Sheleg Al Iri
| This is HoraWiki, a treasury of Israeli folkdance information that anyone can edit! To get started, visit the Home Page. |
Hebrew: שלג על עירי, "Snow on My City". Circle dance by Shoshana Kopelevich, 1978.
The city of the song is not Jerusalem (which experiences snow very rarely) but rather the fictional city of Batlon.
The song is one of thirteen written by Naomi Shemer for the 1976 musical The Travels of Benjamin III (מסעות בנימין השלישי), based on an 1878 novel of the same name by Mendele Mocher Sforim. In the song, Benjamin's wife Zelda imagines him already in Palestine while her city is cold and snowy. The song's original name is "Fruits of Fifteen" (פירות חמישה עשר), a reference to the holiday Tu B'Shevat; Zelda longs for her husband to send her first fruits from the Holy Land.
Shemer may have been thinking of her parents' city of Vilna as she wrote the song.
Links
More information from Ofer Gavish, including links to performances of all the songs in the musical.