Y’all hanging in there? It’s been a wild few months, and the book industry has been hard-hit just like everything else. Some readers only received their books recently because of the shipping delays with Amazon. If this is you, I hope you get the chance to read it soon–and as always, don’t forget to leave a review on Amazon and/or Goodreads!
When I posted a playlist for By Light of Hidden Candles, I didn’t know if anyone would really care that much about it or bother to listen to it or read about it. But one reader wrote to tell me that he found it to be a wonderful gift.
So, for him and the other readers who feel the same way, I present the official playlist for Disengagement.
It was a lot more complicated to put the blog post on this together, because many of the songs are Israeli, and I want to provide enough context for non-Hebrew-speakers to understand the significance of each of them. In most cases I translated just some of the lyrics, but in some cases I felt I had to translate the whole song. I hope you enjoy!
1) Zeh Haya Beiti (“This Was My Home”)/Hila Harrari, Keleh 6 & Menny Begger
This is not in a musical style I tend to enjoy, but this song is the one most strongly associated with the evacuation of Gush Katif in my mind. The original version by Menny Begger was written about the evacuation of the Yamit settlement in the Sinai in the early 1980s. This remake was released in 2004, a year before the disengagement from Gaza. I remember hearing it on the radio over and over again during my senior year of high school. The clip I chose includes footage and images from the disengagement, and it may have been this very clip that I watched one summer later, inspiring me to write the short story that much later gave birth to the book.
The lyrics of the chorus translates as:
This was my home
With a garden, and a chicken coop
It was my home
It was yours, it was mine, it was ours
With the dawn,
Strangers will live here
And we and all our dreams
Disappear
2) Wikipedia/Hanan Ben Ari
This song is about the labels and stereotypes that tend to exist in Israeli society, all across the board–political, ethnic, religious–and calls on us to stop defining each other according to these labels. It’s very much in the spirit of what I’m trying to accomplish with Disengagement. Hanan Ben Ari is an absolutely brilliant lyricist and I had a hard time capturing the brilliance, but I couldn’t settle for translating only part of this song, I had to translate all of it.
How convenient
To go with the flow of your brain
With its automatic associations
That don’t require any effort
Just label and growl,
Incite and sacrifice
Items to the gods of ratings
With all your might
Everything’s lined up in our heads
Drawer by drawer
We won’t let reality
Prevent us from seeing that
Every leftist is a traitor,
Every Arab is suicide bomber,
Every haredi is a thief,
And all the settlers assassinated Rabin
All of Tel Aviv is vegan,
All of Netivot is traditional and folksy
All the religious folks are primitives with tzitzit
And along they way, they took out Darwin
Don’t stick me in any cage
Don’t sum me up in a page
On Wikipedia
I’m everything,
I’m nothing
Infinite light dressed in a body
So don’t stick me in any cage
Call me Don Quixote daring to go to battle
Place a prize on my head and a guillotine in the village square
The demons, their time has passed,
And the emperor has no clothes
Erase everything you’ve known about me until now
No, I’m not “the settler”,
Not a representative of God
Not a religious fanatic who discriminates against women,
Not a bridge between the sectors
May all the sectors burn, destroy your prejudices
So everyone can have a chance to write his own story
Because if everything is known ahead of time,
Cliche by cliche
We won’t let reality
Prevent us from seeing that
Every Mizrahi is discriminated against,
Every secular person is a dirty heretic
All women belong in the kitchen,
And all the Russians are crushin’ on Stalin
All hope is lost
Every member of Knesset is a cache of termites
All the Ethiopians run, and the ones who don’t
Sing with Reichel
(chorus)
The day will come…
The day will come when you won’t stick me in any cage
And you won’t sum me up in a page
On Wikipedia
I’m everything
I’m nothing
I came to this world bare
And that’s how I’ll leave
So don’t stick me in any cage
You won’t stick me in any cage
3) Matanot Ktanot (“Little Gifts”)/Rami Kleinstein
This is a very sweet little song I associate with the early days of Rabbi Shlomo’s life in Neve Adva. It’s about appreciating the simplicity of a Friday afternoon, the quiet of Sabbath eve, and all the small gifts God has blessed us with.
