Due to the Labor Day Weekend in the United States, we didn’t post on Sunday or Monday. This week we’ll post The Week’s Essay on Wednesday, and the weekly podcast on Thursday.
You want to escape, even if only for a few hours. It’s been that kind of summer, and it’s likely to be that kind of year.
A break, even a short one, is so very tempting.
You know you shouldn’t try to escape—because the families of the hostages can’t. The parents of the soldiers in Gaza can’t. Where in this cosmos can they escape to where dread and desperation don’t shape every sleeping and waking moment?
You know that an hour and half drive away from Sultan’s Pool amphitheater, there’s a brutal war being waged. Soldiers are getting killed and grievously wounded. There’s a humanitarian disaster among Gazans—it doesn’t matter what definition you give it, you know that it’s there and you know that if your heart isn’t breaking, it should be.
There are hostages there, not starving, but being starved; day by day, to the point that even if they get out alive, what that might mean is not clear. But they won’t get out if the IDF gets too close, as we learned almost a year ago precisely when the six murdered hostages were found in a tunnel. And getting very close is precisely the plan of this new military campaign, which the IDF Chief of Staff opposes, as do many Israelis (according to some recent polls, 70% oppose the plan, though other polls put the number at closer to 40-50%).
So yes, you need a break. You want a break. And you feel like you shouldn’t take one.
But you do.
Shlomo Artzi, who is now 75 years old, is one of Israel’s most beloved and enduring singer-songwriters. He got his start in the late 1960s as a performer in the Israeli Navy’s entertainment troupe, but got his big breaks in the 1970s with albums like Shlomo Artzi (1971) and A Man Gets Lost (1971), and then again when he represented Israel in the 1975 Eurovision Song Contest.
Over the decades, Artzi has become a cultural institution in Israel, releasing more than 30 albums and selling over a million records—almost unfathomable in the relatively small Israeli market. When he was younger, he was known for marathon live performances that often lasted over three hours. He’s slowed down a bit—the concert we attended on Thursday night went for only about two hours, and the high notes aren’t what the high notes used to be, but it didn’t matter. Israelis—of all generations— love him, and because the mere name Shlomo Artzi evokes memories of a bygone Israel, he still sells out instantaneously.
So, we went. It was a lot of fun. Good for the soul.
And a reminder, all the same, that try though we might, there is really no escape.
There was, of course, the now de rigueur sign on the screens before the concert began.
Dear audience, If there is an air raid siren during the performance you are instructed to stay seated, to bend over as much as possible and to protect your head by putting your hands over your head for 10 minutes. It is important to stay in your place to avoid injury. Remember, the instructions of the Home Front Command save lives.
In other words, “Dear Audience, if there’s an air raid siren, there’s really nothing you can do. You can hope, you can pray, but when your number’s up, your number’s up.”
It wouldn’t take that much to get very cynical about the insanity in which we live. Except that when you look over one of the screens, and just atop it, you see the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem, you’re reminded—we’ve been here a long time, and for most of that time, it hasn’t been easy to survive here.
Why did we really expect it was going to be different in our lifetimes? We did, of course. But why?
He was fun, the music was good, the crowd was very much into it. But what struck me as relevant to Israel from the Inside and the “peek” into Israel that we try to afford were those interspersed moments of the concert that were just uniquely Israeli, and in many ways, unique to this period.
Towards the bottom right of the shot below (I didn’t take a better one because I didn’t think about it much at the moment), you can see a few people standing and holding what looks like an Israeli flag. “Kinda sucks for the people right behind them,” I thought to myself a few times. It was clear that there was some writing on the flag, but I couldn’t make it out. They were holding it towards the stage—obviously towards the cameras, hoping that somehow whatever they were holding would make it onto the screen.
It did. What you see is the star in the middle of the flag, but then the head of someone in a helmet. And at the top, רס”ן דוד שקורי, הי”ד — Major David Shakuri, הי”ד. Holding the flag/sign are obviously his parents. A quick search turned up his tragic story.
