Tirtza Atar

Tirtza Atar (; birth name: Tirtza Alterman; 27 January 1941 – 8 September 1977) was an Israeli lyricist, author, singer, theater actress, playwright, and translator.

Atar was her pen name, an abbreviation of her maiden surname, Alterman.

Biography Tirza Atar was born in Tel Aviv, the daughter of the renowned poet Nathan Alterman and the theater actress .

In October 1958, shortly before her 18th birthday, she enlisted in the IDF and served as a singer in the Armored Corps Entertainment Troupe. As a soloist, she famously performed the song "Elipelet," written by her father, in the troupe's 1959 program, Yoter Midai Avak (Too Much Dust).

In 1962, she married Oded Kotler. Following her marriage, she traveled with her husband to New York to study acting.

In New York she experienced several mental health crises, which prompted her father, Nathan Alterman, to fly there to be with her. In his letters from New York to her mother, Alterman described an improvement in her condition, writing that she was in a good and energetic mood and not under stress. Nevertheless, her condition deteriorated again. Nathan Alterman with his daughter Tirza Atar at the Café Kassit, 1960.Less than a year after her arrival to The Big Apple, she returned to Israel with her father.

Career in theatre and writing Back in Israel, she appeared in the play No Man's Land by Yehuda Amichai at the . She then took a break from the stage, focusing on writing poetry, stories, and a play, as well as translating plays.

In 1964, she was invited to act in the play Three Women in Yellow at the Habima Theatre, but after the play was postponed, she was left without a role. A while later, she was unexpectedly asked to appear at Habima in Miss Julie, despite being a beginner actress.

On March 28, 1970, her father passed away. Shortly after, her poem "Pit'om Achshav, Pit'om Hayom" (Suddenly Now, Suddenly Today), with music by and performed by Shlomo Artzi, won first place at the 1970 Israel Song Festival.

Atar concentrated on translating plays and writing poetry. By the end of 1970, she had translated about 25 plays.

During those years, Atar rarely appeared at public events.

In her short career she translated over 30 plays from English to Hebrew.

The last poem she wrote was "Ballada La'Isha" (Ballad for a Woman). It was written for the play Four Women (an adaptation of Pam Gems' play, which she translated, and which deals with the suicide of one of the characters). The poem included the lines: "Even the books in the closed and sad room / Already knew she was not alright / She is going away for good." She gave the lyrics to the composer Moshe Wilensky. On the morning Wilensky delivered the composed song to Habima, Atar fell from her window and died.

To this day, there is no clear answer as to whether her death was an accident or a suicide. Wilensky suggested that having dealt with depression and a death wish for years, she may have fallen to her death without intending to. A story from the book, (Ha'aryeh she'ahav tot), was republished in 2003 and was a national bestseller for 116 weeks. In 1970 her song "Ani Cholem al Naomi" sung by the duo Hedva and David won the first place at the Yamaha Song Festival Tokyo, Japan. Its Japanese version ナオミの夢 "Naomi no Yume" was sold between one and three million copies, becoming the gold record. It was placed second on the 1971 Israeli Annual Hebrew Song Chart.

About her life and work In 2015 produced a documentary , which won the jury award at the 2015 Haifa International Film Festival. , Tirza Atar: Wenn alles berührt. Eine Biografie der Dichterin in Essays und Übersetzungen, Edition Karo, Berlin 2019, ISBN 978-3-945961-09-4