Bracha Zefira (, also spelled Braha Tzfira; 15 April 1910 – 1 April 1990) was a pioneering Israeli folk singer, songwriter, musicologist, and actress of Yemenite Jewish origin. She is credited with bringing Yemenite and other Middle Eastern Jewish music into the mix of ethnic music in Palestine to create a new "Israeli style", and opening the way for other Yemenite singers to succeed on the Israeli music scene. Her repertoire, which she estimated at more than 400 songs, included Yemenite, Bukharan, Persian, Ladino, and North African Jewish folk songs, and Arabic and Bedouin folk songs and melodies.
Born in Jerusalem to Yemenite Jewish immigrants, she was orphaned of both parents by the age of three. She was raised by a succession of Sephardi Jewish foster families in the city and imbibed the musical tradition of each, as well as the local Arabic songs. She rose to stardom in the 1930s with her musical interpretations of Yemenite and Middle Eastern Jewish folk songs, accompanied by Western arrangements on piano by Nahum Nardi. In the 1940s she began collaborating with art music composers such as Paul Ben-Haim, Marc Lavry, Alexander Uriah Boskovich, Noam Sheriff, and Ben-Zion Orgad, performing her songs with classical music ensembles and orchestras. She was popular in Palestine, Europe, and the United States. In 1966, she received the Engel Prize for her musical contribution.
Early life
Bracha Zefira was born in Jerusalem, in the Ottoman Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem, in 1910. Her father, Yosef Zefira, had immigrated to the Land of Israel from Sanaa, Yemen, in 1877, and resided in the Nachalat Zvi neighborhood of Jerusalem. Here he married Na'ama Amrani, also a native of Yemen. Na'ama died giving birth to Bracha, and Yosef succumbed to typhus when Bracha was three years old.
Bracha's uncle in Jerusalem took her in, but she ran away from his home at the age of five. She was adopted by a family in the Bukharim Quarter, where she was surrounded by Persian Jewish neighbors. Three years later, when that family left Jerusalem, Bracha lived with a widow in the Yemin Moshe neighborhood, where the neighbors were mostly Sephardi Jews from Salonika. Bracha imbibed the religious liturgies, piyyutim, and festive songs of each culture she lived alongside, which would manifest in her later musical career. She was also exposed to Arabic songs that she heard in the city; she and her friends would append lyrics from Hebrew poems to them.
She attended school in the Old City and was also a student at the Lemel School in central Jerusalem. In her early teens, she enrolled at the Meir Shfeya youth village located near Zikhron Ya'akov in northern Israel. There her musical talent was recognized by Hadassah Calwary, a teacher and wife of the village director, and Bracha was asked to perform for students and teachers on Friday nights, singing the Shabbat zemirot. The school decided that she should develop her talent at the Kedma Music School in Jerusalem, but a few months after transferring there, Zefira was sent by her conservatory teachers to Tel Aviv to study acting instead.
In 1927, Zefira was accepted into the Palestine Theatre and its acting studio, founded by Menachem Gnessian. However, the theatre produced only a few plays before closing that same year. Zefira then joined the satirical theatre company HaKumkum (The Kettle), acting and singing with the company until it disbanded in 1929.
Henrietta Szold, then head of Youth Aliyah, arranged for her to study acting and music at the studio of Max Reinhardt in Berlin. During her time in Germany, Zefira sang before notable personages including Albert Einstein and Max Nordau, and also performed at Jewish venues around the city. She always appeared with loose hair and bare feet, explaining that this was "out of a desire to feel the earth".
Collaboration with Nahum Nardi
Zefira met Russian-born pianist Nahum Nardi at one of her performances in the Berlin Jewish community center. Nardi had immigrated to Palestine in 1923, but returned to Berlin in 1929 to pursue his musical studies. Zefira asked him to listen to some of her songs and to improvise arrangements for them. In her book she wrote: I sang Bialik's "Yesh Li Gan" and "Bein Nahar Prat" for him, and Sephardi piyyutim ... and other songs that I was used to singing from Shefeyah. He was a quick study with an excellent ear and a light touch at the piano, and was familiar with Hebrew lyrics, although from a traditional galut (Diaspora) perspective. His playing and the simple harmonies electrified me. I felt that the song had taken on new sounds …