I suspect that even the people sitting right behind them understood why the flag was held aloft for the entire concert.
There’s been quite a bit of coverage about Daniel Weiss, a musician who lost both of his parents on October 7th. His father, Shmulik Weiss, was murdered by Hamas terrorists during the attack on Kibbutz Be'eri, while his mother, Yehudit Weiss, was abducted to Gaza and later murdered.
When Artzi introduced Daniel Weiss and said that Daniel would sing the next song, a lot of people knew his name and clapped. When Artzi finished telling Weiss’ story, everyone applauded.
And then Weiss sang Artzi’s “Fields of Irises”:
The love song, sung by a young man who had lost so much, was hard enough. And then came the slide that needed no explanation:
The only sound in the amphitheater was Daniel Weiss. The thousands of other people were utterly silent.
At one point, Arzti sang Yare’ach, “Moon.” There’s that refrain which simply has to mean something very different than it did when Artzi wrote the song more than 30 years ago. Just look at the faces:
היתה תקופה כזו שהאושר בא בזעם, צחקנו מהכל, שרפנו את מה שבא ליד, לא נשאר לנו אלא לחבק את הצער, להגיד "אתמול היה טוב ויהיה גם מחר". אתמול היה טוב, אתמול היה טוב, אתמול היה טוב, ויהיה גם מחר. There was a time when happiness came in a rage, We laughed at everything, burned whatever came near, All we had to do was embrace the sorrow, To say "Yesterday was good and tomorrow will be too." Yesterday was good, yesterday was good, Yesterday was good, and tomorrow will be too.
Etmol haya tov — “Yesterday was good” Etmol haya tov — “Yesterday was good” Etmol haya tov, ve-yihyeh gam machar — “Yesterday was good, and tomorrow will be, too.”
At about 00:37, you can see Artzi, who has left the stage and walked into the crowd with his mic, motioning to someone. What happens next is most clearly seen on the left hand screen. Nothing more needs to be said.
There was also Melekh Ha-Olam, “King of the World,” another Artzi classic. It opens with this verse:
שם בתוך מיטה, מול קיר ענק כחול, קר וזול, לפעמים אתה, נאנח בלי קול ובכל זאת, אמא שם שומרת גם כשאתה גדול מחליפה לך בגדים אומרת שאתה: מלך הגברים בשבילה אתה יכול להיות מה שבא לך לראש, למשל, מלך החיות או מלך ההרים, אם תטפס אי שם, קום תהיה כל מה שבא לך כי בשבילה אתה תמיד מלך העולם. Lying in bed, facing a huge blue wall, cold and cheap, sometimes you sigh silently and yet, Mom is there, watching over you even when you’re grown. She changes your clothes tells you that you are: king of men. For her, you can be anything that comes to mind, for example, king of the animals or king of the mountains, if you climb somewhere, get up, be anything you want, because to her you are always king of the world.
“Because to her you are always king of the world.”
And then the pictures below appeared on the screen. They needed no explanation:
Neither did the camera shot that appeared between those photos, as Arzti embraced the parents of the fallen soldier on the right:
And of course, the hostages.
The huge, agonizing, heart-slashing elephant in the room of every Israeli moment. Note how Artzi faces the photos, not the crowd.
At about 00:49, the photo was of Ilan Weiss, long known to have been killed, his body still held by Hamas.
As we saw his face on the screen Thursday night, who could possibly have imagined that we’d see Ilan Weiss’ face so soon again, this time not at the concert, but in the headlines the very next morning:
Eventually, of course, the concert had to end. Back to “real life.” Back to Shabbat, and then out of Shabbat. And then, Sunday morning’s headline:
the 900th soldier to fall in the war had just been killed. By friendly fire.
“Because to her, you’re the king of the world.”
The new offensive against Gaza City is slated to begin any day.
And one can only wonder:
Will it bring any hostages home?
Is it really going to bring Hamas to its knees after we’ve failed to do that for two years?
And how many more mothers are going to have to mourn their King of the World?
