horrors of the Holocaust), and because the song, behind its cunningly cheerful chorus, concealed the line "Israel is alive".

Her proud performance did not go unnoticed; Ofra was hailed by her people, who crowned her a national heroine, and the eponymous LP Chai, released at the end of that year, met with enormous success and went platinum. The album remains one of her bestsellers and features other hit songs, such as "Amen Lamilim"/"Amen For Words" and "Sof Akayitz"/"End Of Summer", once again in the vein of a successful blend of exotic melodies and a rich reworking of Yemeni tradition. Hebrew-Yemeni music can be divided into three fundamental categories:

– the liturgical kind, performed in synagogues exclusively by men, in Hebrew or Aramaic;

– the secular kind, sung exclusively by women in Judeo-Yemeni language, dealing with themes of everyday life;

– the diwan kind, a collection of devotional verses, straddling sacred and profane, composed to be sung in Hebrew, Aramaic or Arabic, whose texts are written down while the music and dances are passed on only by oral tradition, with fairly complex and intricate metrical readings and rhythms. A diwan performance is in turn divided into nashid (free rhythm, never accompanied), shira (song and dance, typical of large gatherings) and hallel (a song of praise, for dancers and choir).

Every Eastern community has its own diwan repertoire, and among these the Yemeni one is without doubt one of the richest; in the years that followed it would gain considerable recognition and renown, thanks in no small part to the tireless work of promotion and the superb performances of Ofra Haza, a skilled weaver of song who drew constantly from tradition, continually updating it with modern rhythms and new sonorities, without ever compromising its primal purity or altering its authenticity in any way.

In these years the partnership between Ofra Haza and Bezalel Aloni is particularly fruitful and shows no sign of slowing down, so in 1983 comes Shirey Moledet/Homeland Songs, which unfolds through personal reinterpretations of Israeli folklore: the record is a major discovery especially for younger generations, who through "Homeland Songs" come into contact with the ancient songs of their own land, whose very existence they might otherwise never have known. It achieves extraordinary success, to the point that two more volumes under the same title will follow in 1985 and 1987.

Along the same lines, in spring 1984 Bayt Ham/A Place For Me yields the fine singles "Yad Beyad"/"Hand In Hand" and "Hitcha Halayla"/"With You Tonight", as well as the title track, whose lyrics, written by Bezalel, tell the story of young rebellious girls who leave home amid family conflict, and recount Ofra's dream of one day building, with the first money she earned, a place to shelter them. The public response is convincing, and at this point the curiosity and buzz surrounding her inevitably catch the attention of European producers, who propose she work on an album with a broader international scope, one that could project her fame and growing appeal beyond the Middle Eastern market, a stage that is inevitably starting to feel too small for her.

So in November 1984 comes Yemenite Songs, which marks a point of no return in her career. The album is a collection of Yemenite songs: Ofra returns to her roots, performing a series of verses written by the sixteenth-century rabbi Shalom Shabazi, accompanied by both ancient and modern instruments, wood and metal percussion, timpani, flutes, horns, string instruments, but also drum machines and synthesizers. These are love songs, laments, but also sacred texts celebrating an age-old tradition, composed over centuries ranging from the 1500s to more recent times, with Hebrew lyrics set to Yemenite melodies.

A splendid example of world music, Yemenite Songs contains, among others, the original versions of "I'm Nin Alu" and "Galbi", which in later reissues will become two massive hits and remain her most famous songs. Although the record was initially met with a fairly lukewarm reception, the English group Coldcut hears "Im Nin' Alu" and uses a sample of it in the remix they are preparing for "Paid In Full/Seven Minutes Of Madness", a track by the hip-hop duo Eric B. & Rakim.

"That gave a huge boost to my songs," Ofra recalled. "It's funny how people who didn't know me first heard my voice on a rap track."