Little gifts
Someone has sent me little gifts
Shards of intention,
Circles of faith
Little gifts
Someone has sent me little gifts
Like the strength to accept
What isn’t, and what is
What else could I ask for?
(I once posted a translation of all the lyrics on Letters to Josep; you can check that out here)
4) Ad Mahar (“Until Tomorrow”)/Evyatar Banai
This emotional ballad is about a pregnant woman waiting for her child, battling the worries and hardships of becoming a parent. For me, this song embodies Svetka’s yearning for a child of her own.
The chorus translates as:
Until tomorrow
Just a little longer
A child will be running to you
Embracing you
5) Neve Tla’ot (“Home of Hardships”)/Yonatan Razel
“Home of Hardships” is Yonatan Razel’s official translation for the title of this song, but the word “Neve”–as in “Neve Adva”–has a few different meanings; it can mean “home”, but also “pasture” or “oasis” (neve midbar), or “beautiful”. It is often used in names of Israeli towns or neighborhoods. My first home in Israel was located in a neighborhood called Neve Avnit.
So the title “Neve Tla’ot” carries within it a distinct contradiction, a paradox, and it refers to the world we live in–an oasis, a beautiful home and pasture, that is full of hardships.
I associate this song with Rabbi Shlomo’s later experiences in Neve Adva, as life starts to get more difficult and hardships begin to emerge. A partial translation:
But now I go down to the sea,
To cry for myself and for my home
To cry for myself and for my home and for my world
Look down
From Your holy dwelling,
From the Heavens
and bless your people, Israel
6) What About Us/P!nk
How’s that for a change of pace? 😉
This is a powerful song that calls for accountability on the part of leaders who have disappointed or abandoned us. I feel that this reflects the sense of betrayal that was felt by the communities of Gush Katif toward the Israeli political leaders, especially Ariel Sharon, who was one of the original masterminds behind the settler movement and supported and encouraged the settlements, only to turn around and order their destruction.
What about us?
What about all the times you said you had the answers?
What about us?
What about all the broken happy ever afters?
What about us?
What about all the plans that ended in disaster?
What about love? What about trust?
What about us?
7) You Found Me/The Fray
This is Peduel’s song. His sense of being abandoned and betrayed by everything he loved, and the strong and painful feeling of missed opportunities, come through here so powerfully.
Where were you
When everything was falling apart
All my days
Spent by the telephone
That never rang,
And all I needed was a call
That never came
From the corner of First and Amistad
Lost and insecure
You found me, you found me
Lying on the floor
Surrounded, surrounded
Why’d you have to wait?
Where were you?
Where were you?
Just a little late
You found me
8) Ma Ata Rotzeh Mimeni (“What Do You Want from Me”)/Hanan Ben Ari
I associate this song with Talia and the candid revelations about her struggles with God. Hanan Ben Ari’s lyrics also portray a frank, honest, and almost angry conversation with the Almighty, and it reminded me not only of her, but Rabbi Shlomo and his conversation with his mysterious guest the night before the evacuation.
A translation of the chorus:
What do You want from me?
What?
What?
Who asked you to throw a soul into me?
Why don’t you come to me in the afternoon
Embrace me, look me in the eyes
9) Tefilla L’Ani (Psalm 102:1-3)
This video includes a recording from the actual news footage of the young women singing these passages from the psalms in the synagogue of Neve Dkalim in the hours before the evacuation. The sheer power of their song pierced the hearts of viewers, and this song became associated with the disengagement as a result.
God, hear my prayer
And may my cry come before You
Don’t hide Your face from me
On the day of my distress
10) Ima Im Hayiti (“Mother, If I Could”)/Hanan Ben Ari
Yes, there’s a reason Hanan Ben Ari has turned up so much on this playlist: he, himself, was evacuated from Gush Katif. He was 17–just like Yossi Toledano. This is a song he wrote from the pain of that experience, and I think it speaks to Yossi’s experience quite powerfully.
