Shira BeTzibur (Public Sing-Alongs)
"Shira BeTzibur" (public sing-alongs) is a unique Israeli event.
The event is initiated and planned, usually for evening hours. Dozens or hundreds of people participate, and it can take place in a municipal cultural hall, a community center (Matnas), a kibbutz dining hall, a retirement home, a spacious villa courtyard, or an open area under the summer night sky, and in any place suitable for a group of people who gather to sing Israeli songs together in Hebrew.
The program is known in advance.
Participants, who arrive in couples or solo, fill chairs row after row. Facing them on stage: the evening's facilitator-leader – not a famous solo singer, nor a member of a well-known musical ensemble. Just someone with musical talent who loves to sing and found a way to make a living from it. The evening's facilitator prepares the song list in advance and will sing them one by one, sitting at a piano or standing with a guitar in hand, hoping the list will be exciting and inspiring enough for the audience.
The most seasoned and famous among these facilitators is undoubtedly Saraleh Sharon.
She is known for the enthusiasm she brings to her evenings. She pounds forcefully on the piano and leads the communal singing with a hoarse voice.
She's not so young anymore, and neither are they.
They are middle-aged Israelis, pensioners or on their way to retirement – who gather for a get-together centered around singing, and only singing. This is the sole purpose of their gathering. They just want to return for a brief hour to the songs that "do it for them." Songs that were played on the radio in the days before television. Songs that touch on the distant and not-so-distant past. Songs that topped the charts. Songs that accompanied them in youth movements. That they listened to during military service. That they danced to at university dance parties. Songs that remind them of what they consider: the 'Beautiful and Solid Eretz Yisrael.' The one that was and is no more, at least in their consciousness.
They sing with Hasidic devotion classic tunes like "Bapardes Leyad Hashoket" (In the Orchard Next To The Trough)' "Al Kol Elle,"(For All These Things), "The Red Rock," "BaShana Haba'a" ("Next Year We'll Sit on the Porch,") and "Lo Nafsik Lashir" (We Won't Stop Singing),
songs by Naomi Shemer and Israeli military ensembles, Arik Einstein and Arik Lavi, Yaffa Yarkoni and Yehoram Gaon. Ilanit and Yardena Arazi.
The lyrics of the songs have strong and essential meaning.
If you truly want to excite the audience, you should give them "Kol Hakavod" (All the honor) from the famous musical "Kazablan," which was a huge hit on stage and in movie theaters. The song "Malchut HaHermon" (Kingdom of Hermon) will sweep them away on waves of nostalgia straight to the years of euphoria after the Six-Day War. And for one moment, the enthusiasm can be subdued with the wistful and melancholic "Eli Eli Shelo Yigamer Le'Olam" (My God, My God, May It Never End), and everyone will join in, singing softly like a prayer.
The leading facilitator on stage changes slides on the screen, gesturing with her hands like an orchestra conductor, and the singing erupts from throats scattered throughout the hall, echoing between its walls.
The singer Eyal Golan cannot be played there. Neither can Rami Fortis or Si Heyman.
These singers, with all due respect, are not connected to what is known as "Hebrew songs" – a very defined and established Israeli genre. These popular singers can be heard in other circumstances, but not at this canonical moment. They are not part of the unique Israeli soundtrack that was written over decades and became a cornerstone for large segments of Israeli society. These singers don't have what the Gevatron or HaParvarim Duo have. They don't have songs with melodies and lyrics that can be sung together to feel a sense of belonging to a forgotten culture.
After 75 years of the State of Israel's existence, this culture is still in demand, with an audience that consumes it devoutly. They just hear about a Shira BeTzibur evening – and they'll come. This isn't a massive production, and there's no need for special preparation for the event – tickets aren't sold months in advance, the format is really cheap to produce, and the decor is completely simple: no giant speakers, no orchestra, and no spotlights.
It's just the public sitting on chairs, and the Hebrew song embracing lips and hearts.
HaTishma Koli? ("Will My Voice Be Heard?")
Yes. And this is also characteristic of Shira BeTzibur evenings:
Those with sharp hearing will notice that the female voices in the hall overpower the male voices.
Women come to these evenings, which are all about camaraderie, overflowing emotions, nostalgic smiles and sadness, social embrace, uplifted spirits, and public surrender to pure pleasure.
For men, it's a bit more complicated. They come to sing in public, but the rugged Israeli male demeanor doesn't easily allow for the wellsprings of emotion to open up. Often they look and sound as if they were dragged along by their partners and simply came.