It is above all the legendary John Peel who starts heavily playing these tracks on English radio, and so little by little sales of Yemenite Songs grow enormously, and the album will eventually be released in the United States too, under the title Fifty Gates Of Wisdom (in honor of the lyrics of "Ayelet Chen", included on the record). It's an unexpected, almost accidental success, so much so that, interviewed by the New York Times, Ofra states: "Bezalel and I are surprised by the huge following the album is gaining in European dance clubs; we simply wanted a record our parents would like, adapting the poems of our tradition to modern percussion and electronic instrumentation." Her fame is now reaching its peak: Ofra is the first Israeli artist to have her face printed practically everywhere, from letters, postcards and stamps to teenage diaries, T-shirts, stickers, posters and so on, as was then reserved only for Western stars.

Adama/Earth, from 1985, also wins great favor with the public: conceived and written with the valuable collaboration of major songwriters/composers from the country (Sasha Argov, Ehud Manor and Naomi Shemer chief among them), the album produces tracks that achieve considerable popularity, such as the title track "Adama", "Mishehu Holech Tamid Iti"/"Somebody Always Walk With Me" and the splendid "Goral Echad/One Destiny". The record is particularly well received in Argentina, where at the time Ofra is giving a series of performances to raise funds to build and renovate several schools in Buenos Aires. Her releases are now reaching into the South American market as well, and later the Japanese one.

For Jewish Passover that same year, the compilation Halbom Hazahav/The Golden Album is released, a double LP collecting 24 of her most famous songs, some of them also performed in French.

The following Yamim Nishbarim/Broken Days, from 1986, is instead a more introspective, deep and personal album: Ofra herself writes the lyrics. Entrusted to the well-known producer Izhar Ashdot, the record yields a more modern sound, moving toward rock, giving rise to important tracks such as "Hake'ev Haze"/"This Pain", "Bo-Venagen Oti"/"Come And Play With Me" and "Kol Haklafim"/"Open Your Cards".

Ofra is now constantly traveling the world between tours, recording sessions and charity events; by this point she is a star loved everywhere, her unquestionable musical talent, her class and a certain air of mystery making her one of the most sought-after and in-demand presences.

Her country comes to a halt for her for the first time on February 3, 1987, when the unthinkable suddenly happens: returning from a successful performance for soldiers at the Nevatim base in southern Israel, the Cessna she is traveling in, after clipping a mountain on the border between Israel and Jordan, starts losing altitude and crashes in the desert. Hours of frantic, desperate search efforts follow, and after days spent in deep anguish and emotion shared by the public, the media, the music world and beyond, Ofra is found alive.

Her manager Aloni, who also survived the crash, recounts that during those moments Ofra tried to encourage him, saying: "Whatever happens, it will have been God's will." That February 3rd would be described by Ofra as her "Second Birthday", and every year on that date she would continue to meet with the plane's pilot to celebrate having escaped disaster. As a good-luck charm, he gave her one of the plane's broken propellers, which Ofra kept carefully at home. From that moment on, for her people Ofra Haza took on an almost mystical aura, as if the immense admiration for the singer and the boundless affection for the person weren't already enough.

Looking West and "Im Nin' Alu": the doors to success swing open

It is at this point that the decisive leap happens: Ofra Haza moves to Los Angeles for a period, where she signs with Sire and starts working with a number of American producers on her new record, Shaday. The title, chosen by Ofra herself, literally means "Guardian of the gates of Israel" in Hebrew, one of the names by which God is referred to in the scrolls. Released in 1988, the album manages to perfectly blend typical Middle Eastern sonorities with the disco rhythms most in vogue at the time, with a clearly defined electronic sound that refreshes some of her older, almost forgotten productions and turns them into genuine gems of Eighties pop music. Among these is, without doubt, "Im Nin' Alu (English mix)", an excellent meeting point between Eastern mysticism, warm sensuality and synthetic dance-oriented grooves: it's a mixture that proves explosive, without ever slipping into sacrilegious vulgarity or risking blasphemy. It sells millions of copies and shoots to the top of the charts almost everywhere, especially in Europe, and in particular in Germany and the Scandinavian countries, where communities of immigrants from the Middle East have always had a strong presence. Already included in its original version on the album Yemenite Songs, the track actually dates back to 1978 and had already been performed with her old theater company in a show for Iba General Television, although it was never officially recorded before 1984. The lyrics draw on a poem of the same title, attributed to the seventeenth-century rabbi Shalom Shabazidel:

