Riki Gal

Riki Gal, born Rivka Menashe on July 7, 1950, in Jerusalem, is an Israeli singer whose work spans blues, folk, and pop. She grew up in the Mea Shearim neighborhood, raised in an Orthodox family. Her parents divorced when she was two years old, after which she and her brother Menachem were placed in an institution in Kfar Saba. Their mother later entrusted the children to caregivers of the Finnish Lutheran Mission, where they were raised at a home called Shalhevetya under strict discipline.

In 1968, at seventeen, Gal was drafted into the Israeli Navy, where she began performing in the military's entertainment troupe. She completed her service in 1971. Following her discharge, she released her first single and an album titled World of Jacques Brel, and went on to collaborate with musicians Matti Caspi, Ehud Manor, and Louis Lahav. Her album Ohevet otcha yoter, a co-production with Caspi, featured his compositions, arrangements, and instrumental accompaniment.

Gal married Yisrael Poliakov of the HaGashash HaHiver trio after leaving the military; the couple divorced in 1975. She subsequently traveled to New York, where she married a second time, though that marriage also ended in divorce. She later returned to Israel. From 1990 to 2002, she was married to Channel 1 news reporter Ori Cohen Aharonov, and in 1991 the couple had a daughter named Leary.

During her time in New York, Gal appeared on Broadway in 1976 in Don't Step on My Olive Branch. Her stage work continued in Israel, where she played Mama Morton in the Beit Lessin Theater production of Chicago, appeared as one of the leads in the Israeli production of Les Misérables by Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil, and in 1989 headlined the Israeli production of Evita alongside Eli Gornstein and Viki Tavor. She also served as a judge on Kokhav Nolad, the Israeli version of A Star is Born.

In 2009, Gal released the album Seeing the Years, whose title song, "Imazman," serves as a tribute to her mother. The word functions as a play on the Hebrew words ima, meaning mother, and zman, meaning time, combining to suggest the phrase im hazman, or over time. The song opens with lyrics from "Que Sera, Sera" before continuing in Spanish. Gal also provided the Hebrew dubbing voice for Esmeralda in The Hunchback of Notre Dame.