My Word: In times like these, every song becomes a prayer - opinion

It was a peculiarly Israeli experience. I attended an event at Jerusalem’s Menachem Begin Heritage Center last month in which journalist Akiva Novick interviewed writer-philosopher Micah Goodman about his new book, HaYom HaShemini (The Eighth Day: Israel after October 7). Everything in Israel now divides into “before” and “after” October 7, the date of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad invasion and mega-atrocity that led to the Israel-Hamas war.

Before the talk, two songs were performed, turning the event into a mini-singalong of the type that Israelis hold for every occasion – from commemoration to celebration.

It started the evening on the right note. Goodman believes that listening to Israel’s changing soundtrack can provide an upbeat lesson. He expounded on his theory that Israeli society is not divided into two polarized camps of nationalists vs universalists, as often thought. There is a third group, a hybrid critical mass in the center, with different levels of liberalism and nationalism. “Israel is special in the combination of individualism and self-realization and self-sacrifice as seen in that switch that came about in the war,” he surmised.

Goodman finds solace in the music. We all do. Novick noticed the type of songs being produced by the families of fallen soldiers indicating both the dreams and the sacrifice.

“According to Plato, music reflects the psyche of a society,” Goodman declared. “If you look at Israeli music in recent years, you’ll notice the hybridism in Israeli society.”

Fifty-year-old Goodman noted that when he was growing up, there was a difference between Jewish music – klezmer and hazanut, for example – and Israeli music, typified by Arik Einstein and Shlomo Artzi, among others.

Today, a whole new genre exists with musicians who aren’t classified as belonging to one category or the other. If you look at Israeli society through a political paradigm, you’ll see the polarization, but if you listen to the music, there is a form of harmony, a mix of sounds, where the Jewish traditional liturgy and music seamlessly merges with the modern Israeli beat, East and West.

“Listen to the music!” Goodman beseeched. It reflects Israeli society.

Changing with the times

ISRAELI MUSIC is changing, in tune with the times. Elton John sings “Sad songs say so much...” but in Hebrew, sad songs have their own elevated status.

More than a decade ago, Israel’s Army Radio (Galei Zahal) created a special project with the somewhat bizarre name Od me’at na’afoch leshir, “In a little while, we’ll become a song,” in which well-known artists sing the words of fallen soldiers and victims of terror. The songs became staples of the Remembrance Day playlist.

On October 7, 2023, some 1,200 people were slaughtered during the Hamas invasion; 346 soldiers have fallen since; and 101 hostages are still in Gaza, dead or alive. They are remembered in an incredible number of new songs, in styles ranging from rap to theatrical.

Many more old songs have taken on a new meaning. In an extraordinary combination, the words of Rabbi Abraham Kook “Ben adam, aleh le’maala, aleh…” “Man, ascend on high, ascend,” with their reference to mortals having “the powerful wings of eagles” have been intertwined with the theme song from the 1977 film Operation Thunderbolt about the 1976 Entebbe hostage rescue.

One recently published song was composed by Itamar Shohat to the words of a family friend and neighbor who fell in Gaza last November. Capt. Kfir Yitzhak Franco wrote how “The earth is still there, conquering Time.” Nearly a year after his death, the lyrics are literally haunting.

My friend and colleague David Brinn wrote a tribute to Kibbutz Nirim resident Rimon Kirsht Buchshtav, who bravely gave her Hamas captors a death stare when she was released from captivity last November. “Rimon’s Song,” performed by Maine-based group Libbytown, honors Rimon’s love and longing for her husband, Yagev, who several months later was determined to have died in captivity. His body is still held by Hamas.

Israel’s Eurovision Song Contest entry this year was forced by the European Broadcasting Union to change the lyrics from “October Rain” to “Hurricane,” but there was no doubt in the minds of Israelis watching Eden Golan’s powerful performance in Sweden that she was preserving the memory of the hundreds of Supernova music festival partygoers who were brutally slain on October 7.

