When people think about “The Prince of Egypt,” they think about (I hope) a joyful nostalgic film, the most Jewish animated film of all, the story of Moses, dubbed by the late great Val Kilmer (may his memory be for a blessing,) Ralph Fiennes, Michelle Pfeiffer, Sandra Bullock, Jeff Goldblum, Danny Glover, Helen Mirren and Patrick Stewart. They think of the first DreamWorks movie, a Spielberg production. They think of Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston singing “When You Believe.”
I think of all of these too, but for me, the most important voice in “Prince of Egypt” is the woman who opens it with its first song, “Deliver Us,” — Ofra Haza.
Haza was cast as Yocheved, Moses’ mom. She recalled in an interview about “The King and I” — another film in which she dubbed and sang, though only in Hebrew — how connected she felt to that role. When Haza came to LA to work on the movie, the first animated feature of the Steven Spielberg, Jefferey Katzenberg and David Geffen production company DreamWorks — now known mostly for its work in animation — she was shown sketches of the character based on her likeness. That gave her an affinity for the role, the character. “It was a pleasure singing in Hebrew and English,” she told Guy Pines in an interview, because the American version of the song also features the Hebrew “yaldi harach, al tira ve’al tifchad — my newborn boy / don’t fret and don’t be afraid.”
In that interview, she talked about how meaningful it was for her as a girl from the Tikvah neighborhood of Tel Aviv to be amid all these Hollywood stars. She spoke about the power of the song and her hopes that it would become a big anthem. Ofra Haza would end up spending a lot of time with Yocheved — she dubbed her and sang the song in 17 languages, a truly impressive feat.
But Ofra Haza was a woman of many impressive feats. To many, she is still to this day the most beautiful voice that came out of Israel, maybe one of the most beautiful singing voices of an entire generation, across the world. Ofra Haza wasn’t just voted Israel’s singer of the year on multiple occasions, she was also an international hit. After her song “Im Nin’alu” was sampled in the hip hop song “Paid In Full,” it became a Billboard hit. Ofra Haza was a Grammy-nominated singer. She sang in Hebrew, English, French and Arabic on stages across the globe. When Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat won the Nobel Prize for the Oslo Accords, she sang for them. She sang duets with Paula Abdul and Iggy Pop, was offered (but refused) to perform to the pope and was dubbed by Rolling Stones as one of the 200 best singers of all times, the “Madonna of the Middle East.” And yet I can’t help thinking that if she had been around longer, Ofra Haza would be an even bigger deal.
“The Prince of Egypt” came out in December of 1998, a little over a year before Haza died of complications related to HIV/AIDS at the age of 42 in February of 2000. The film was supposed to be a huge boon for Haza, who was and remains one of the greatest Israeli singers of all time. She had already had a successful international career, but the song brought her to a new audience. She was working on a new album, which was meant to be her best yet, one where she was fully leaning into her Yemeni roots.
Growing up in Tel Aviv’s disenfranchised Tikvah neighborhood, a home to many families who came from Yemen like hers, Ofra was surrounded by Yemeni music. Everyone in the neighborhood called her Bat Sheva; she was the seventh daughter in her family, one of nine kids. Her mother worked three jobs, her father worked for the city, and they tried to always keep a watchful eye on their girls. At home, her brother Yair recalled, she would get in front of the mirror, put on her mom’s clothes and sing. She was shy but she sang all of the time.
Her career started in the Tikvah neighborhood, as a young teen, when she joined the Tikvah Theater Troupe, then managed by Bezalel Aloni — Aloni and Haza’s career and lives would stay impossibly entwined until her marriage in 1997. The theater troupe was a protest one, bringing to the fore the plight of the Tikvah neighborhood, singing and performing about their roots. It was there that Haza first sang on stage a song that later made her an international star, based on the 17th century poem by Rabbi Shalom Shabazi: “Im Nin’Alu.” She was just 14 when she earned third place at a Mizrahi singing competition, wearing a dress Aloni helped her get at a local HaTikvah neighborhood boutique and wearing her mother’s shoes.
But the first song that made her a national icon was undoubtedly “The Song of the Frecha” from the 1979 film “Schlager.” In the movie, Haza declares herself a “frecha,” a term for a flighty and “easy” young woman, sexually promiscuous, originally used to describe mostly Mizrahi women.
