by Steve Huey

When Chava Alberstein (b. circa 1946) was only four years old, her parents moved from their hometown of Szczecin, Poland, to Israel; since then, Alberstein has become CBS Israels longest-tenured artist, with nearly fifty albums to her credit (many performed in Hebrew). Albersteins first love was traditional Yiddish music, but she came to embrace various folk, traditional, and worldbeat styles from all over the globe. Alberstein scored her first Israeli hit record in 1964, the year she was drafted into the army; 34 years later, in 1998, Shanachie made a best-of collection titled Crazy Flower available in the U.S. Later that year, Alberstein set the poems of several 20th-century Yiddish writers to music, resulting in a collaborative album with the Klezmatics entitled The Well. Yiddish Songs followed in early 2000.