Although she’s accustomed to performing on national television, last night, Hagit Yaso took her voice to a somewhat smaller stage — the Samuel Riggs IV Alumni Center.
Yaso, who won Israel’s version of American Idol, A Star is Born, in 2011, preformed to an audience of about 50. The cabaret-style show was part of the Jewish National Foundation’s “Positively Israel” college campus tour and was co-sponsored by TerPAC and the Hillel.
Yaso is an Ethiopian Jew born to immigrant parents in Sderot, Israel — the closest city in Israel to the Gaza Strip, and a target for bombings. Yaso discovered her love of singing at a young age, and during her time in the Israeli Defense Forces, she sang in a military band. In 2011, she “spontaneously” tried out for Israel’s popular show and won in the final round in one of the most-watched television performances in Israel’s history.
Since then, she has been performing across Israel, including at the Fourth of July celebration at the U.S. Embassy in Israel last year. Yaso has also been working on an album and is touring the United States, playing free shows for college students.
Despite the show’s late start, Yaso quickly got on stage and immediately started singing. In between some songs, she described the significance of the piece in Hebrew to the audience. Hillel’s Israel fellow, Yael Gertel, translated.
Yaso’s show was trilingual — of the 10 songs she performed, most were in Hebrew, two in English and one, a Moroccan song, was in Arabic. Mike Silver, a senior computer science major and the president of TerPAC, said, “It’s pretty amazing to hear an Israeli singer sing a Moroccan song in Arabic.”
Most of the songs Yaso preformed were covers of songs she had an emotional connection to. For example, she sang “Yerushalayim Shel Zahav,” or “Jerusalem of Gold,” a popular song about Israeli pride.
Junior public health major Michael Samuels said “Jerusalem of Gold” in particular made an impact on him.
“That girl can sing,” Samuels said. “That last song gave me the chills.”
Joshua Eisdorfer, a freshman mechanical engineering major, said Yaso “defines what Israel is to me … born to immigrant parents and was able to work hard and become a giant star.”
Jonathan Fine, a student in the Golden ID program studying Hebrew, said the performance moved him to tears.
“I think she is going to go far,” he said.
Sophomore journalism major Leo Traub said he was impressed by Yaso’s success story.
“It is cool that she is daughter of Ethiopian immigrants and is seen as a minority and is able to easily rise to stardom,” he said.
