This article was published in City Lights of The Jerusalem Post, January 16, 1998.

For Yaffa Yarkoni learning lyrics and making a quiche go very well together.

The sheets of paper Scotch-taped across her kitchen cupboards as she cooks do not contain exotic recipes; they are words to new songs she is adding to her repertoire. On that particular day, in a corner of the much lived-in apartment, I am helping Yaffa prepare a booklet of her musical tour with actor Meir Suissa through the year – 120 songs in eight cassettes for which I wrote English introductions and transliterated the Hebrew into an English version.

Yaffa is able to render more than 900 songs in seven or eight languages by heart, many of them which she has committed to memory while cooking.

Yaffa is a wonderful hostess. No one invited to dine in her home can forget the experience: the food, the atmosphere, the family, the guests from all over, but mainly the hostess’s conviviality. How was she able to produce the mouthwatering, unforgettable fare that is the talk of her guests. Certainly not from recipes in a cookbook, she assures them. She attributes all she knows about cooking to what she learned from her mother.

You mix a bit of this, add a pinch of that, season it, put it in a pot on the stove: it takes as long as it takes and you’re done, but keep tasting and adding flavor. The basic foods she makes are salads, soups, quiches and fish – all Caucasian styled.

"I was always on the go so it was natural for me to be sent shopping for food," Yaffa relates. "My mother was busy running her café-nightclub in Givatayim. I was busy, at the age of eight, studying dance with Gertrude Krauss; at 12 performing in a ballet, and at 16 I was already singing to the troops. So when did I have time to learn to cook?"

We first met in New York at a concert of Shoshana Damari with whom Yaffa had agreed to profess professional rivalry. Nothing could be further from the truth. They were among the first Israel singers to be welcomed abroad, each with a distinctive singing style as conveying the spirit of modern Israel.

Shortly after this meeting abroad, I moved to Tel Aviv and responded to Yaffa’s warm invitation to visit her. We became fast friends and immediately established ongoing personal and working relationships spanning almost 50 years, facilitated by living within one street of each other behind Dizengoff Street.

Generations of Israelis, I found, were brought up on Yaffa’s children's and festival songs. Soldiers were welcomed to be guests at her Jaffa nightclub and when any of them requested her to bring a message to his family after her performance at the front, Yaffa, it was learned, often delivered in person. Throughout her life she answered hundreds of letters from fans.

Yaffa talks from the gut about her late husband Shaike."When I got married, I knew I had to be a wife, mother, housewife before building a career. But my husband and daughters always came first. When they had babies they came straight from the hospital to me and I was the nanny and filled every other role. Aurit is married to Dr. Yigal Shochat and works for Haaretz. Tami is a teacher, divorced with three children. Ruti, the youngest, married Meir Suissa – introduced to her by her mother, and is the mother of three."

Yaffa Yarkoni’s infectious way with audiences won her accolades around the globe. The first Israeli performer to hold a concert at the Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall resulted in their switchboard being swamped with calls asking about the date of her appearance. When a performer is in such demand, the Hall’s director, who asked to meet her, told Yaffa she must have something.

Her legion of admirers on all continents will miss the legend; her intimate circle, the inspiring friendship and generosity of which they were deprived by Yarkoni’s tragic years suffering from Alzheimer's, to which she succumbed at 86, leaving behind a loving family including eight grandchildren and five great grandchildren to whom she was passionately devoted. Generations were brought up on her children’s, festival and national songs and Yaffa Yarkoni will forever be part of Israel’s heritage.