At a time when many Israeli artists are wary of jumping into the political cauldron – and those who dare to do so are burned almost immediately by the fire of social networks – it is no wonder that the immediate mobilization of artists in the Yom Kippur War seems to be taken from another world. The songs that were created quickly during the war reflected the general shock, along with the feeling that morale had to be raised, and sometimes, mercifully, criticized.
"It's Judgment Day, it's Judgment Day. Allah is not helping you, the IDF is hitting you again. One day you got a four, you came in droves. Please look back, Allah does not help you. While we were praying, you crossed the canal. When you went up the mountain again, you didn't think about tomorrow" - this is how Gabi Shoshan and Moti Giladi sang in the song "Judgment Day", one of several songs recorded during the days of the battles.
In the song you can hear the gravity of the situation: Judgment Day is here, and also - you have to demoralize the Arab armies (in Hebrew!), and it is clear that the IDF is hitting you again. Moreover, the song reveals the deep need for singers to take part in the national effort for survival.
While reporting on the battles in the canal, the radio messenger came across a performance by the High Windows Band, singing Nurit Hirsch's "Next Year," but with other words, hastily adapted to the time and place: "That on Yom Kippur, we prayed - how dare you open fire? So we left the fast, stopped praying, and said: If fire - insulting! You will still be, you will still be, you will still be atonement, atonement for all the people of Israel. To the yellow desert we have returned again, and we will return in this way in you to strike. We swear to strike - wait, we're not done yet, until you shout - oh hello."
The suburbs recruit Alon and Anat, small children, to sing a song that reminds the fighters what they are fighting for: "Bless him a daring tank, whose sling is every shell, fifty shots per bull, it crosses literally every boundary - who howled and who prayed, bless all Israel."
The holy men of Israel are also mobilized for battle: "On a stronghold that stood besieged, on missiles in the fields of the village, on my sons who said you will not pass, you will not pass, here Golani Golani fights," Moshe Hillel sang the words of the prophet Amos, which Zrubbala Shonkin adapted to the period and Yair Miller composed in "On the Three Crimes of Damascus."
Even Aris Sun, the Greek who holds honorary Israeli citizenship, records an anthem of immediate encouragement to the people and fighters during the war: "There is no more power in the world, there is no more power in the world. Who subdued and struck at the spirit of this people, this time too, they will receive their ration a thousand times."
Not that euphoria anymore
The songs of the war did not die down with the ceasefire, and already after it an album appeared with the best songs that became the soundtrack of the period - "The Last War". However, contrary to the sense of wonders and miracles of the Six-Day War, here it was unmistakable how different reality was.
"In the name of the pilots who broke into a furious battle, and were burned by missile fire and NON fire. In the name of the paratroopers between lead and smoke, they saw you, like an angel, above their heads. I promise you, little girl, that this will be the last war," Yehoram Gaon sang Haim Hefer's words to the tune of Dubi Seltzer.
The majesty and splendor of the pathos of the six days were replaced by the knockout pain of the first days of the war, and especially the great bereavement. One thing remains unchanged – Israeli soldiers are the heroes of the hour, even if the reward for their courage is not the Temple Mount in our hands, but more mundane pleasures. "Take care of me and I'll watch over you," sings Ricky Gal on behalf of the women left behind, signaling to the soldiers that there is somewhere and why to return home.
The songs of consolation also appear on the album, most notably "Let It Be" (inspired by "Let It Be"). The album features a performance by Hava Alberstein, but the iconic wartime rendition of the song was that of the pale tracker. In a moment that is both bizarre and heroic, the national trio of funnymen is called to the flag during the war itself to entertain and entertain, and records with national songwriter Naomi Shemer a song of consolation, which begins with inspiration from a Beatles song and ends as an Israeli prayer to escape the dark and hope for the rise of the star and peace for all those we love.
"When you are pale with sorrow, burrowing into your silence, let me speak to you and walk among your shadows, to be with you." It was with this consolation that "Like a Wild Plant", the album most identified with that war, released in March '75. The lyrics of the song "I'll Talk to You" were written by Rachel Shapira, composed by Alona Torel and sung by Chava Alberstein. 50 years after that war, the song created by the Mothers of Consolation still holds true today, and is Alberstein's most played song on 21st-century streaming services.
