![View of Petra](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/23/View_of_Petra.jpg)
"HaSela haAdom" ( he, הסלע האדום, lit=The Red Rock) is an Israeli song written by
Haim Hefer
Haim Hefer ( he, חיים חפר 29 October 1925 – 18 September 2012) was a Polish-born Israeli songwriter, poet and writer. He wrote for numerous composers and musical artists, as well as for military bands. Several of his songs, including "H ...
, with music by Yochanan Zarai, recorded by
Arik Lavie
Arik Lavie ( he, אריק לביא; 9 March 1927 – 29 June 2004) was an Israeli pop-rock-folk singer and actor.
Early life
Lavie was born to a Jewish single mother named Edith Aubin, who gave birth to him at the age of 19. His father was a me ...
in 1958. The song tells the story of a young Israeli soldier who illegally crossed the Israeli-Jordanian border to visit
Petra
Petra ( ar, ٱلْبَتْرَاء, Al-Batrāʾ; grc, Πέτρα, "Rock", Nabataean Aramaic, Nabataean: ), originally known to its inhabitants as Raqmu or Raqēmō, is an historic and archaeological city in southern Jordan. It is adjacent to t ...
, and ends with the death of its hero. Hefer was inspired by a popular tradition of Israeli youth of hiking to Petra, many of them killed by Jordanian soldiers. The song became so popular among the youth that the government banned it for many years. Hefer's song was familiar to all Israelis, and many authors incorporate it into their books and songs.
Background
![PikiWiki Israel 20682 The Palmach](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/90/PikiWiki_Israel_20682_The_Palmach.jpg)
Hiking across the land of Israel started as part of the Zionist movement of youth, especially popular in
Palmach
The Palmach (Hebrew: , acronym for , ''Plugot Maḥatz'', "Strike Companies") was the elite fighting force of the Haganah, the underground army of the Yishuv (Jewish community) during the period of the British Mandate for Palestine. The Palmach ...
. It was seen as a thing
sabras, non-immigrant Israelis, should do. They toured the whole new-born country, often going through a desert, along coasts and Egyptian and Jordanian borders. The hikers had a saying, "Next year –
Petra
Petra ( ar, ٱلْبَتْرَاء, Al-Batrāʾ; grc, Πέτρα, "Rock", Nabataean Aramaic, Nabataean: ), originally known to its inhabitants as Raqmu or Raqēmō, is an historic and archaeological city in southern Jordan. It is adjacent to t ...
", the site was called "the trek of treks".
Meir Har-Zion
Meir Har-Zion ( he, מאיר הר ציון; February 25, 1934 – March 14, 2014) was an Israeli military commando.
As a key member of Unit 101, he was highly praised by Chief of Staff Moshe Dayan who described him as "the finest of our commando ...
, often called a "mythological army hero", "fulfilled this oath" and travelled to Petra with his girlfriend, Rachel Savorai (also from Palmach), in 1953. Dominik Peters described their trip: "They hitchhiked southwards in Israel, crossed the border, took four bottles of water, some juice, food for two nights and one day, as well as a compass, a map, and a loaded rifle with them
..Once Meir Har-Zion and Rachel Savorai, the first ''kovshim'' ("conquerors") of the sandy and stony soil, returned safe and sound, three men and two women decided after a Palmach reunion to follow their example."
After publication of Har-Zion's book, ''Pirkei Yoman'' (''Chapters of a Diary''), such trips became very popular among young Israelis. This first group who decided to reach Petra after Har-Zion and Savorai were Arik Meger, Miriam Monderer, Eitan Minz, Ya'acov Kleifeld, and Gila Ben-Akiva. They did not succeed: Minz was bitten by a snake, and when they tried to return to Israel, they were killed by Jordanian soldiers. Later, in 1956, Dror Levi and Dimitri Berman of the 890th Battalion tried to reach Petra; Berman was wounded and Levi was killed. In 1957, six more Israelis were killed when they tried that trek.
Yigal Schwartz writes that in the 1950s "the Red Rock functioned as a magical place on the map of the Israeli national imagination, the product of an ancient civilisation, the secret of whose charm also lay, without a doubt, in the fact that it was a dangerous site".
Song
''HaSela HaAdom'', inspired by Har-Zion and the Petra hiking by Israelis, was written by
Haim Hefer
Haim Hefer ( he, חיים חפר 29 October 1925 – 18 September 2012) was a Polish-born Israeli songwriter, poet and writer. He wrote for numerous composers and musical artists, as well as for military bands. Several of his songs, including "H ...
, with music by , and recorded by
Arik Lavie
Arik Lavie ( he, אריק לביא; 9 March 1927 – 29 June 2004) was an Israeli pop-rock-folk singer and actor.
Early life
Lavie was born to a Jewish single mother named Edith Aubin, who gave birth to him at the age of 19. His father was a me ...
in 1958.
