As our journey of discovery continues, another hidden story appeared. After Efraim Weinstein passed away, Ron Weinstein, his son, found an original sheet of notes and lyrics in a box, after organising objects that were left behind by his father. On the top right of the sheet of music was hand written - Music by: Dr. Chaim Kobrin, Lyrics by: Efraim Weinstein. At the bottom of the sheet it was dated the 1st of October 1945, Tel-Aviv. The title of the song: "In the Shadow of a Palm Tree” (Tango). This discovery lead us to an incredible surprise.

On the 9th of August, 2013 the radio talk show host Yoav Ginai (Reshet Bet) interviewed Ron Weinstein and Orna Bar-Ilan, the granddaughter of Dr. Chaim Kobrin regarding the original music notes that Ron found at home.

It related to a pervious radio talk show that took place in August 2013. Yoav Ginai raised a question to the listeners of the show, in search of information regarding Shlomo Feintuch-Efrat, the person mentioned as the lyrics and song composer of “Shadow of a Palm Tree and the Light of the Moon”. Apparently this information was not correct. In fact, all these years the lyrics and song composer of this musical piece were unknown.

Many listeners of the radio show took part in searching for the mystery lyrics and music composer. They also posted a question on facebook asking people if they had any information regarding the unknown writer of the song. After a few weeks of research, Yair Even Zohar, the founder of the website "Zemerreshet" got in touch with Yoav Ginai to tell him what he found out.

Before we reveal what he found out, here are a few facts about the evolution of this song. During the 1970's the song became very popular because of the famous singer - Zohar Argov. However, the first commercial recording of the song was in the 1950's by Lilith Nagar. On the album of this recording only the name of the producer Yaakov Efrati was written without the names of the song writers. But, unlike the writing on the album, in ACUM (a non-profit corporation administering the rights assigned to it by its members: authors, composers, lyricists, poets, arrangers and music publishers) Shlomo Feintuch-Efrat was mentioned as the song lyrics writer and music composer (from 1999-2014). But was he the actual lyrics and music composer?

After Cellcom, a large Israeli mobile phone company created an advertisement with this song, and the singer Karolina created a cover version of it, many questions were raised regarding who the unknown authors of the song really were.

So what did the research by Yair from "Zemerreshet" reveal? He was contacted by the Weinstein family that the lyrics for the song were written by Ephraim Weinstein in 1945 to impress his girlfriend Rivka, with whom he later married. His brother in-law, Dr Chaim Kobrin composed the music. According to Weinstein's family, the song was written for private matters and not for publicity or recording, therefore Weinstein and Kobrin did not register the song in "ACUM" and did not take care of the copyright issues. Ron Weinstein found the original piece of paper with the lyrics and the notes of the song that his father and Chaim Kobrin wrote and framed it at home.

In November 2014, after full court evaluation and under a court order, the credit for the lyrics and song composition was approved and both Efraim Weinstein and Chaim Kobrin were credited for writing the music and lyrics of this song. Unfortunately they are both no longer alive, but for the families this was a great triumph and pride to give credit to them.

A side note: Throughout the years, my father told us the story that his father (Dr. Chaim Kobrin) always mentioned that this song was his, or in his words - “my song” whenever it was played on the radio. The family disregarded it as they thought that he said it because he loved the song, not really knowing that he wrote its music. He also used to play this song on his violin during family get togethers and parties. Unfortunately, no one is alive now to ask them why they did not mention this song in the past.

Another hidden story discovered. We are so happy that Dr. Chaim Kobrin and Efraim Weinstein will be credited every time this song will be mentioned in the future, and their names will be remembered forever.

In 2020 a podcast about the journey of the song was created by KAN11. This podcast is in Hebrew.

What will we discover next? The search continues…

Featured