The metallic voice, so recognizable, of Yaakov Ben-Herzl, an Israeli radio legend, fell silent tonight, when he passed away at the age of 92. “It used to be impossible to approach the microphone without a radiophonic voice and without a basic knowledge of Hebrew,” noted the legendary broadcaster, who left an indelible mark on The radio broadcasts in Israel, in an interview seven years ago for the “Where are they today” section. “Now every Zev Tomam broadcasts and there is no strictness to correct Hebrew. When I listen to the radio, I have a noise in my ears, while the same goes for the television.”
The voice of Ben-Herzl – who later conducted the master program “The Court!” and headed the team of the program “Yom Bi Yishuv”, in which the starving girl from Beit-Shan was exposed – was discovered during his studies at the Herzliya Gymnasium, when he was reading from the Bible in the ceremonies there. Ben-Herzl, who was almost a teenager, immigrated from Lithuania with his parents at the age of four. His original surname was Psalm Zogar, although he made it clear that he was not a relative of Dan Ben-Amutz, who was also named that way originally.
In the War of Independence, after a Golani soldier, “when I barely knew how to hold a rifle”, was sent to the battle for Degania, “from there I don’t remember myself firing a single shot”. In his next station in the army he served as a medic officer in Tel Hashomer. There they noticed his wonderful vocal ability Issachar Miron, composer of “Tsana Tsana”, who was the cultural officer of the medical corps and his deputy, the radio woman Hana Ben-Ari and sent him in 1950 to Kol Israel.
“It was not in my plans at all and I actually dreamed of becoming a doctor,” he said. At the Kabbalah exam on the radio, while still in uniform, he read as his testimony with terrible pathos and with great excitement a review by Raphael Bashan of the movie “Red Shoes”. “You are too pompous,” the radio director told him. “Inspired by him, I somehow moderated,” he testified.
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Ben-Herzl liked the atmosphere in the radio studios in Tel Aviv, “even though the conditions were on the face”. “One day the actor and singer Eddie Kantor came to visit us and was amazed,” he recalled. “You are so primitive, don’t you have a recording machine?”, she wondered and made sure to send us a huge recording machine.
In 1954, Ben-Herzl was a representative of Kol Israel at a memorial ceremony held in Kibbutz Ma’agan for the paratroopers who were sent to Europe during the Holocaust. 17 attendees of the ceremony perished when a “Piper” plane crashed into the crowd in what has since been remembered as the “Agan disaster”. According to him, his life was saved there, when one of the paratrooper commanders offered him to switch places and perished. “I was supposed to record and describe what was happening there, but as a member of the medical corps, I left the recording device and went over to treat the wounded,” he commented.
A year later, he was sent for professional training in the USA as part of the American aid program for developing countries, where he learned from the great broadcasters, including Walter Cronkite, who “no broadcaster would touch his ankles” and Edward Morrow, who “shared his professional secrets with me”.
Ben-Herzl returned to Israel with a franchise for the “Trap” program, which was based on criminal cases of the Israel Police. “For the purpose of one of the programs, we staged a bank robbery in coordination with its employees, but one of the neighbors called the police, who arrested us at these hours,” said Ben-Herzl, who studied law at the university without having a law license and his flagship radio program was “The Court”, which was based on real trials and was attended by first-rate lawyers.
As a passionate film buff, he was the film critic for the radio and also the editor of “Geva Diaries” until television broke out, where he did not go as far as he did on the radio. During his short time as the director of the programs there, he was the one who brought the “Lol” programs to the ground, “after I was enthusiastic about an experimental program they showed me”. According to him, these programs caused a stir: “After the first broadcast, I was attacked by the authorities on the grounds that the program was too left-wing, and in the Knesset they submitted a query on how such brats are allowed to present a program on television.”
From radio and television, Ben-Herzl came to manage the “Anbal” dance theater, which was in a heavy deficit, “even though Yemeni dance was far from me.” “I couldn’t refuse the request of Sarah Levy-Tanai, their founder and artistic director,” he reasoned. “After all, in the 1930s she was my favorite kindergartner.”
and besides that? – “In those years, I organized most of the people’s celebrations in Israel, where I was the editor, director and narrator. My biggest profit from this is my wife, the singer Nira Gal, who was among the participants in the musical ‘Ka Lahi’, which I produced on the half-jubilee of the State of Israel. She has been my life partner ever since.” .
“Nira is my crowning glory,” he blessed who was his third wife, and together they were one of the best-known couples in Tel Aviv’s cultural life. “Nowadays, when I’m not in good health, she holds me. When we fell in love with ‘Ka Lahi’, it was…a successful work accident. I bless the day I met her.”
what do you miss – I asked him to finish. “I miss the early days of radio with the innocence, professionalism and fear of the Holy Spirit in front of the microphone,” he replied. “What happened, will not come back…”.