Im nin’alu daltei n’divim (Even if the gates of the rich are closed)

daltei marom lo nin'alu (The gates of Heaven will never be closed)

It's a resounding and probably unrepeatable boom, destined to be reissued over the years in various editions and remixed every which way, but what remains most famous is a sample used in “Pump Up The Volume”, the colossal 1987 hit by M/A/R/R/S. In 2005, part of the song is featured in “Isaac”, a track by Madonna on the album “Confessions On A Dancefloor”. The video is a huge hit on MTV, where Ofra becomes the first Israeli artist ever to appear.

But the album Shaday holds much more besides: first and foremost the sinuous “Galbi”, whose original version had also appeared on Yemenite Songs, and which here is reworked and relaunched with the exact same lyrical, stylistic and structural traits as “I'm Nin' Alu” (in Italy it becomes an even bigger hit, if anything), the gorgeous a cappella “Love Song”, with lyrics drawn from the Song of Songs in the Old Testament (also known as “Song Of Songs 8:6-7” or “Song Of Solomon”), a reworking of an old song Ofra had sung in Hebrew, originally included on her 1979 album Shir HaShirim/Love Songs, and her first entirely English-language songs, namely “My Aching Heart” and “Take Me To Paradise”.

Success smiles on her, and some of her songs even manage to knock off the top of the charts new tracks by the king of pop himself, Michael Jackson, who that year is promoting “Bad”. So much so that Jacko, after asking to meet her in person, invites her to join him on some dates of his world tour, but Ofra turns him down: “Michael is a gentleman, incredibly gentle and sensitive, but our audiences and our approach to music are too different, I don't think they can mix.” She's replaced by Kim Wilde, though the two will later get the chance to duet together, on a successful leg of the tour Ofra performs in Japan in 1990, after picking up first prize at the Tokyo International Festival.

The echo of Im Nin' Alu hasn't faded, and 1989 brings Desert Wind, which picks up where the previous Shaday left off: fairly prominent synths and mainstream rhythms winking at the dancefloor, like the irresistible, sultry “Ya Ba Ye”, with its sweeping beat and the gypsy trumpets so dear to Goran Bregovic (the two would later record “Elo-Hi/Canto Nero” together – on the Bosnian composer's album “Ederlezi” – as well as collaborate on the soundtracks for “Arizona Dream” and “La Reine Margot”), the other single “Mata Hari”, the more Middle-Eastern-flavored “Middle East”, “In Ta” (which even flirts with house music) and “I Want To Fly”. “Fatamorgana”, meanwhile, is a tribute to the harsh experience her parents had lived through years earlier in Yemen, and features a chant in Arabic that her mother used to teach her over the phone during the recording sessions. It's a sad, melancholy track: “the rhythm evokes the march of her people in exile through the desert, the unbearable heat, the mirages,” as a Wall Street Journal reporter described it at the time.

The closing track, “Kaddish”, is instead a reworking of an ancient Hebrew prayer describing an angel carrying away all the evils of the world, bearing their weight upon its wings. “Kaddish” is sung in Aramaic, while the rest of the album is sung entirely in English.

Ofra Haza's lyrics are intimate and personal, a direct projection of Eastern markets, desert expanses and unfamiliar landscapes, evocative of the lands to which she indissolubly belongs and to which she continues to turn with passion and intensity, especially during this period spent abroad, as an impeccable, elegant ambassador for Israeli culture around the world. The bond with her family and her homeland is a recurring theme, a thread impossible to sever. A precious treasure to be guarded: Ofra never misses a chance to stress as much, as when – interviewed by Santa Monica's KCRW-FM radio – she recalls her parents, the passion for traditional Yemenite songs passed down by her mother, and a childhood marked by a love of music alongside poverty and the neglect afflicting the Hatikva neighborhood: hence her dream of helping her people wake up and rise against the indifference of governments.

