“My dear, why did you suddenly decide to interview me? For what? What do I have to say? I don’t need publicity,” Naomi Polani told me in our last conversation. In fact, both in our face-to-face meetings and in our telephone conversations, she always repeated this, and I always knew that the secret to causing For her to open up is to throw names at her from the past that she knew very well such as Yoram Gaon, the Gashshims (Sheika Levy, Gavri Banai and Israel Poliakov) or Haim Topol.
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As soon as you threw her a name that has a special meaning for her – she was always interviewed, as long as the focus is on the personality she is talking regarding and not on herself. “If you write and quote me, try as little as possible to use the word I in my quotes. It was never me, but I always worked in a team, also in the cheeseboard, also with the military bands, both in the roosters and in the hamtzims,” she explained. “It was always us and not me. The problem with you, the younger generation, is that your self is more important than we, when you don’t understand that if it weren’t for the we, there wouldn’t be me. Togetherness is something on the basis of which the country was built, and in recent years it has faded away, which is very sad.”
In meticulous and careful Hebrew and in slangs that have accompanied her since the days of the War of Liberation and are part of her charm, Polani spoke to me at the last meeting regarding everything except herself, and every time she claimed that “I don’t have too much to say” – she said a lot. In her home in Moshav Kinneret, her place of residence since 1977, far from the Tel Aviv hustle and bustle of which she was an inseparable part in the first years of entertainment in the country, Polani found peace and quiet, always surrounded by her family and good friends who make a pilgrimage to her to swallow her pearls of wisdom, living modestly, in awe from nature and angry regarding the change that has taken place in society and the country.
“The generation that was born before the establishment of the state was a generation that was terribly nice to be born into,” she said. “We had hopes, ideas, creative joy and helping each other. I am saddened by what has happened to the country, I worry and know that peace will not return to the souls of the citizens, that the nation will not return to what it was. Don’t forget that many people left the country or were born abroad, and they will not have the same brightness and the same soul that they had if they were born here in the country or if they never left. It hurts what happened in the country.”
“Everything was so simple”
Polani was born in Tel Aviv on August 4, 1927 to Hichiel and Ada Polani. Her grandfather, Dr. Haim Hisin, was one of the founders of Tel Aviv. “My grandfather Haim Hisin, a man of the first aliyah, told my parents regarding me as a ‘musical girl’ and at the age of 6 I started learning piano with a teacher, but I was very lazy,” she said. “My mother would urge me to practice playing at home, and every time I would lose track of the notes Or I would get confused, I would start inventing sounds so as not to stop the melody, because then my mother, who was resting in the other room, would ask me to play once more from the beginning, but I don’t want to talk regarding it.”
She composed two songs during her lifetime: “On the Banks of the Yarkon”, performed by the Armored Forces Band, and “Take My Heart”, written by Haim Hefer. The latter was deeply rooted in the Hebrew singer in Drora Havkin’s performance at the end of the 1960s, and during her lifetime Polani herself even recorded it at the initiative of radio personality Noam Gilor and musician Rami Harel on the occasion of her 90th birthday, as a sort of rectification of a historical injustice for her: “For many years, the word ‘ Go to hell’ in the chorus, and I didn’t like it, why ‘go to hell?’ Haim Hefer wrote in the chorus: ‘Take my heart, I don’t need it anymore, following you betrayed me – I will give it up’, without ‘go to hell’, it spoils the meaning of the song. It’s actually a joke song that Chaim (Hefer) wrote for a Purim party in the early 1950s.”
It is difficult to testify that during the meeting Polani spoke in a chronological manner. In a manner very similar to her character, she fired sentences according to her mood at that minute, spinning stories without a certain sequence, but with a lot of longing for simpler days that are gone and will not return. “Do you watch TV? I stopped, there’s nothing to see there, it’s superficial,” she said. “Once upon a time, people studied in order to study, not for a certificate. Players were more committed and serious regarding the profession and the result was accordingly. People studied for the sake of learning and not for a certificate.”
