Yardena Cohen, daughter of Miriam Rafalkes and Pinhas Cohen (1887–1956), was born on July 1, 1910, in Wadi Nisnas (the Arab name of a district near the Haifa port). Yardena was the oldest of three children; the others were musicologist and writer Ruth Keviti Jordan (c. 1921–c. 1997) and Nir. Her father, who was born in Zikhron Ya’akov, graduated first from the Mikveh Israel agricultural school and then from an agricultural college in Berlin. In 1908 he founded the first Hebrew school in Haifa. Her mother, who was born near Vilna c. 1880 and was a descendant of the Vilna Head of the Torah academies of Sura and Pumbedita in 6th to 11th c. Babylonia.Gaon (Elijah ben Solomon Zalman, 1720–1797), studied science with Chaim Weizmann in Geneva, and then joined her parents, who were founders of Rehovot. She died in Haifa c. 1960.

Yardena was immensely energetic as a child and was often seen dancing spontaneously, especially on the beach in Bat Galim, Haifa. She studied in Tel Aviv at the Herzlia Hebrew Gymnasia where she joined a youth group, Mahanot ha-female/sing.; individual(s) who immigrates to Israel, i.e., "makes aliyah."Olim, a section of Ha-No’ar ha-Lomed. Here she met Shemaryah Tzameret, an American idealist who had come on Lit. "ascent." A "calling up" to the Torah during its reading in the synagogue.aliyah. Together with the youth group, they worked in the orchards of Haderah and then helped found A voluntary collective community, mainly agricultural, in which there is no private wealth and which is responsible for all the needs of its members and their families.Kibbutz Bet ha-Shittah, where Yardena was known for her spirited impromptu dancing in the evenings. Shemaryah was so moved that he gave his allowance from America to Yardena in order to encourage her to obtain professional training, using his gift as a stipend to study dance in Europe. His hope that she would return with dance skills was fulfilled.

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