“I don’t have a head for big words,” she sings in it, and “I want it during the day/I want it at night/I want to shout: ‘I’m a Frecha.'” Svika Pick, one of the icons of Hebrew music and Quentin Tarantino’s father-in-law, who composed the movie’s music and guest-starred in it, was against Haza’s casting and made her sing it in particularly high key, hoping she would screw it up. She didn’t. The song spurred wild cultural debate, and was not always one that Haza was happy with, but it has since become a cult song. Yet after the hit, songwriters didn’t want to write for her, because she was the woman of the “Frecha Song,” because she was from the Tikvah neighborhood. And so, Bezalel Aloni became her manager and also the writer behind many of her biggest hits.
“Deliver Us,” in which Haza’s Yocheved sings a prayer to God for freedom and safety, especially for the little boy she is about to send away in the Nile, singing about her hopes to reach the promised land, of her hopes to see her son again, echoes so much of Haza’s music. Faith and God were an important part of her identity; she often spoke of her gratitude to God in interviews, especially after she survived a plane crash and an experience on a plane that was hit by lighting. Yet just as importantly, it was a big part of her music, from “Shabbat HaMalka,” a song praising the holy Jewish day of rest that won her that third place in the singing competition to “Im Nin’alu.” Her faith is especially highlighted in one of her first hits after the Frecha song, “Tefilla,” “Prayer,” a song written by Aloni and composed by Henry Barter, a French immigrant to Israel, in which Haza asks God to “Protect us like children/Protect us and do not let go/give us light and youthfully joy/let us also love.” Aloni said he wrote it to honor Haza’s connection to faith.
Haza’s first big international moment was, arguably, her performance on the Eurovision stage in Germany, where she sang on the very same soil where Nazism was born, a Jewish song about survival: “Chai,” the Hebrew word for living and alive. “Chai, chai, chai,” she sang, “yes I am still alive, this is the song that grandfather sang to father and today I am [singing it too].” The song gained new meaning after October 7, helping many in Israel deal with their trauma in the same way that her song “Le’Orech Ha’Yam,” “Along the Sea,” helped people grieve the murder of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1994 and continues to be a song that walks many Israelis through grief.
It’s impossible to list all of Haza’s hits. She put out dozens of albums and singles and she collaborated with Israel’s biggest songwriters, from Ehud Manor to Naomi Shemer. But one of the most beautiful things about Haza is how she never let go of her roots. For two years, she wrote about social issues and religious issues for an Israeli newspaper. In her last film role, she played a journalist writing about the Yemenite Children Affair. Her career started in political protest theater; she unapologetically celebrated her Yemenite roots and her deep connection to Judaism, as evidenced by the fact that her biggest hits are from albums full of Yemenite classics and that her biggest international hits, from “Deliver Us” to “Im Nin’alu,” fully embrace these two important aspects of her being.
The story of Haza’s death is murky and messy. In 1997, Haza married Doron Ashkenazi, a wealthy businessman. He became her manager, which according to some freed her, and according to others took her away from Aloni. In February of 2020, Haza was brought into the hospital with a “mystery illness.” 11 days later, she was dead. It took quite a while for the information about her cause of death to be made public; she had been HIV-positive, and had died of AIDS. Haza had apparently had the virus for years. A salacious and incredibly painful — and some would say sexist — game of pointing fingers ensued about how she contracted the virus. Her husband died of an overdose a year and a half later, on Passover night. The early recordings of the songs that were meant to be part of Ofra Haza’s greatest album are also still part of a family feud over her legacy. A duet of hers with Sarah Brightman was released posthumously, and she was recently “resurrected” through AI for a controversial duet with the late Zohar Argov.
Twenty-five years after her death, it’s hard not to dream of what could have been if Haza was still around. It’s devastating to think that if it hadn’t been for the stigma around HIV/AIDS, Ofra Haza might still be alive today. She had so much great music left in her. But in her more than two-decades long career, Ofra Haza delivered us so much transcendent music. There’s just so much to be grateful for. Each one of her songs gives me goosebumps, her voice a proof itself of the divine. It’s meaningful that her last big international project was a movie like “The Prince of Egypt” which brought, and continues to bring, so many people to the Jewish story of Exodus. I also love that through it, Ofra Haza, with her sweet and gorgeous boy, has become part of so many people’s Passover celebrations forever.
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