The Nineties, international recognition and a message of peace

In 1991 she comes to Italy to take part in the Sanremo Festival, performing “Today I'll Pray”, the English version of Raf's “Oggi un Dio non ho”. The following year she sings “That's Why People Fall In Love”, included on Thomas Dolby's album “Astronauts And Heretics” (Dolby had co-produced both Yemenite Songs and Desert Wind for her), and then records a new version of “Temple Of Love” with the Sisters Of Mercy, tellingly subtitled, not by chance, “Touched By The Hand Of Ofra Haza”: it's the moment when everything Ofra touches turns to gold: Kyria, in fact, comes out in 1992 and once again wins over both audiences and critics.

The album is the fruit of a successful collaboration with the gifted Don Was, by then devoted more to production work than to his own output as Was (Not Was), and it's built around the distinctly pop sound he favors, though with something of a return to more classic instrumentation, gradually dialing back the synthesizers and the pounding dancefloor rhythms. The record, among other things, earns a Grammy nomination in the World Music category and is enriched by a guest appearance from Iggy Pop (his is the spoken intro on “Daw Da Hiya”, which tells of a Yemenite girl sentenced to death for having “tasted the forbidden fruits of love”). Ofra returns the favor by joining Iggy and other guest stars on the non-profit single “Give Peace A Chance”, John Lennon's song relaunched in response to the Gulf War. For the occasion, Yoko Ono assembles a dense roster of artists, including Adam Ant, Peter Gabriel, Little Richard, Cyndi Lauper, Duff McKagan, Wendy & Lisa, and the Zappa offspring Dweezil, Moon Unit and Ahmet. From this point on, Ofra Haza repeatedly becomes a champion of peace, hoping through her lyrics as well to find common ground between the warring peoples of the Arab countries. Kyria, in fact, is the ancient Hebrew name for the city of Jerusalem: “many of our children are dying because of you,” the title track declares.

These are tense years in international relations due to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, but on at least one point young people on both sides agree: they see Ofra Haza as a positive role model, partly thanks to her songs, which constantly strive to send a message of reconciliation, and they also embrace her as a symbol of Israel's unity for being a Jew of Arab origin. “That's exactly what my music is about: we're tired of fighting.” So, when a truce agreement between the two countries is signed in 1993, the signatories – Yitzhak Rabin, foreign minister Shimon Peres and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat – receive the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, and Ofra herself is invited to perform at the award ceremony, delivering a striking duet of “Paint Box” with Sinéad O'Connor.

That same year sees the release of Oriental Nights, a collection of some of her most famous songs, and in 1994 Kol Haneshama, featuring the song “Le'orech Hayam” (“Along The Sea”), which initially doesn't make much of a splash but later becomes a genuine anthem at home after being performed in 1995 at the funeral ceremony for Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, assassinated a week earlier.

1995's Star Gala (Queen In Exile) features a collaboration with former Talking Heads members Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth, working under the name Tom Tom Club. It's an LP that, for unknown reasons, Ofra apparently didn't want to make, even though it contains significant passages from the Bible on “Genesis” and “Jerusalem”, as well as the lovely, lightly flamenco-tinged “In This Burning Town”.

All things considered, the album remains a minor episode, but its title about exile is telling, hinting at a desire to stop and go home — so much so that Ofra settles once again, and for good, in Israel.

The self-titled Ofra Haza from 1997 marks her last official studio release, although she continues recording until 1999, lending her voice mainly to soundtracks or collaborations with other artists. It includes the single “Show Me”, yet another new version of “Im Nin' Alu”, and a cover of Carole King's “You've Got A Friend”. Recorded between Hamburg and London's legendary Abbey Road Studios, the album is produced by Enigma co-founder Frank Peterson, who also slips a vocal sample of Ofra into Sarah Brightman's “Mysterious Ways”, another artist he's working with at the time on the album “Harem”.