And again, that same melody
That you used to sing as a lullaby
Plays in my heart and reminds me of things from there
There, facing that sea,
When the sands were my home
And the winds whispered to me that I’m not alone
And you held my hand
You said: “Look to the skies”
You promised that one day we would return…
Mother, if only I could
Heal the longing
The memories burn in my mind
Love didn’t win, and neither did spirit
Mother, if only I could
Believe you, and not run away
My heart has been betrayed and doesn’t let me trust
Only that melody gives me strength
And again that same melody
Every year in the summer
In the greenhouses, orange flowers bloom as they did then
The children also bloomed slowly,
They have almost all build their own homes
Only the names of the streets
Remember that which was buried
Do you remember how we sang
In the synagogue
“If I forget thee, Jerusalem”
We cried out that one day, we would return to here…
Mother, if only I could…
We will return to there,
We will return to there,
We will return, mother,
We will return
Mother, if only I could
Heal the longing
The memories burn in my mind
Love didn’t win, and neither did spirit
Mother, if only I could
Believe you, and not run away
My heart is beating, it wants to feel joy again
And that melody gives me the strength
11) Run For Your Life/The Fray
I associate this song with the relationship between the sisters Olga and Svetka Borokhov.
Seventeen years by her side, broke the same bread
Wore the same clothes and you said
“We’re sisters with nothing between, if one of us fall
The other will soon be following”
Both of you fell the same day and you don’t know why
But one of you never woke up
You lay your body down on the floor, you’re desperate to hear
Her footsteps again, but this house is on fire
And we need to go
Oh, you don’t have to go it alone, go it alone
Run for your life, my love
Run and you don’t give up
With all that you are and all that you want
I will be close behind, run for your life
12) Yedid Nefesh (“Friend of the Soul”)
This is a piyyut, a liturgical poem, traditionally sung between the afternoon prayers of Friday and the special prayers of the Sabbath eve. One line from it appears in Reuben’s dream: Ki zeh kama nikhsof nikhsafti, “for how I have longed greatly”…
13) Lir’ot Et Ha’Or (“To See the Light”)/Efrat Gosh
I associate this song with Amal, and the lyrics speak for themselves as to why.
I saw my path disappear
In a thick forest, between walls of groves
And into the bleeding earth
My feet were driven, they set down roots
And for a moment, I could hear
The leaves teaching their song
And I wanted to rise up high
And to bloom with them
I knew the drops of rain
Gathering within me, dripping below me
And the wind is cold and despairing
It froze me, it weighed me down
And for a moment I could touch
The tip of the gray pain
And I wanted to rise up high
To see the light
To see the light
They say the sky above us
Is full of lights
Maybe one day I, too, will be able to see
To see…
And I fell to the earth, quietly
I closed my eyes, I sealed my heart
And I felt how I was falling apart
From all my pain, from all my loneliness
And for a moment I could flee
Like a feather on the wing of a bird
And I was able to rise up high
To see the light
To see the light
14) Feels Like Home/In Paradise
This song is for all the characters in the book who find a glimpse of home in an unexpected place: a person they wouldn’t have imagined connecting with.
Feels so good when I’m with you
The moments that you take me to
So good
So familiar
It’s true
That you remind me of a place I’ve always known
And it feels like home
15) Mechubar (“Connected”)/Aaron Razel
Aaron Razel is Yonatan’s brother, and he was active in his opposition to the disengagement, appearing at rallies and protests. This is the title song from an album written after the event. The album contains some songs that are more specifically about the disengagement, but I chose this one because I feel it connects to some of the deeper themes of the book. It’s about the singer’s desire to stay connected to God, to the moment, to the past and the future, and to the people around him.
So don’t disconnect me,
I want to be connected to You, God
And if You embrace me,
I want to stay connected to You, God
I want to be connected to You
So that’s that! Are there any songs you thought of while you were reading the book, or that you associate with the events recounted in it? I’d love to hear.
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