Today it looks like a collection of hits: "Like a wild plant", "You will walk in the field", "Every man has a name", "Beaches are sometimes", "Binyamina days", "Endless meeting". Although no song deals directly with the war, the spirit of the days that followed pervades the entire album. It begins with the cover in which Alberstein is photographed in ancient brown sepia colors, and continues with the musical production of Matti Caspi, Hanan Yuval, Moshe Wilensky and Gerard Michel Cohen. Everyone sought to distill the sound of consolation out of bereavement, to contain and raise long.
The cover of the record "Like a Wild Plant",
"'Like a Wild Plant' was a record of refinement, of a desire to turn the frustration, insult, grief and pain we all went through after the Yom Kippur War into something positive, a change, a hope," Alberstein wrote on the album's 40th anniversary. "I needed comfort – not to shout, not to blame. The songs on this record found each other like people finding soul mates in a crowd of people. And then the songs found the people who needed them at that particular moment in their lives."
It is no coincidence that Alberstein sought the change from grief, insult and pain to something positive. While the political-media world was busy with committees and accusations, Alberstein sought a respite from the uproar. Time to process the trauma, heal the wounds and most of all find comfort.
"The songs found each other, like people finding soulmates in a crowd of people." Alberstein, Photo: Eldan David/GPO
In '75, three albums of consolation were released for that war, even if in this case the consolation had a completely different sound, passing through the legs and heart. "I was supposed to get married in November of '73. Unfortunately, my fiancée's brother was killed in the Golan Heights in the war, and I was injured in the ditch," says impresario Asher Reuveni of the Reuveni brothers about the birth of new Mizrahi music in Israel.
"We postponed the wedding to January, and because of the mourning, we did a chapel in a small house, 60 square meters with a bit of a yard and a lot of street. A friend brought the guys from Shabazi - canned and duvale, palmetto and Ben Mosh. I grew up on this music at home, in a synagogue, I knew it from the neighborhood, but they lifted it up and made an unbelievable darkness there. That's what we needed to get up from that terrible war.
"They happened to record this wedding, and then every day someone would come to me and say, 'Make me a copy of this.' So I got fed up, and that's how we decided to release their album. That's how we turned from an electronics store into a record company."
Between Hafla and Lament
The debut albums of Sounds of Oud and Sounds of the Vineyard are considered a defining moment in the music of immigrants from Islamic countries in Israel. They are often remembered as albums that contained songs of joie de vivre that sought to ignite from sadness. But Israeli soul and blues songs taken from the valley of the cry and the sands of Sinai, such as "Pure Stork" and "Old Forest," were also forgotten, expressing the rift through frills from the depths of the soul.
At the same time, these albums also show nostalgia for safer times, in the song "In Memory of Days of Time", just as in "Days of Binyamina".
Album cover "In My Memory of Days Forever",
It is surprising to discover that the album, most of which dealt directly with that war – "Where is the Soldier", Ahuva Ozeri's debut album – is almost completely absent from the soundtrack associated with it. In contrast to the people of Oud and Kerem, Ozeri wrote her own poems, and it is amazing to see how that war is reflected through her poems on the Israeli home front.
"Where is my soldier, when will I run towards him?" wrote Ozeri in the title song. The song was written about her neighbor, the mother of Staff Sergeant Adi Sorek Zviv. Sorek was one of the missing in battle in Sinai, and for weeks and months his fate was unknown. Ozeri, who heard his mother ask, "Where is my soldier?" made her words the theme song.
Album cover "Where is the Soldier",
The other songs on the album also dealt with the horrors of war directly. "It happened on 9 June, the Barak Battalion rose to the plateau, the sun struck the fighters, their faces were greeted by shells, the stiff plateau, we sipped our blood. Some survived," lamented Ozeri in the song "Rama." "Tomorrow I will shed a tear", "Who will bear my name?" - she sang on behalf of all those who perished, and in "Where Will I Go" she described the abyss left after bereavement: "A boat I, without oars, drift away among the waves. Where will I go, everything is bland, my eyes are watery, the universe is dark."
A few weeks before her death in 2016, Ozeri was interviewed by Hananel Pazerker and Udi Hazan, and explained the unusual encounter between Hafla and Kina: "I started singing while still in kindergarten... By the age of 8, I was lamenting and writing lamentation poems about the deceased. I would sing the songs of darkness and lamentations in people's homes for money... The culture of joy and lamentation has shaped me a lot ever since, as a singer and writer."