There are so many songs, so many words, so many singers. I can’t mention them all, and everyone has their favorite. Their song. The one that makes them cry.

Among the first on the October 7 playlist was Hanan BenAri’s “Moledet,” “Homeland,” a classic example of modern Israeli sentiment mixed with ancient Jewish references. In a similar style, Eyal Golan’s “Am Yisrael Chai” (“The People of Israel Lives”) unabashedly incorporates religious references: “The Holy One, blessed be He, watches over us, so who can beat us, because we have no other state. Make peace among us, protect our children, because our faith is not lost.”

Where else could such a song be performed for soldiers – and where else would the soldiers join in and dance to the music? Eyal Golan’s “Am Yisrael Chai” topped the charts of Israeli songs played on the radio in the outgoing Jewish year according to ACUM, the Society of Authors, Composers and Music Publishers in Israel.

Sarit Hadad’s “Shema Yisrael,” popular during the wave of terrorism in the early 2000s, made a comeback. Hadad, together with Eden Hason, hit close to home with “Anachnu Zeh Goral” (“We Are Fate”) with the words “We are all children of the Master of the world.”

Many of this year’s songs not only fuse traditional and modern words, but they are also a plea for unity.

Leah Shabat’s song from the 1990s “Will Always Wait for You” made a surprise reprise, becoming a virtual hymn to the hostages. Her brother, Shlomi Shabat, sang: “In Thy Blood, Live!” the title a clear echo of the prophet Ezekiel’s “Be’damaiyich chayi.”

On Tisha Be’Av, mourning the destruction of the First and Second Temples, many Orthodox communities added to lamentations for Jerusalem a lament written by Yagel Haroush for Kibbutz Be’eri and other destroyed communities of the South. Slihot (penitential) prayers ahead of the Jewish New Year are attracting lots of people who don’t usually define themselves as religious. Many services are combined with modern Israeli songs.

Ben-Ari’s “The Broken-hearted,” like most of his music, has a clearly religious tilt that doesn’t detract from his popularity, and probably adds to it. “Hanan Ben-Ari’s music is the most Jewish and most Israeli possible,” Goodman said.

In times like these, almost every song becomes a prayer.

If you haven’t yet seen it, watch the video clip of “Habayita” (“Homeward”) performed by 1,000 singers and musicians at the Caesarea Amphitheater as part of the Homeland Concert. If you’ve seen it, watch it again. And again. Until the hostages are home.

“But where have all the children disappeared to?” – a line in a song by David Broza and Yehonatan Geffen about visiting a former home on kibbutz – sounds chilling rather than nostalgic after the disappearance of the children from the southern kibbutzim. Don’t forget the Bibas boys, Kfir and Ariel, the youngest hostages.

The October 7 invasion and massacre took place 50 years after the start of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, which also took the country by surprise and resulted in heavy losses.

Many old war songs were revived, revised, and mobilized. Among the most touching songs from that war are those from the secular Kibbutz Beit Hashita, which lost 11 soldier members. Dorit Zameret’s “The Wheat Grows Again” speaks to anyone who has ever suffered a bereavement and wondered how the sun continued to rise. This year, the song was revised to reflect the fate of the southern communities.

But it is composer Yair Rosenblum’s gift to Beit Hashita that made the greatest impact. He took the words of the “Un’taneh Tokef” prayer – the same words that inspired Leonard Cohen’s “Who by Fire?” – and set them to music. Rosenblum’s music is now used throughout the Jewish world as communities recite: “On Rosh Hashanah it is inscribed, And on Yom Kippur it is sealed: How many shall pass away and how many shall be born. Who shall live and who shall die. Who shall reach the end of his days and who shall not.”

May our prayers be answered, and in the words of the traditional Sephardi liturgy sung on Rosh Hashanah eve – “May the year and its curses end, may the next year and its blessings begin."