Finally, in 1998, Ofra Haza at Montreux Jazz Festival is released, documenting an old live performance of hers from July 1990 at the prestigious festival, where, backed by a small orchestra, she had sung the best-known tracks from the hugely successful Yemenite Songs, Shaday and Desert Wind.

Over the years, moreover, countless duet collaborations with other artists followed (for example “My Love Is For Real” with Paula Abdul in 1995), live performances with some of the leading lights of the world music scene (most notably her celebrated appearances alongside Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston), as well as the frequent use of her songs in the soundtracks of Hollywood cult movies, above all “Dick Tracy” and “Wild Orchid”, but her most important work for cinema undoubtedly remains her 1998 contribution to DreamWorks' “The Prince of Egypt”: Hans Zimmer, with whom she worked on new songs for the film, introduced her to the producers, who found her so beautiful that they designed the character of Yocheved, Moses' mother, modelling her features on Ofra's own. As well as naturally providing the voice for the same character, Ofra sang the song “Deliver Us” in as many as 19 different languages, using for many of them the technique of phonetic singing, that is, the method of first memorising the lyrics and then reproducing them by simply imitating the sounds of the words, without ever pronouncing them faithfully.

Also in 1998 she worked with the techno troupe Black Dog on the Babylon project, dedicated to peace in the Middle East: she wrote the tracks herself, which achieved a certain degree of success on the British charts. In 1999 she first composed five songs for the soundtrack of the animated edition of “The King and I”, the famous Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, then appeared on Jonathan Elias' album “The Prayer Circle/Music For The Century”: a multilingual compilation of sacred songs featuring, among others, Alanis Morissette and Perry Farrell of Jane’s Addiction. Finally, there were some successful covers, including “Kashmir” by Led Zeppelin, “Separate Ways” by Gary Moore and one of Madonna's “Open Your Heart”, which also earned her the nickname “Madonna of the East”, a comparison that is anything but irreverent: Ofra Haza stands for the East as Madonna does for the West, the adoration she inspires is boundless, she holds her own against Miss Ciccone and towers far above the string of Western-style pop stars flooding Israeli radio. Ofra was, in fact, a trendsetting artist, present everywhere, but while we know practically everything about her vast musical output, the same cannot be said of her private life, long kept away from the spotlight and shielded from the curiosity of the tabloid press until 1997, when Ofra went to the hospital to visit a friend's son and there met her future husband, Doron Ashkenazi.

The marriage, a bitter end and a deafening silence

Doron was introduced to her as a businessman with a thriving construction company, also active in Israel. He was a thirty-eight-year-old divorcee, with a daughter from his first marriage and another adopted son. From the day after their first meeting, Doron began a relentless courtship, and even Ofra's sisters pushed for the union: despite being a global star, they felt she wasn't truly fulfilled, she was now almost forty and still single, her biological clock was ticking relentlessly, and the desire to start a family was taking precedence over a career that had, by then, already said everything it had to say. So, less than a year after their first meeting, the two married, with the wedding held on 15 July. The marriage, however, was frowned upon by many, first and foremost by her longtime manager Bezalel Aloni (and he wouldn't be entirely wrong): Doron would soon reveal himself to be a possessive, disrespectful man burdened by debts, who seemed intent on exploiting Ofra's wealth and fame to settle accounts with a shady past that was quick to resurface, made up of suspicious friendships (some of his associates appeared to have ties to activities controlled by the Italian mafia) and several reports to the local police for repeatedly harassing and threatening his ex-wife, Etti Perry.

In short, all the bad omens were there, and Aloni wouldn't have it: he ended his artistic partnership with Ofra then and there. She went back to work, briefly, with Finnish violinist Linda Brava (the track “Tarab” can still be heard on her Myspace page) and then with new producer Ron Aviv, with whom she began recording a new album of original material that, however, would never see the light of day.