"Missiles, explosions - and you sing"
The horrors of the war left a deep impression on the souls of the artists who participated in it. Leonard Cohen emerges from his home in Greece, makes an unforgettable tour of Sinai and Ramah and all the hospitals where there are wounded to sing to the soldiers. A year after the war, he will release "New Skin for the Old Ceremony", an album with the Yom Kippur War on his songs.
Cohen was the most famous of them all, but he was not the only one who enlisted in the Artists' Corps. "Before the war, we felt like the crown of creation, the heroes of the cosmos and the universe, but we got a huge slap," Yizhar Cohen recalls. "The country was in an absolute knockout. The situation was difficult, there was a lot of anger at the authorities, the war was very difficult. We've been through things that can't be described in words. You understand what it's like to sing in the sands and between battles. You see bodies and seriously wounded and sights you can't forget. And you feel missiles falling next to you and explosions, and in the midst of it all you sing. We were scared, but we didn't think about it because we were crazy Zionists at the time."
Just before the war, Cohen, newly released from the Nahal staff and already a prince singer, meets Haim Hefer, one of the leading writers of the time. Hefer suggests that the young singer write a collection of satirical songs about the situation, which Cohen will compose and a band will perform. Cohen teams Razi Amitai, Esti Katz and Margalit Tzanani with him, and thus the gang was founded.
"We were scared but we didn't think about it." The gang band performs in Sinai, Photo: Ron Ilan/GPO
"We were in rehearsal fever, I did the vocal arrangements, Hefer gave me a lot of credit," Cohen recalls. "I was 21 years old, and when we got to the final stages of production, boom! The Yom Kippur War broke out." Thus, for the album "The Last War", the band recorded the song "On the Kippak". "I want to read children's books, I want to buy a Spanish guitar, and talk with my head still warm, and know that I exist," Cohen sings longingly for a childhood world where everything was clear.
Album cover "The Last War",
"We were taken down to Sinai together, we went up to the plateau, in the midst of the battles I crossed the canal together with Arik and we performed on the outskirts of Ismailia at the first bridgehead," Cohen says. "Where you see soldiers, you go down and sing to them, literally. It's completely crazy, but it was natural for us. In the middle of the war, they decided to do a TV show to raise morale, and flew us from Sinai to Jerusalem on a transport plane. We're sitting on the floor, next to us wounded on stretchers and dead bodies - it was a terrible trauma that we didn't understand at the time. When I look at it today, I know that my panic attacks started there, in the war. And after all that, you come to the TV studios and smile and sing and raise morale, because that's what it takes.
"I was in reserve for six months, we performed everywhere. After the war, everything changed. All the texts before her were no longer relevant. We fell apart. I remember being invited to sing at the Eastern Testimony Song Festival, which was at the very end of the war, and the IBA didn't know whether to produce it or not, and in the end it was produced with a lot of messages in the songs.
"You know, before the Yom Kippur War, we were disparagingly called 'cream children.' My parents fought and lived in austerity - and we got all the cream. In the Yom Kippur War, this generation proved in a big way what a huge generation it is. After the war I recorded a lot of memorial songs, there were a lot of ceremonies and I participated in every entertainment program or the main program of Independence Day. I was always singing, and recording every day. But the anxieties were there everywhere they tried to make me an international star. We didn't process the trauma, it wasn't until many years later that I realized I was traumatic.
"I remember that on one of the tours of the war we were housed nowhere, in some Egyptian stone building, and the whole band and the singers sleep in field beds above each other, and everything is Egyptian darkness, and in the middle of the night I wake up screaming in terror. And I climb on top of people and don't understand where I find a box of matches, and screamingly run out, lighting match after match in the middle of darkness to calm myself. I'm talking to you—and those pictures are coming back to me now," Cohen's voice faded.
Like in Fellini's movie
"Look at this picture, it shows you the madness, and how out of touch the leaders were," Yehuda Adar tells me, showing a picture of Prime Minister Golda Meir among the smiling Nahal troupe soldiers. "The leadership didn't do what needed to be done, and the prime minister, who messed up hugely, came to take pictures with the band.
"You felt like everything was crashing." Herd, Photo: Efrat Eshel
"I remember that on Saturday the siren woke me up at two o'clock in the afternoon at Kibbutz Kfar Hanasi. I ran to the shelter and said, 'I can't believe we're going back to this movie.' Between the six days and Yom Kippur, there were six years of crazy delusion. Everyone thought we were a superpower, I had a supreme sense of freedom like no other since, I felt like I could do whatever I wanted, live how I wanted – sex, drugs and rock and roll like in Woodstock – and suddenly tanks, airplanes and sirens."
