Mourning Bnayahu Biton, a musician and poet killed on October 7

Bnayahu Biton, a Yerushalmi, musician, singer, songwriter, and poet, was alive and present in his life: attentive and introspective. He had a creative imagination; always there were his thoughts, feelings, images, words, chords.

On Oct. 7, at age 22, Bnayahu was murdered at the Supernova music festival. Two months earlier, he had completed three years of army service.

In his poem “La’amod Zakuf L’Chaim” (standing up straight for life), Bnayahu expresses his vision:

The vision of Bnayahu Biton

If not now then when?

Fear of loss

Like chasing passion

Like chasing passion

If not now then where?

Caught between two worlds

Between the desire to begin,

and to stop everything

and run away

I want to stand up straight for life

I want to be true

“My brother knew how to live,” says his sister Noa Yaffe. “It is obvious he had a deep soul. He was young and intense and understood what was important. He liked to sing ‘Lech Lecha Le’atzmecha’ [go forth inward, and search your heart and soul].”

Noa recalls that after the two bombings occurred at the bus stop near the entrance to Jerusalem on November 23, 2022, when a teenager was killed and 22 people were wounded, Bnayahu wrote “Chasing Butterflies”:

They were chasing butterflies

Joyful and happy

They were just kids

Who wanted to fly

Like butterflies with a lollipop

They were joyful and happy

And smiling upward to heaven

They went shopping with their mother for Shabbat

They did not return

They are pure

They are clean

They did not do anything wrong

They were only chasing butterflies

Bnayahu, one of seven children, grew up in a loving, devoted, extended family that encompasses the spectrum of a cultural, religious, and political way of life – Yerushalmi, Tel Avivian, ultra-Orthodox, Orthodox, secular, and having diverse political opinions.

Noa was 13 when her brother was born. She remembers that Bnayahu came into the world with a beautiful smile. Growing up, his smile and his laughter were always combined with a wisdom beyond his age. In his teen years, studying in yeshiva, he persisted in looking for his own path. Then he began studies at the Chabad Beit Sefer LeMelacha (craft school) in Kiryat Malachi.

She explains that this yeshiva presented a whole new way for him, a place for him to study, mature, and understand other perspectives on life. And he was taught the importance of duty, of army service. The yeshiva trained him for the combat unit, and he successfully passed the rigorous one-and-a-half year training program. He was accepted into Unit Egoz, the elite IDF commando brigade. Later, he developed respiratory asthma and had to move to a general commando unit.

“For Bnayahu, music was a passion,” says Noa. “I played piano and guitar all the time at home, and Bnayahu would sit beside me, listening and playing around with the instruments. He started playing the darbuka, the drums, and taking lessons. The drums released his energy. He was an excellent drummer and accompanied me when I played piano. He and his friend Noam liked to sing and drum together.

“When Bnayahu was 15, he picked up my guitar and started to play on his own,” his sister says. “I gave him his first guitar, and he made immediate progress. Right away, he needed a professional guitar. He was a talented, natural, mostly self-taught musician. He played the drums, guitar, electric guitar, piano, and special instruments like the oud, the saz [lute], and the pantam [handpan drum].

“He also wrote music about what was happening in his life, and we could hear his soul in his music,” she says. “When our family sang together, you could only hear Bnayahu’s voice soaring high above us.”

HIS FRIEND Elior remembers when Bnayahu played the violin for the first time without knowing how to play the violin. They made music together and were working on a composition to perform at different venues – Elior on saxophone, Bnayahu on guitar.

“Bnayahu and I were friends,” says Elior. “We liked sitting near springs of water, talking and dreaming. We always had the saxophone and guitar with us. Bnayahu was planning to study music. He visited wounded  soldiers and sick people, and we talked about doing volunteer work together, going to hospitals, army bases, senior residences, wherever there was a need to make people happy with our music.”

What gives music its power? Noa believes, “Music gives the soul a place to show itself. It helps you to communicate without words. And sometimes your soul will give you the words, will give you the joy of expressing yourself with words. It flows out of you.”

Her brother had the creative impulse to write. “We found Bnayahu’s notebooks and the diaries he kept during army service and afterward,” says Noa. “He wrote emotionally charged insights. It was for him avodat ha’middot, a way of working on himself, a way of examining and clarifying his character traits and identity.”

Noa works at the Israel Innovation Authority in Jerusalem, responsible for promoting Israeli start-ups. She completed a master’s degree in music therapy at the David Yellin College of Education in Jerusalem. 

“Since October 7, I cannot touch my instruments,” she says. “Bnayahu and I used to meet at least once a week, and we had our long list of songs we liked to play together. It was our medicine. Now I can’t use music as medicine.

“I miss my brother. Our family misses him. His friends miss him. His soldier friends miss him and remember sitting around the campfire where his music was their therapy.”

His friend Shimon says, “Bnayahu and I were like brothers. I feel empty in my heart because I lost my best friend. We understood each other. I wish Bnayahu could wake me from this bad dream.”

“If I drew Bnayahu,” says Noa, “there would be a guitar in one hand and a beer in his other hand. And his beautiful face. His smile. Always happy, always respectful, always loving, always singing. Always calling out, ‘L’chaim, to life.’”

Bnayahu wrote this song “Since You Have Been Gone.” And now we say his words:

From the outside everything is as usual

From the inside everything is burning

From the outside everything is happy

From the inside everything is lonely

Since you have been gone

Since you have been gone

It was like a dream

For a few days

And now in the dungeons

Walking among sharks

Since you have been gone

Since you have been gone

And I don’t want to be here without you

Now that everything here is gray

Without you

From the outside everything is burning

From the inside everything is lonely

Without you

Without you

NOA IS a part of the Netzach [eternity] Project, working to commemorate, honor, and produce the musical and artistic legacy of Oct. 7 and the beloved victims of Swords of Iron.

“The project was created from longing for our loved ones, and our deepest desire to keep hearing their beautiful voices. The idea is to continue one or several pieces of music that the artists started working on and transform them from raw material into professional art,” she explains.

And so Bnayhu’s spirit and legacy live on. 