'I Loved Her,' 'The Watchful One's Song,' 'Come, Rain,' and 'I Dream of Naomi' are just a handful of the roughly 500 songs written by this artist, whose life was cut short at 36.

Tirza Atar: Life and Work

I'm certain that by the time you reach the end of this story, you'll be humming at least one of her songs, and another will be stuck in your head for days. This extraordinary songwriter was responsible for famous songs performed by many singers, including Shlomo Artzi, who became famous for her song 'I Loved Her,' and Arik Einstein, with 'Saturday Morning.' Though the songs became famous through their performers, every one of them was written by Tirza Atar.

She adopted the surname Atar because she wanted to become famous and be appreciated in her own right, rather than for being the daughter of a famous actress and a well-known poet. She inherited her gift for speech and acting from her mother, and her writing from her father. She could have been anything she wished, but it all came to an abrupt end: "The poet Tirza Atar, 36, was found lifeless this morning, lying in the backyard of her home at 26 Shimon HaTarsi Street in Tel Aviv," the newspaper Haaretz reported on September 7, 1977. News of her death stunned her family and friends, as well as the country's worlds of poetry and theater.

Tirza Atar was born in Tel Aviv in January 1941 to the poet Nathan Alterman and the theater actress Rachel Marcus. Rachel was born in a small town in Poland, into a traditional family. Her father, Daniel Marcus, a tobacco merchant and president of the Keren Hayesod foundation in Poland, was a superb orator. The Marcus family came to Israel in the 1930s and settled in Hadera. Rachel left Hadera for Vienna to study acting with the theater legend Max Reinhardt, and by 1947 she was already performing at the Cameri Theatre. At the Snow of Lebanon café, where Tel Aviv's entire bohemian crowd gathered, she met Nathan Alterman, who made her Mrs. Alterman in August 1934. Six years later, their only child, Tirza, was born. Nathan Alterman was born in Warsaw to a dentist and an educator. In the 1930s, after studying in Paris, he immigrated to Israel and took up writing. A journalist and playwright, he was one of the most important figures in Hebrew poetry. He remained married to Rachel Marcus until his death, while also carrying on a long-standing affair with the painter Tzila Binder.

Tirza Atar was 36 when she fell from the balcony. She packed two lifetimes into her short life. She first revealed her singing talent in the Armored Corps troupe, where she sang 'Eliphelet,' a song her father had written especially for the troupe and dedicated to his daughter. After completing her service in 1960, she married Oded Kotler, and together they went to the United States to study acting. Life in the US was not easy for her. On one occasion, when she was at breaking point and her father traveled to bring her back to Israel, he wrote her 'A Vigil Song' ('Guard Your Soul'):

"Guard your soul, guard your strength, guard your soul, / Guard your life, your understanding, guard your life, / From a falling wall, from a burning roof, from dark shadow, / From a hurled stone, from a knife, from claws..."

And she answered him with 'The Watchful One's Song':

"I am careful of falling things. / Of fire, of wind, of songs. / All kinds of winds beat against the shutters. / All kinds of birds speak. / But I keep my soul safe from them. And I do not cry, either. / I remember that you asked me to be blessed..." By the age of 26, Tirza had already built up an impressive body of work as an actress, poet, and singer. As preparations began for the Nahal troupe's 20th production, Yair Rosenblum, the troupe's musical director, approached her and commissioned a song. Tirza wrote 'Come, Rain':

"Rain, rain, come / Rain, rain, come again / It is already spring, and all the hills are ablaze with green. / Rain, rain, come / Rain, rain, come again / Rain, return from the distant forests, hurry..."

This song, too, echoes her father's poem 'By the Wayside':

"By the wayside we will again meet young women, and their wet hair will sway softly over our shoulders, curly and splendid..."

In March 1970, her father, to whom she was bound with every fiber of her being, died. After his death, she selected 40 of his poems and published a collection titled Nathan Alterman. Thirty of them deal with the relationship between a father and daughter. Shortly afterward, her song 'I Loved Her' (music by Yaakov Hollander), performed by Shlomo Artzi, took first place at the Israeli Song Festival.

Tirza grew up with two women: her mother Rachel and her grandmother Bella, Nathan's mother. She wrote about her father's absences from home in the story 'The Plum Tree' (in the collection Suddenly All the Lights Went Out): "I was overcome by terror. Where is my father? I was always afraid that people would never come back." She describes how, as a child, she longed to be close to him, and how once she waited all morning in the café where he used to sit; when he arrived, he took her home.

She wrote ten children's books and translated more than 30 plays. She dedicated two of her poetry collections to her children, Yael and Nathan (who was named after her father), whom she had with her second husband, Binyamin Selor (Benz). Binyamin was the complete opposite of her father. He was a stagehand who gave her the quiet life she needed. These were good years: she became a mother, left the stage, and focused on writing. She made Yael the heroine of her book Yael Goes Traveling, and Nathan, nicknamed Nuni, the hero of the book Nuni, Nuni, There's No One Like Me and the book Ballad of My Boy Who Grew Up.

Some of the ideas for her works came from things that happened at home, as her son Nathan recalled: "Every evening before bed, she would ask me, 'What song would you like me to write for you today?' And I would challenge her. I asked for songs about a tractor and a song about an accordion, a song about a birthday and a song about the seashore... She would write the songs right then and there, and immediately go and type them up. When she had enough songs, she published a book called Nuni, No One Like Me, which is about me, and The Lion Who Loved Strawberries, which comes from Yael Goes Traveling. That's a book about my sister. And it all started because Yael was being difficult at dinner and didn't want this or that."

Death and the Last Song

The circumstances of Tirza Atar's death remain a mystery, but her family is certain that she fell from the balcony. The day before her death, Tirza was injured in a car accident, hurt her eyes, and was discharged home after a brief hospital stay. Her husband told a Haaretz reporter that on the evening before she died, she left him a note saying she was tired and going to bed. In the note, she also asked him to make sure in the morning that their two children, then in fourth and first grade, got to school. He also said that at around 7:00 a.m., Tirza came out of their bedroom and watched the children getting ready to leave for school, then went back to her room.

Some claim she died by suicide, basing this on a coincidence. Just before her death, Tirza Atar translated 'Poppies in October' by the American poet Sylvia Plath, which begins: "Even the sun-clouds cannot manage these gowns / Nor that woman in the ambulance / Whose heart blooms through her coat with such thunderous astonishment..."

At the same time, she wrote her final poem, 'Ballad of a Woman,' for the play Four Women. She gave the words to the composer Moshe Vilensky, and Shashi Keshet was supposed to sing it. On the morning Vilensky delivered the completed song to the Habima Theatre, Tirza Atar was already gone. The song, which echoes Sylvia Plath's poem, begins with these lines: "Even the clouds above could not silence her,

She looked and looked, never sated, and she knew / That now the valley bloomed with wild narcissi in profusion / And despite it all, despite it all, everything was over. / Even the purple October clouds facing the sunset / Could not help her, not even for a moment, could not help her find calm, / Though once more the valley bloomed with wild narcissi in profusion / And despite it all, despite it all, everything was over..."

Tirza Atar was deeply influenced by Sylvia Plath, who was also a mother of two and died by suicide in London in 1963. To this day, there is no clear answer as to whether it was an accident or suicide. The only thing that is clear is that we lost a gifted artist in the prime of her life.