Polanyi studied acting at the Ehl Theater (“I wanted to be an actress!”) and dance with Gertrude Krauss and specialized in stage art. In 1948, with the outbreak of the War of Independence, she joined the Palmach and was one of the founders of the organization’s entertainment band – the Chizbetroon, on the basis of which the military bands were later formed. “Haim Hefer, who founded the Chezbetron, asked his friends who he should add to the band,” she said. “Dan Ben Amutz recommended, for example, Sheika (Ofir), and Sheika recommended me because he saw me in a stage test at the Ahel Theater. After that I recommended Yoel Zilberg who accompanied Sheika and me on the accordion and we started performing in songs and skits when Sheika and I played. We appeared in remotes, and more than once I also played the roles of boys. We did not appear in the line of fire, luckily, we felt protected. Everything was so simple.”
The cheeseboard, 1949 (photo: L.A.M.)
Later, other members such as Gideon Singer, Shlomo Bar Shavit, Zaharira Haribai, Ohala Halevi and Rebecca Kramer joined Cheesetron. The band operated until 1950 and as part of it Polani’s singing in the song “There were times” and her duets with Sheika Ophir called “Hey the Jeep” and “The Penny and the Moon” became famous. “The programs consisted of songs and skits, and following that the military bands adopted it,” she said. “We were in the Hevar’s band, what interested us was to create and do and not to become famous as today’s singers want.”
With the disbandment of the Cheeseboard, Polani began acting in the Chamber Theater (“Queen of Sheba”, 1951) and studied music with Herbert Breen and dance with the choreographer Noa Eshkol. She later became the director of military bands and as part of her work with the Northern Command Band, the Armored Forces Band and the Nahal Band she was also responsible for the staging and vocal arrangements. “At that time, I also worked with the Northern Command Band and the Armor Sisters Band, and from each band I drew inspiration and got to know great young talents,” she said. “We worked on the positions, body movements and pantomime, and mainly focused on turning the song into a real show.”
“There was creative joy”
In 1960, some of the expatriates of the Nahal band – Yehoram Gaon, Israel (Polly) Poliakov, Amiram Spector, Toval Petar and Hanan Goldblatt approached Polani and asked her to continue working with them in a new civilian ensemble. “We didn’t plan in advance that the first lineup would include only men,” she explained. “Most of the hymns that were sung in the military bands at the time were male solos, so it just came out that way. Along with the guys from the Nahal Band, I turned to other soldiers from different military bands that I worked with, and so Shaika Levy from the Central Command Band and Zvi Gretel and Yossi Tzemach from the Armored Forces Band also joined.
After gathering a number of veterans of military bands, Polani rehearsed with the ensemble first at her home in the Neve Tzedek neighborhood in Tel Aviv, and later at Beit Hasharion on Yerushalayim Boulevard in Jaffa. “During the rehearsals, no one got paid – neither them nor me. We had no where to go,” she said. “But there were no grievances. There was creative joy. We would rehearse from morning until late followingnoon. many hours”.
On the advice of her friend Dan Ben Amutz Polani called the band the Roosters. “When I told Dan regarding the new band consisting of eight men, he said, ‘A man is also a rooster, so call the band the Roosters,'” she said. “That’s how it was. I took to the band songs that I liked and that I knew might be worked on. So, for example, we took ‘The Nature Lovers’ and ‘Eliplet’ by the band Gisot Hasharion, ‘Arab Mascha’, performed by the Onion Band, ‘Weakness of a Bat’, sung by the Nahal Band and ‘There is no such thing as Jaffa in the Nights’, ‘Self-Respect’ ‘ and ‘This is from Panorama Street’ by the Theater Club Quartet. And there were also songs that we performed and later decided to give them up.”
The Roosters’ first program was a resounding success and in 1961 the band’s masterful debut album was released. In 1962 Polani began working with the Roosters on a second program, this time without Yoram Gaon, Hanan Goldblatt, Zvi Gretel and Yossi Zemach. In their place, Gavri Banai, the clarinet player Yigal Klaus, Lior Yeni and two members of the Nahal band – Aliza Rosen and Deborah Dotan – joined. “In the second program, we worked on original songs written specifically for the band and not on cover versions, so we adapted the roles for women as well,” Polani explained the female reinforcement.
