The musician who gave up a huge contract: "I didn't really sacrifice. I did what was required of me and simply chose the truth"
Hadas Shmerling was marked as a great promise and was in negotiations for a long-term contract with the music giant "Helicon". In an interview with Hidabroot, she shares with candor the spiritual process she underwent, the choice of the world of repentance (Teshuvah), and the challenges and advantages that the new path brought with it.
For Hadas Dagul, a secular girl from the Ramot neighborhood in Jerusalem of the eighties, the musical path opened already at the age of six, when she remained mesmerized by the kindergarten teacher who played the guitar. At that moment, the dream sprouted in her, and she began to study carefully to realize it.
Hadas grew up in a classic Israeli home, half Ashkenazi and half Sephardic, far from keeping commandments but full of deep Jewish identity and Zionism. Her connection to art came from a desire to deepen. She admired the old songs of the Land of Israel, and at her Bat Mitzvah, she asked to sing them specifically. One of her father's friends, who listened to her clean voice, approached him and said: "She is really talented. You must send her to the Academy of Music high school." At the last moment of the summer, Hadas was accepted, and the rest is history. "It was the change of my life," she describes. "From seventh grade, I knew there was no other option. I felt that this destiny was stronger than me."
Lights by the register
Her distinct talent led her, upon her enlistment, to the coveted title of "outstanding musician" - a slot reserved for a limited number of recruits each year. At the same time, she served in military bands, within the Education Corps jazz ensemble, while singing and playing classical guitar at a high level. "In the army, I felt that I was on the fast track to success," she recalls.
Immediately after her release, at the age of 21, Hadas released her first album with the "Ha-Tav Ha-Shmini" company. The album, entirely of her own making, received rave reviews. She found herself opening the International Film Festival at the Sultan's Pool, performing at the President's House, and being invited to the Israel Festival. Her songs began to be heard more and more, but under the surface, sparks of something else had already begun to burn.
"Anyone who listens to the first album sees that everything was there already then," she smiles. "There is a song on the album called 'Tikun Chatzot' (Midnight Correction) and a song called 'Kol Be-Isha Erva' (A woman's voice is nakedness). During my service, I sat in a rehearsal with four musicians who pretty much ignored my musical opinions. I suddenly felt that they were catching me in this position of 'singer' and that's it. I felt that it didn't respect me, and out of frustration, I wrote: 'A woman's voice is nakedness - the sentence is familiar but I didn't understand, a woman's voice is nakedness - now it's understood and relevant.' This sentence sat in the back of my head, without me understanding that I was predicting my own future."
After her release, Hadas moved to the bohemian stronghold in Tel Aviv - the Neve Tzedek neighborhood. There, her process of Teshuvah began to gain momentum, out of existential questions about her Jewish identity. "I asked myself: why are we actually here in the country? I felt there had to be a deeper reason than Alterman's songs. I just felt a constant longing in my soul."
The practical turning point occurred at the age of 22. Hadas left a successful meeting at "Ha-Tav Ha-Shmini", walking with her guitar on Shamai Street in Jerusalem, where she passed by a guitar shop at the entrance of which stood a young man. Someone called him "Tzvika". Hadas approached him spontaneously and asked: "Are you the legendary Tzvika Shmerling?"
A few minutes later, when she realized it was hard for her to walk around with the equipment she was carrying, she returned and asked to leave her belongings with him. When she returned to pick them up, Tzvika asked her to play. "I told him: 'Me? Playing here? I'm going to release an album, I'm the next Rita!'" she laughs. "But he insisted. I took out a guitar, I played, he joined in, and suddenly people entered. That was our first performance together."
Next to Tzvika's register, Mordechai Tzvika, lay a pile of holy books and a kippah. Hadas, who was flooded with thoughts about Judaism, felt it was a sign. The two became a couple. Mordechai Tzvika was already putting on tefillin and praying, and Hadas was initially frightened: "We had a lot of explosions. I was afraid of the word 'Teshuvah', and especially I was afraid that I would have to stop performing."
The glass ceiling
For two years they strengthened slowly, kept Shabbat, and got married at the age of 25. At the same time, the secular cultural world continued to call her. Hadas entered a marathon of meetings with Roni Braun, the legendary CEO of "Helicon".
"For three years we met every two weeks," she recalls the days when she almost touched fame. "It was supposed to be a 20-year contract, for five albums. I was exactly the slot they were looking for."
At one of the meetings, Braun invited the songwriter and artistic director Yaakov Gilad to get an impression of her. "Yaakov met Mordechai Tzvika and me a few days before, at Amir Dadon's launch show. At the meeting with Roni, he told him: 'She is returning to religion.' Roni laughed: 'She just doesn't perform on Shabbat, Ninet doesn't either.' Yaakov replied: 'I saw her husband, they are returning to religion.' Yaakov said it even before I said it to myself."
After it was already on the table, she tried to offer solutions. "I came to Roni and told him: 'I will go on stage with modest dresses, it will work great.' I tried to bridge, but the contract they offered was too binding. I sent it back with a lot of corrections, they didn't agree - and we parted ways."
Hadas produced her second album independently together with her husband, but the real change was the Halachic decision she made: to perform only before women.
Beyond the Halachic matter, is there another reason why you decided to perform only before women?
"The decision was from Halachic motives only, but after I accepted it, I understand that it has deep layers. A woman in front of a mixed audience activates, even subconsciously, mechanisms of wanting to be loved, to impress, to find favor. Even in front of women, this need exists, but there it is much cleaner, and the performance becomes something friendly, eye-to-eye, and deeper."
How much it costs us
In the last 14 years, Hadas's main occupation was total motherhood to her seven children. "I dedicated my life to my children," she says. "I didn't send them to daycare, and I stayed with every child at home until the age of three. Everything I did in music was 'in the meantime'. It is impossible to compare a man's career, who sits in the studio for whole days, to a mother's career, who has the house on her 100%."
Now, when the little girl entered kindergarten, Hadas is entering the "second phase" of her life. Recently she released a new single called "Sod" (Secret); she teaches voice development, writing, and composition at the "Shirat Ha-Leviim" school of Yonatan Razel; she performs with original materials, runs a new show with Ditza Or, writes and composes songs for herself and others, and recently even finished writing a musical for children.
For the first time in years, she has whole mornings dedicated to creation, and this energy is bursting into a unique project: a cultural greenhouse that chose 10 artists out of 100 to raise the professional level of children's shows in the Haredi and religious sector.
"At first I said to myself: what do I have to do with this? And then I realized that it was tailored for me, that it includes everything I love and do best - writing, composing, acting, singing. So I applied, and with God's help, I was accepted. I wrote a musical for children called 'Rnana Al Anana' (Joy on a Cloud). It is intended for children from the age of three and up, accompanied by invested songs recorded in the best studios. It is clean and suitable for the sector, but can also speak to every child in Israel. I am excited about this chapter in my life in a way that cannot be described."
Just before the end of the interview, when the subject of the price of keeping Halacha comes up again for conversation, Hadas shares honestly: "Sometimes there is such a fear in the back of the head, that maybe after 120 years God will tell me: 'Hadas, I gave you a phenomenal voice, why did you limit yourself?'. I sometimes have such thoughts, but more than them - I have a burning faith that this is not what they will tell me there. When I look at my children, at the house I built, at the Halacha keeping I stuck to, and at the cleanliness of my creation today - I know that great things are still in store for me, and that in the depth of things I didn't really sacrifice. I did what I was supposed to do, and simply chose the truth."