A foreigner won't understand why these Israelis would spend an entire evening together with people they don't know, just to sing.
It's understandable for adults, who are connected to nostalgic yearning for the past, but it's surprising to repeatedly see how occasionally even twenty-year-olds come, wanting to connect with this social genre, to stop singing alone in the shower, and join in droves for the sublime experience unknown in any other nation in the world.
A hundred years after its inception, the original Shira BeTzibur still exists but not on the scale it once knew. It is gradually fading along with the older generations. And now we've reached the 21st century.
In the 21st century, it has advanced versions with Einat Sarouf who gets the crowd jumping out of their seats and makes them sing and dance. With facilitators who engage children, and facilitators who go down into the audience with a wireless microphone and press it against a random person in the crowd, so they can sing one verse of a song.
The most advanced version is called: Karaoke night.
A group gathers at a friend's apartment, background music plays (the karaoke track), someone holds the microphone and sings, and everyone joins in.
Karaoke night is a social product imported from the wider world, and it has a slightly different character – the music is more rhythmic, the atmosphere is joyful and unrestrained, no polite applause, but "Yalla Kapayim!" (an Israeli term describing a sweeping popular enthusiasm, literally "Come on, clap!"). There are no age or ethnic origin restrictions, and ears are open to Mizrahi, Western, Greek, Irish, Russian music – anything goes.
Karaoke nights are not open to the general public but are intended for small groups, where the men are particularly loud and prominent (in spoken Hebrew: "Notnim BaRosh" – literally "giving in the head," meaning giving it their all), and the women join in. Beers and pitzuchim (snacks/seeds) are on the table. There's a chance for hookahs and various intoxicating substances. And if the atmosphere gets too lively, there's a chance the neighbors in the building will call the police because it's already past midnight.
Einat Sarouf - getting the audience excited at a communal singing event
Historical bits
Shira BeTzibur was a ritual for members of the Jewish Yishuv (pre-state Jewish community) under the Mandate rule.
In kibbutzim and Moshavim, it was a regular event on Shabbat nights or holidays, and in the city – part of the activities at the "Beit HaAm" (Community House) or the clubs of the mythological labor organization HaHistadrut. Without radio, television, or YouTube, musicians taught their audience new songs and disseminated them from gathering to gathering throughout the country.
After the establishment of the state, the phenomenon became institutionalized.
Shira BeTzibur was a dessert to conclude a cultural evening, after a lecture and slides.
And not only that – it was also an activity for youth movements, a free evening for a military company, a reason for a party for couples and friends. It was a farewell party for a senior officer retiring from the army, a kumzits (bonfire gathering) around a bonfire, a radio program for a holiday. It was figures like Gil Aldema, Nisan Evron, and Suliman HaGadol. And most of all: it was the complete antithesis of the ballroom dancing evenings where young people danced to the sounds of Cliff Richard and Elvis Presley in the 1950s and 60s.
Shira BeTzibur has always been the 'Beautiful and Solid Eretz Yisrael.' In the eyes of the trailblazers of the renewed Hebrew culture in the land.
It was a secular event, but it had hallmarks of a religious ceremony.
The ceremony was set for fixed days at fixed hours, usually on Friday nights or Saturday evenings. The songs were like a prayer, and the facilitator/leader – like a cantor or priest, the public – like a congregation praying, singing the words with devotion and responding to them with bodily gestures: clapping in rhythm, closing their eyes or opening them wide with a smile, nodding their heads left and right, and if necessary – moving their entire body. When it was the turn of a particularly canonical song, one could feel the camaraderie enveloping everyone, moving long rows of men and women, left and right, head after head, body after body, in uniform rhythms.
In particularly secular strongholds, like the city of Haifa, it was possible to gather many hundreds of people in a cultural hall and spend an entire evening together, entirely dedicated to Shira BeTzibur led by the undisputed king – Efi Netzer and his famous accordion.
The accordion was the leading instrument in other places as well. Sometimes the facilitator played the guitar, and if he was a recognized musician – he led the singers by playing the piano.
Shimon Shadmi Conducting Shira BeTzibur at the Emek Veterans' Conference at Kibbutz Ein Harod-Ichud 1963 Photo: Eliezer Skallertz – "Bitmuna" website
In the 1950s and 60s, their hits were coffee and Finjan songs, pioneering songs, and a genre called "Ho...Ho...Ho" (the "Israeli 'Country' style").
