"We are the families of the winter of '23"
This time, not the "children of the winter of '73," but the "families of the winter of '23." A classic song gets yet another remake; we continue to explore Israel's soul through its evolving music.
As I was writing my history of Israel in 2014-2015, it was clear to me that the story of the Jewish state could not be told without a good bit of attention to Israel’s soundtrack. One really cannot understand Israel without learning about its soundtrack.
In the book, back then, all we could do was tell about the songs. This medium allows us to actually share them with you, and this week, we’re doing that with yet another remake of the classic Israeli song, “The Children of the Winter of ‘73,” which we’ve discussed on several occasions.
We come back to that in a moment.
TUESDAY (04/02): Who are the Israelis? There’s a recurrent theme in Israeli journalism these days. Dana Weiss, Amit Segal (in the WSJ among other places), Benny Morris (in the WSJ, as well) and Havivi Rettig Gur (and many others) are saying to their readers, “first, you need to understand who we are.” We haven’t written about Dana Weiss yet, so today we’ll do that. With links to the others, of course.
WEDNESDAY (04/03): October 7 is by far the most documented pogrom in the history of the Jewish people. Many organizations are doing what they can to collect material, but behind all of it is the National Library of Israel. In this week’s podcast, Raquel Ukeles and Yaniv Levi-Korem of the NLI tell us how the project got started, give us a sense of its scope, and share some of the moral and technological challenges.
THURSDAY (04/04): Periodically, we are told that a hostages who hasn’t been seen since October 7 is suddenly declared dead. Why and how does that happen? It turns out that there are three doctors are the heart of this painful work; today we’ll meet them and find out more about how they do what they do.
FRIDAY (04/05): The stories just keep oozing out. The horror of what happened on October 7, young Israelis who saw their parents killed, tried to save them, etc. These children are far too young to have memories like that, and a new book in Israel has collected some of their self-written profiles. We’ll read a bit of the “essay” by a thirteen year old girl who went through what no human being should ever had to endure.
Since Purim is now in the rear-view mirror, Passover cannot be far away. We’ll provide more details as the holiday grows closer, but for now, a quick note that we’ll be taking most of Passover off.
Most of the power of Israeli music stems from the beauty of the melody, the poetry of the words—and their association with critical events in Israeli history. Sometimes, though, a song is powerful not only in its own right, but because it has multiple lives over the course of time.
“The Children of the Winter of ‘73”, as we’ve shown on multiple occasions, is such a song. In the past, we’ve shared a few versions:
Here is the first performance in 1994 and here are those same four performers singing the song again in 2011 on Yom Hazikaron.
We covered the song and both performances in an early column, which you can read here.
Then there was the Jewish and Arab duet of the song, which we covered here.
And more recently, in December of 2023, we featured three high school teachers who wrote their own version of the song for their former students, now soldiers who are protecting the country. You can view the post and listen to that version here.
And now, the families of those who were killed at the Nova music festival and nature party at Kibbutz Re’im have written their own version of the song, “Winter of ‘23”. As you listen, recall that this song is perhaps the Israeli song about parents who broke their promises—explicit or implicit—to their children. It thus fit, in a horrible way, to the events at the Reim music festival.
Though everyone can see and hear the videos by clicking on the links above, for the ease and convenience of our paid subscribers, we’re pasting those videos into this post below, so you won’t have to click to other sources and posts.
Here are the words to the original, following by the very first performance:
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