Talk:Esther Ofarim

Untitled
I have moved this page from Esther Ofarim to Esther and Abi Ofarim. Whilst I appreciate they both had careers after their divorce, it was the period they were together for which they were most famous, and I don't think there's really enough material for two articles. Also, whilst I have added some sources, several of them are from fan websites which I am reluctant to use; however, there isn't much alternative about. DWaterson 00:38, 9 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Sorry, but I do not think the current setup to be a very good idea. The Eurovision participation is Esther's and she is also the one who made more name. The part of bundling their careers while married under one chapter is actually a very bad idea because Esther had her major successes during this time. Also I failed to see the discussion about the merger and the edit history of the Esther Ofarim article, but that is probably my fault. At this stage I suggest changing this article's name to Esther Ofarim and putting Abi-specific content in a separate article. gidonb 10:55, 3 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Yeah, go ahead as you suggest. Having rearranged the articles, I do agree that that it now looks rather clumsy and doesn't read very elegantly. That's partly down to the need to expand the article. I think two shorter stubs might be better in retrospect. DWaterson 14:28, 3 January 2007 (UTC)


 * OK I did the basic separating. I will fine-tune this later today or tomorrow. Best regards, gidonb 14:57, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Military service
I remember from an interview many years ago that she had to perform two years of military service (in her case, in the Israeli army). Is this notable, bearing in mind that she would have shared this experience in common with other Israeli girls at that time? Meltingpot (talk) 07:41, 26 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Based on presentation on her i've seen, she did only 4 months of military service and was spared the full service due to being married (apparently marriage back then was also a way for women to avoid military service).--Kmhkmh (talk) 00:25, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

Banned in the Israeli Radio
Does anyone have any references to explain why Esther Ofarim was banned in the Israeli Radio between 1964 and 1968. I got this one reference from www.youtube.com : "Esther was banned in the Israeli radio for some years from approx. 1964 until 1968. "  Yaz (talk) 07:26, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
 * The ban was on the background of Germany-Israel relations that were strained when Esther started performing in Germany. gidonb (talk) 01:11, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure whether that is due to particular relation at that time, but rather local Israeli politics/attitudes. As a consequences of the Holocaust the German language as well various (artistic) work of German culture were banned in the early years of Israel, so I guess it is probably more related to that. However the cited source doesn't state that Ofarim was banned in Israel, as Ofarim is just cited as an example of an Israeli artist being successful in West Germany, but does explicitly state her being banned in Israel, instead it just talks about German artists being banned from performing or selling in Israel. Whether or how that affected Ofarim is unclear (one might suspect that her recordings in German might have been banned in Israel), but that is just a guess, the source makes no such statement. In any case it seems highly doubtful to me that Ofarim was banned in Israel in general (including her works in Hebrew and English).--Kmhkmh (talk) 14:04, 22 September 2021 (UTC)
 * P.S. Some further research seems to indicate that she was indeed banned from radio play in Israel in the early 60s, however the exact reasons for it remain a bit unclear to me but it doesn't really seem to be related to political tensions between Israel and West Germany in the early 60s. So i wouldn't object against including the radio ban again, it however require a different source than the one used before.--Kmhkmh (talk) 00:31, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

According to what I heard from many people of my family or others, who lived in Israel in the 60’s, only the hebrew songs of their european records were on radio at this time, quite frequently (that’s the way they heard and learned those israeli pioneer songs), but the general feeling was that she had betrayed Israel by leaving the country to build a career in... Germany! I also understood that they « « forgave » her when she started to come back regularly in Israel to sing on TV and in festivals from 1970 on (strangely, after her divorce from Avi). And they realized that during all this time, she had made famous in the world some israeli songs, so she had been a kind of ambassador of beautiful israeli music. They also realized that she was the most powerful and sensitive performer of those splendid and melancholic melodies... Marquifrane (talk) 09:09, 8 July 2022 (UTC)