"BaTachanah Le'Beer Sheva Amad Katar" (A locomotive stood at the station to Beersheba), "Hoy Artzi Molad'ti" (Oh My Country My Homeland), "Baab El Wad" and "Yesh Li Gan" (I Have a Garden) – songs by leading poets and lyricists such as Nathan Alterman, Haim Hefer, Haim Nahman Bialik, and Saul Tchernichovsky.
These gatherings were famous for two distinctive, almost ritualistic, moments involving canonical songs:
The first, during "Ma Yafim HaLeilot BiKna'an" (How Beautiful are the Nights in Canaan): The leading facilitator would enthusiastically roar the song's opening line, "Ma Yafim HaLeilot BiKna'an!", and the entire audience would roar back with a resounding "Haaasssss!"
The second, with the Russian song "Kalinka": When the facilitator reached the word "Kalinka" in the chorus, they would hold the first letter of the first word with full lungs, drawing out: "Kaaaa...liiii...nka." The audience would eagerly wait for them to run out of breath, and once they finished, the signal was given, and everyone would sing together: "Ka-linka ka-kalinka ka-kalinka ka-maya."
These two occurrences were well-known to all participants of Shira BeTzibur evenings, creating a shared and memorable experience.
Then, it was still customary to bind the sheets into a small booklet called a "Shiron" (Songbook). Particularly creative organizers added a small drawing to each song, which might express the atmosphere of the words and melody. Later came slides, and the classic accordion and guitar were replaced by electric ones. More sophisticated organizers even brought an electric organ that could fill the role of an entire orchestra.
Slide for a Shira BeTzibur evening - "Let's sing to a beautiful land"
1977 - Holon Municipality invites to a Shira BeTzibur evening
The years passed.
The locomotive numbered seventy-four hundred fourteen from the famous song went to its eternal rest in the Beersheba museum. And with it died "Av" and "Elul" (Hebrew months, famously symbolic of passing time in a well-known song) and the warmth of those songs.
The young people of yesteryear, those from the ballroom dancing scene, became parents themselves, a bit bourgeois, a bit conservative. The revolutions were behind them, and the generation gap before their eyes. At the height of their business and family careers, they returned to their parents' roots. In the 1970s and 80s, they took the deeply rooted Israeli ritual of the old generation and slightly changed the repertoire – instead of Palmach songs, they sang pop chart hits. Instead of Bialik and Kritchevsky, they sang Jonathan Geffen, Ehud Manor and Nurit Hirsch, Zvika Pick and Yardena Arazi.
And so, while performing the ceremony with the appropriate decor, they could feel that the flag had passed to them, and that they were now "Eretz Yisrael HaYaffa" (The Beautiful Land of Israel) – the guardians of the flame of an ancient culture that was gradually disappearing.
And while they were singing, another kind of Shira BeTzibur began to develop on the cultural fringes.
The new singers of the 90s did not see themselves as people of "Eretz Yisrael HaYaffa," but rather the opposite: the marginalized Israel, the "other" Israel, which doesn't connect to Russian, Ukrainian, and French culture.
"If it's Europe anyway," they said, "then we choose Greece. And we don't just sit comfortably in our chairs and politely clap – we get up and sing, and even dance, and even get on the tables, when the ecstasy is at its peak."
Their groups were smaller, gathering in their own clubs to the sounds of Greek songs adorned with bouzouki. Their stars were Stalos and Trifonas, Zohar Argov and Tzlilei HaKerem, Daklon and Haim Moshe.
And now we've reached the 21st century.
As the state turns 75, Israelis don't give up on public singing. There's room for everyone, and everything gets mixed – some sing about the Israel of the past, and others sing about the Israel of today, some organize nostalgia evenings, and others go to karaoke nights.
In the 1980s, Jonathan Geffen wrote the song "Ga'agu'im LeShoshana" (Longing for Shoshana) which deals with a group of nouveau riche gathering for a Shira BeTzibur evening in a glittering villa, yearning over glasses of Chivas for the cheerful Palmach days, for Shoshana from the company, and for the unique slang with "Dahilak, Sach'tein, Ma'alish." The song was composed by Ariel Zilber and sung by the HaGashash HaHiver (The Pale Tracker) members. The song itself and the skit about Shira BeTzibur are not famous online, but the wonderful lyrics can be found on Shironet here at the link, and they are as incisive as Geffen's other songs.
This is part of "The Israeli Story 1948-2025" project
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