Herd was in the Nahal troupe, Tammuz and Duda, and it turns out that Kaveret was also in its North African column. "At some point, for some reason, Klafter stopped going to concerts in Sinai, and when the guys crossed the Channel to Africa, I replaced him with Hive performances there – definitely one of the highlights of my life."
But reality was far from funny to the funny. "We created a crazy bubble to keep ourselves safe. We performed for a few weeks or months, I lost time. It was a real freak show, Kaveret and the Nahal band, and Menachem Zilberman and Yair Rosenblum joined, 30 young disturbed guys crammed into the bus, traveling between battles, performing four or five times a day. Sometimes they connect to the battery of the bus, sometimes they appear to pilots who leave for a flight and do not return.
"All this happens when the country falls apart in a terrible war. It was like a Fellini movie - you see the clowns laughing and singing, and everyone around is broken. We lowered the curtain, we lowered the curtain on the soul.
The cover of the album "End of the Orange Season",
"I remember one time we performed at Soroka in front of seriously injured people and 30 guys sat in front of us, each with an eye patch. And suddenly we realize that all the viewers have only one eye, and it's delusional, and we're torn up with laughter, because your brain refuses to get used to such a chaotic situation and define it as normal."
And how does all this affect your postwar work?
"We were a generation that wanted to realize the vision of the '60s. Forget politics, there was something about us whose rebellion was the desire to be normal. After the war, when Tammuz performed, it was the first band whose audience got up and danced - they needed it! Fifteen-year-old Avi Kushnir led a group of rioters from the Green Village, would go on stage and dance and go crazy. We encouraged the breaking of the fourth wall, between us and the audience. We wanted to be normal together, and the way there was to go crazy. True, there was a war of attrition after the Six Day War, there were battles, but you felt that you were a superpower, and it all crashed in one minute in the Yom Kippur War. In fact, I'm still post-traumatic from that siren on Saturday afternoon."
"We created a crazy bubble to keep ourselves safe." Kaveret during the Yom Kippur War, photo: courtesy of the IDF Archives and the Defense Establishment, photo: Eli Chen
Medina in Flutter
"They brought us to the Golan Heights, an open field, one building with a flat roof. We turned the amplification up, looked around, wondered who would come. Suddenly, we hear a huge noise in the distance. 50 tanks arrive. We stand around and the commander says, 'Play them well, because from here they're going to attack.' It was the craziest show we've ever had," recalls Ephraim Barak, guitarist of the progressive rock band Zingala.
"Peace", released by Zingala in '77, is considered a progressive rock album about war and peace, in response – albeit a little late – to the shell shock of vocalist David "Freedom", who fought in the Yom Kippur War. Barak: "I don't see the connection, but if you listen to the songs, you hear the desire for the war to end, for us to live on a planet where only music will play. We wanted peace!"
The most prominent rocker who addressed the Yom Kippur War on his first album is Rami Fortis. "For years they called him 'crazy, punk,' but few people understood that 'Flutter' – apart from the fact that it corresponded with things that were coming out at the time in Britain and was very innovative in the Israeli space – was the reaction of a man who went through terrible things in the war," says writer Yossi Sukari, a member of Tel Aviv's club scene in the early 80s.
Album cover "Flutter",
"Plounter" is not the immediate name that comes to mind when thinking about the Yom Kippur War, but when you listen to it in light of the events, it rings completely different. From the collective's blame classes in the song "Because of You", through the statement that "death is not due to lack of work", and even "Incubator", which offers in its surreal way the desire to return to childhood, to the same safe place, as diagnosed in soldiers who participated in battles, or in other words - nostalgia.
"I came out shaken." Fortis, Photo: Coco
"I came out pretty shaken by this story," Portis said in an interview with Yoav Kutner. "I participated in the war! They threw bombs at me, I shot at others. But what matters is not me at all, what matters is that I realized that all the people in this country around me - I am not unique compared to them. Every second person you and I know in this country is scratched to the core, because they played war games. Maybe that's why this is what the country looks like. They think everyone comes out of it as heroes, you get titles, they give you medals, and only for the soul - nada, nothing."
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