Like a bolt from the blue, in February 2000 Ofra was admitted to hospital in desperate condition, and after thirteen days in a coma she died at the Shiba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer. At first, little was known about the exact medical diagnosis; the first medical bulletins spoke of a severe form of flu, and Ofra had lost an alarming amount of weight. But in the days that followed, the news spread that her death was caused by the worsening of a pneumonia directly linked to Aids. The blow was severe, and there was widespread shock and disbelief in the music world, in politics, and above all among medical staff, who believed that, with timely intervention, she could have been saved. But out of shame, Ofra had long kept the true nature of her illness hidden: Aids, in fact, has always been a taboo subject in Israel and a stigmatising label, given its nature as a virus transmitted mainly through drug use or sexual contact. It was one of the country's leading newspapers, Ha'aretz, that broke the story, sparking major controversy over the media's intrusion into the star's private life and triggering endless debate over patients' right to privacy and the sensationalism with which speculation began over how she might have been infected, dragging through the mud, according to many, what had been an otherwise spotless personal conduct. The newspaper defended itself by arguing that Ofra was a public figure and that the circumstances of her death therefore could not be passed over in silence. “Aids,” explained Yoel Esteron, the paper's editor, “is a disease like any other, and there's no reason to demonise it; on the contrary, a figure of such stature would have had a duty to speak out publicly, so as to educate and raise awareness among people, as so many celebrities in art, music and sport are doing, such as basketball champion Magic Johnson.” But who knows whether the fundamentalist rabbis who prayed for Ofra Haza's life with kabbalistic rituals at her hospital bedside would have done the same had they known the truth.

Her family immediately accused her husband Doron of having hidden his HIV-positive status from her; he tried to counter by claiming that Ofra had been infected at a Turkish hospital, following a blood transfusion after a miscarriage. But Doron Ashkenazi was a drug addict, and he would die of a cocaine overdose in April 2001.

Tens of thousands of admirers and political figures attended Ofra Haza's funeral; many of her fans, in tears, climbed over the fences to reach the entrance of the auditorium to bid her one last farewell. During the ceremony, Prime Minister Barak wanted to recall how “Ofra managed to rise from the slums of Hatikva to reach the heights of the world, carrying Israeli culture to the top, honouring her country and leaving an indelible mark on all of us.” Even more moving and significant was the tribute paid to her by her nieces Aya and Dorin, who recited beside the coffin: “Our beloved Ofra, you have suddenly left a great void in us, your parents, your family and so many fans now orphaned of you. This time, medical treatment and books of psalms were of no use, and you slipped away between our fingers. To us, you remained the humble daughter and sister you always were; talent never went to your head, not even when they called you 'Queen'. You were brutally torn away in the prime of your life, and today you finally join the chorus of angels waiting for you at the gates of Heaven. Farewell, our princess.”

Ofra Haza is buried in the artists' section of the Yarkon cemetery in Petah Tikva, outside Tel Aviv. Her city, meanwhile, named a playground in her honour, Gan Ofra (Ofra's Park), as a symbol of her love for children and for the streets where she grew up and to which she kept returning. The park is in fact located in the Hatikvah neighbourhood, at the end of Bo'az street, where her childhood home, at number 39, can still be visited today.

Some time later, her longtime manager Bezalel Aloni, who had chosen not to attend the funeral, decided to clarify his position on the matter, publishing in 2007 the book “Michtavim L’Ofra” (“Letters To Ofra”): written in epistolary form, it is partly a personal memoir and partly a biography of Ofra. An interesting excerpt, “The life and death of Ofra Haza”, was published in the very newspaper, Haaretz, which, years after having been the first paper to reveal the actual cause of death, attempted once and for all to shed light on some of the darker aspects of this bitter end, made all the more painful by the fact that, even today, family members and fans alike, mourning her loss, insist on using the word “killing”.

Musically speaking, Israel tried to recover from the terrible shock by placing its hopes above all in the lovely Noa and a handful of lesser-known performers, but it's clear that Ofra left behind a void for the country that is difficult to fill, an artistic legacy impossible to inherit.

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