Songwriter
Haim Hefer
Haim Hefer ( he, חיים חפר 29 October 1925 – 18 September 2012) was a Polish-born Israeli songwriter, poet and writer. He wrote for numerous composers and musical artists, as well as for military bands. Several of his songs, including "H ...
was himself a member of
Palmach
The Palmach (Hebrew: , acronym for , ''Plugot Maḥatz'', "Strike Companies") was the elite fighting force of the Haganah, the underground army of the Yishuv (Jewish community) during the period of the British Mandate for Palestine. The Palmach ...
; he "created with his songs a soundtrack for the young state of Israel, 'the karaoke of the 1960s', a 'collective linguistic DNA'".
The song was very popular, it "glorified the danger of hikes to Petra"; to discourage the youth,
David Ben-Gurion
David Ben-Gurion ( ; he, דָּוִד בֶּן-גּוּרִיּוֹן ; born David Grün; 16 October 1886 – 1 December 1973) was the primary national founder of the State of Israel and the first prime minister of Israel. Adopting the name ...
banned the song from the radio.
As a result, "forbidden song about forbidden city" became even more popular.
Legacy
Almost all Israelis were familiar with the song,
Petra was featured later in many books and songs. Among them is a book by
Amos Oz
Amos Oz ( he, עמוס עוז; born Amos Klausner; 4 May 1939 – 28 December 2018) was an Israeli writer, novelist, journalist, and intellectual. He was also a professor of Hebrew literature at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. From 1967 onw ...
, ''
A Perfect Peace
''A Perfect Peace'' ( he, מנוחה נכונה) is a 1982 novel by Israeli author Amos Oz that was originally published in Hebrew by Am Oved. It was translated by Hillel Halkin and published in the United States by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich in ...
'', written in 1982, that tells a story of young
kibbutz
A kibbutz ( he, קִבּוּץ / , lit. "gathering, clustering"; plural: kibbutzim / ) is an intentional community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. The first kibbutz, established in 1909, was Degania. Today, farming h ...
nik dissatisfied with his life, who leaves his wife and home and heads to Petra where "
ere lay
the Land of Edom. The Kingdom of Transjordan. The city half as old as time. The enemy's home." This is a reference to the first stanza of Hefer's song. Another example is a short story by
Ruth Almog
Ruth Almog ( he, רות אלמוג) is an Israeli novelist.
Life
Almog was born 15 May 1936 in Petah Tikva, Mandatory Palestine to parents who immigrated from Hamburg in 1933. She studied at the David Yellin Teachers College, and at Tel Aviv Uni ...
, titled "Susim" ("Horses"), about a young man, Oscar, who made
aliyah
Aliyah (, ; he, עֲלִיָּה ''ʿălīyyā'', ) is the immigration of Jews from Jewish diaspora, the diaspora to, historically, the geographical Land of Israel, which is in the modern era chiefly represented by the Israel, State of Israel ...
with his mother after surviving in the
Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...
. He served in the army, but when he heard about the Petra hike, his
sabra
Sabra may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* Sabra (comics), a fictional Israeli female superhero in the Marvel Comics universe
* Sabra (magazine), a Japanese magazine for men
* ''Sabra Command'' the original title of the film ''Warhead''
* "Sabr ...
-friend told him that "Petra is not for soaps" (soap (Sabon in Hebrew) was a derogatory nickname for immigrant-Israelis who survived the Holocaust).
Another example of the song's legacy is
Dana International
Sharon Cohen ( he, שרון כהן; born 2 February 1969), professionally known as Dana International ( he, דנה אינטרנשיונל), is an Israeli pop singer. She has released eight albums and three additional compilation albums. She w ...
's song from
1994 album, titled "Nosa'at le-Petra" ("Going to Petra"), written by
Yoav Ginai. By incorporating the Petra theme, Dana International—
transsexual
Transsexual people experience a gender identity that is inconsistent with their assigned sex, and desire to permanently transition to the sex or gender with which they identify, usually seeking medical assistance (including sex reassignment ...
singer and
LGBTQ
' is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. In use since the 1990s, the initialism, as well as some of its common variants, functions as an umbrella term for sexuality and gender identity.
The LGBT term is a ...
advocate, winner of the
Eurovision Song Contest in 1998
The Eurovision Song Contest 1998 was the 43rd edition of the annual Eurovision Song Contest, held on 9 May 1998 at the National Indoor Arena in Birmingham, United Kingdom. Organised by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and host broadcaster ...
—showed that Hefer's words were still known to Israelis; she "criticizes the nationalistic myth, sexualizes it with metaphors not appearing in the original version, and satirizes the nature-loving Palmach language of Haim Hefer, which was in favor of powerful full moons".
Dana's song was called a "political-sexual parody": "Dana turns this Ashkenazi Israeli myth, with its implicit sexual imagery of a heroic masculine penetration of a feminized Orient, into an explicit sexual encounter with a desert that she returns to rather than from".
References
{{reflist
External links
The song at The National Library of IsraelStudio version on YoutubeLive version by Arik Lavie on YoutubeLive version by Rika Zarai in France, 1972 on YoutubeDetailed accounts of all Israelis illegal trips to Petra
1958 songs
Censorship of music
Israeli songs
Israeli culture
Songs about cities
Hebrew-language songs