Shulamit Livnat, who was known as the songstress of the underground movements in pre-state Israel, died in the predawn hours of Wednesday morning. She was 91.
Born in Vienna as a member of the Adler family, she came by ship with her parents to Haifa in the mid-1930s. They had traveled via Poland in order to bid farewell to Livnat’s grandparents.
After leaving school, she joined the Palmah, which gave her special leave to help her mother, who at age 42 was pregnant, and who gave birth to a boy on the significant date of November 29, 1947 – the UN vote approving the Partition Plan for Palestine.
In one of many interviews that she gave, Livnat said that while most people in the country were dancing in the streets that day in celebration of the vote of the United Nations, in her family they had another reason for a celebration.
Livnat always liked to sing, and her talent was initially recognized by songwriter and poet Haim Hefer, who brought her into the entertainment unit of the Palmah. She later joined the entertainment unit of the IDF.
When she was around 20, she met Azriel Livnat, a former Irgun and Stern Group fighter, who was planning to start a musical theater, and was looking for a singer. They married a year later.
In addition to changing her status, Livnat also changed her politics, moving sharply to the Right. The politics of the day did not intrude on her career. She was extremely popular, and among the first Israelis to sing at gigs abroad.
But in the 1980s, some years after the political administration had veered to the Right, Livnat recorded the hymns of both the Irgun and the Stern Group, as a result of which she ironically fell out of favor with the public and was ostracized by the music industry.
She still continued to sing at Irgun and Stern Group commemorative events, also making records here and there, but it was nothing like it had been in her heyday.
She then became a political activist, writer, editor and the driving force behind an ideological study house located at Beit Jabotinsky in Tel Aviv.
She and her husband, who died in April 2015, had two children – a daughter and a son. Their daughter, Limor, was for many years a legislator and a government minister. Their son, Noam, became ultra-Orthodox and advocated for the borders of the State of Israel to be identical with those of biblical Israel. Noam’s son Yosef was killed by Palestinian policemen in 2011, when he went to pray at the Tomb of Joseph.
Azriel never got over the death of his grandson.
But Shulamit soldiered on, and at age 90 recorded a new album.
She also left her home in Ramat Gan and went to live with her granddaughter and her great-grandchildren in the West Bank.
In recent weeks, she complained of not feeling well, so her family took her to a hospital, where she was pronounced critically ill, and given very little time to live.
She accepted this with her usual stoicism and agreed to be transferred to a hospice, where the end came swiftly.
Always a beautiful woman, who was adept at using cosmetics to her best advantage, she looked as beautiful in death as she had in life, according to her daughter.
In eulogizing her, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said she had been a woman of Greater Israel and a magnificent singer, who had contributed greatly to Israel’s development. When she joined the Palmah, he said, it was as a combat soldier.
Her sterling work, together with that of others of the generation of the underground movements, proved to be an inalienable asset, he said, as he conveyed his condolences to the Livnat family.
Similar sentiments were expressed by Justice Minister Gideon Sa’ar, who noted Livnat’s strong character and Zionist values.
He recalled that no matter what the circumstances, she always endeavored to attend the annual Stern Group memorial ceremony and to sing “Hayalim Almonim” (Anonymous Soldiers), the Stern Group hymn written by the organization’s founder, Yair Stern.