Naomi Polani’s flock of roosters (photo: reproduction of the newspaper ‘Bamahane’)
In its second form, the band worked on the songs “Everything is gold”, “When you say no”, “Just like that”, “A soldier’s love song”, “Yossi, my child is successful” and “The neighborhood song”, which became the anthem of the 60s and held the title of the song The longest in the history of the Hebrew singer (6:27 minutes). Other songs performed by the Roosters in concerts but not released on the official record were “Lonely Lantern” and “Purple Dress”. This program was also very successful and “The Neighborhood Song” even won the “Song of the Year” title. Despite this, the band broke up shortly following the release of the record. “Everybody had other goals besides the roosters,” Polani said. “It’s natural and legitimate, so we decided to end it nicely.”
During the work on this program, the romance between 36-year-old Polani and 27-year-old Laini was sparked – and they got married. Later they became parents to a son and a daughter – Yotam (born 1964) and Aya (born 1968). “I don’t like to talk a lot regarding people who are not, but Lior was a nice person, warm-hearted and with a golden voice”, she commented when I asked regarding him. “He had a tone of voice that cannot be defined, a unique talent.” The couple divorced in the early 1970s, but the two maintained a good relationship throughout the years until Yeni’s death in 2021.
In 1966, Polani decided to try to revive the spirit of the Roosters in a new band she founded called the Chamchits. She added Lior Yeni, Deborah Dotan, Aliza Rosen and Zvi Gretel, and at the same time formed a group of musicians that included Yigal Klaus (clarinet), Beno Hodes (bass), Aharleh Kaminsky (drums), Herzl Budinger (accordion) and Oded Yeni (flute ). The premiere was in June 1967, close to the Six Day War, and following one year of activity the band disbanded. Her songs were recorded on a record and some of them became classics, even though they failed in real time: “The Scouts and the Scouts” (Charlie Katcherly), “Who is howling in the wind”, “Mishmish” and “Balconies”. “The chameleons were at a much higher artistic level than the roosters”, she explained the failure, “the problem was that the show came on during the Six Day War, the timing was not good”.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Polani served as a musical laboratory in several radio programs on Kol Israel and was engaged in teaching music and directing various events in her area of residence in the Jordan Valley. In 1998, she even created the show “The Roosters Return”, in which her son Yotam Yeni participated, among others.
In 2019 she won the Israel Prize in the field of theater and dance. “To this day I don’t care regarding the award, why do I need this award? Does he contribute to me in some way?”, she responded to my question regarding how it feels to be the bride of the Israel Prize. “I don’t think that being the bride of the Israel Prize gives me an advantage over others in the grocery store. I still go hunting for a living. The real value of this prize is only the amount of money, which pleases me and provides me with relief for a few months – and that’s it. I accept with love and respect the assessment, but please don’t forget that this is our profession, a profession where we are heard and seen. Financially, I’m doing well, they help me. I did everything I might, paid for my children’s education, put aside savings and ate everything. I don’t have a pension and the old age pension is not enough, so I make do with what I have, and I don’t complain.”
The meeting between us took place shortly before the events of October 7, when the social divide in the country was at its peak. “Ignorant, illiterate people sit in the government and it is outrageous, this is not the country I knew,” she said. “Netanyahu practices tyranny, issues decrees, changes ministers according to political temperament, the country is in a bleak state and it scares and saddens me. The crowd likes to worship and look how they worship the leader of our government. They worship themselves and are afraid of losing their salary. The leadership needs to change. I am Ashkenazi, leftist and a traitor. I am of this variety.”
Are you happy with your career decisions?
“Sure, what question? Let’s stop the interview, I don’t want to summarize anything, I don’t like to dig into my past. Goodbye, my love.”
Goodbye, Naomi, and thank you
