365 Days #320 - The Hanoar Hazioni Singers - Artza Alinu / Jeannie Reynolds - Israel Is Her Name (mp3s)

MP3:
The Hanoar Hazioni Singers
Artza Alinu / Yesh Rechov Aroch (2:21)
Ha Yoshevet Baganim (2:31)
Uhalu Hag'ranot / Bar Eileh Chamda Libi (2:58)
Simi Yadech (1:21)
Bnei Yerushalaim (2:13)
Shir Haletsan (2:58)
Hasela Ha'adom (3:47)
Rakefet (1:46)
Ronu, Ronu (1:25)
Shalom Chaverim (1:52)
Yashen Lo Kfarim (2:03)
Sahki, Sahki (2:31)
Hafle Vafele (2:24)
Bo Veeshak Lecha (1:16)
Nivim Dovrim (Hag) (1:11)
Yatzanu At (2:10)
Jeannie Reynolds
Israel Is Her Name (4:26)
Little Boy of Mine (3:17)

Artza Alinu is a lovely and haunting album of Israeli folk songs, recorded circa 1967 - whether before or after the Six-Day War, I don't know, though if I had to guess, I'd say not long afterwards. Check out the scans of the jacket back and transliteration/translation sheet for some context.

It is not hard to imagine that some of the singers on this album, or the Israelis pictured on the cover, could be the sons and daughters of some of the people heard singing in this moving recording of newly-liberated survivors of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

Also included is Jeannie Reynolds' Israel Is Her Name, which melodramatizes the Israeli pioneer experience, and the b-side of that single, Little Boy of Mine. Not to be confused with the soul singer who was best known for The Fruit Song, this Jeannie Reynolds appears to have been an entertainer in the Catskills.

- Contributed by: Corey K.

Images: Jacket Cover, Jacket Back, Translation & Transliteration Sheet, Label (front), Label (back), Jeannie Reynolds label (front), Jeannie Reynolds label (back), Jeannie Reynolds Remembers (jacket and label)

Media: 33rpm vinyl album
Album: Artza Alinu
Label: London International
Catalog: TW 91446
Credits: The Hanoar Hazioni Singers
Date: 1967

Media: 45rpm vinyl single
Album: Israel Is Her Name / Little Boy of Mine
Label: LM Records
Catalog: LM-100-A / LM-100-B
Credits: Jeannie Reynolds (conducted by Hal Schleifer)

Comments

[Chris R.]

... what makes it considerably *less* moving is that most of the people involved were certainly more directly responsible for sticking Palestinians into the modern version of the Ghetto. Is it really that hard to figure out that victims of the Holocaust (most of whom, obviously, were killed) and a set of Israelis 22 years later are two different groups of people? Or that there are very few victims of the Holocaust alive in Israel today, although millions of Palestinians are still living as the abandoned refuse of the world?

[Karin C.]

My mother played this album when I was a child in the early '70's. I am now playing it for my children.

Israel is one of the most civilized nations in history. In order to question Israel's right to exist, or question Israel's response to terrorism or multiple attempts to annihilate it, you have to think like an accomplice, and apply standards to Israel that you would never apply to any other civilized nation.

The songs are amazing, as is the nation of Israel.

Am Yisrael Chai.

[R Bishop]

Dear God, Zionist hate gets everywhere. "Israel is one of the most civilized nations in history" ? Are you having a laugh ? A country that thinks nothing of sending bombs and shells indiscriminately into the crowded ghettoes of Gaza, of destroying a family picnicking on a beach, that pens a whole million-and-a-half people into the densest, most overcrowded piece of land in the world ? that operates an apartheid system of roads in the illegally-occupied West Bank - roads that only Jews may travel on ?

I could go on and on, but these are things that all right-thinking people with any knowledge of the Middle East know. I suspect even the poster above knows them, but for reasons that disturb me even to think about them, denies.