"When the heart cries, only God hears"

Sarit Hadad's classic Israeli song has taken on new life in these heartbreaking times

As we’ve noted more times than I can recall, it’s really impossible to understand Israel without knowing its sound track. And as we’ve mentioned several times since the war began, the Israeli soundtrack has undergone many changes this year. We’ve seen several new songs, a few songs from the past that have come back to life, and today, we revisit an Israeli classic that in the first weeks of the war, was one of the most-played songs on Israeli radio.

The song is K’shehalev Bocheh or “When the Heart Cries” by Sarit Hadad, one of Israel’s top singers since the 1990s. Matti Friedman once described her as the country’s “Mizraḥi pop queen,” but she’s loved by basically everyone.

The song was written by Yossi Gispan, melody by Shmuel Elbaz.

We’re going to see three different performances below. And then what was, for me, an unforgettable conversation between Sarit Hadad and a former hostage, at the bottom of this post.

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“When the Heart Cries” was written in 2001, which means that young Israelis can’t remember any time of their lives when they didn’t know the song. As we’ve seen in many of the performances we’ve shared over the years, at many Israeli concerts, the crowd knows the song, and for a good, long segment, the performer just lets them sing.

Here is a performance by Sarit Hadad herself in July 2023, just months before the October 7 attack and the war that followed. (We’ve added English subtitles to the original YouTube, which is here; translation can be found online here.)

It’s an entirely modern song, but you can’t miss the words “Shema Yisrael,” which has obvious religious resonance. Watching the video, I can’t help but wonder how many of those young people in the crowd aren’t with us anymore ….

And here is Hadad performing the same song during Shirim B’Kikar, “Songs in the Square,” on Yom Hazikaron this past year. It’s an entirely different sort of performance, just a few months after the one above, with a very different tone for the deeply mournful crowd. (You can’t miss the yellow ribbons signifying the hostages…. )

If you want to know what’s happened to this country in the past twelve months, compare the faces of the young people at the concert in the first video, and the faces of the audience in this one….

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And finally, one more performance.

I stumbled across the video below of Sarit Hadad'’s song being sung by American singer, Aryeh Kunstler and the Israeli singer, Itzik Dadya. There’s a unique beauty to their blended voices, so we decided to share it here. It also includes English subtitles of the lyrics. (Here is the link to the original video posted on Aryeh’s Facebook.)

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A few weeks ago, Sarit Hadad was a guest on the Israeli TV show, Dancing with the Stars (yes, same concept as all the other DWTSs), which has offered Israelis a certain level of escapism during the last couple of months.

But, of course, it’s Israel, and the escapism can never really last that long. Leah Yanai, Israeli dancer and judge on the TV show, is also the sister of Moran Stella Yanai who was kidnapped by Hamas and held hostage until November.

Moran sat in the audience during one of the Dancing with the Stars episodes and spoke with Sarit Hadad about the moment she heard her song on the radio in Gaza.

Below is the video. We’ve added English subtitles.

It’s certainly true down in those tunnels….
When the heart cries, only God hears…. 

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