← Ask Haviv Anything
Ask Haviv Anything
Episode 27: Music amidst trauma - a conversation on life in a war with Aya Korem and Adam Ben Amitai
00:55:31
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- [00:00]
Aviv
FOREIGN welcome to a an extraordinary episode of Ask Aviv Anything. We are probably possibly hopefully toward the end of the war of the long war, the 21 month war in Gaza started by October 7th. We are recording ahead of Netanyahu's trip to Washington in which President Donald Trump has already said the Israelis have agreed to a 60 day ceasefire that will get out eight to 10 living hostages, which is roughly half of the number of living hostages still in Gaza, and hopefully be a first step toward a final conclusion of the war under American parameters. That talk about Hamas's leadership leaving Gaza and Hamas being disarmed and other forces coming in and beginning the whole question of law and order and rebuilding. So we're looking at, you know, for the first time we can imagine that end. It's an end that doesn't have Hamas in power in Gaza, which is of course the found the fundamental Israeli war goal. And nobody has any idea if Hamas will agree to it, if levers of influence over Qatar will work. We don't know. We are in the same fog that everyone else is in. But it is possible more than it has ever been in the past, that we are toward the end. And Rachel and I, who if you're a regular watcher, listener of this podcast, you know, is the executive producer and my wife and boss have decided to take a little bit of a break from the usual kinds of conversations that we have about this war, about, I would say, history, and try something utterly and completely different that is totally new to us. So if you don't like it, that's okay. It's important. To spice things up, we have invited our very, very good friends Aya Korem and Adam Ben Amitai, who are two of the most remarkable politicians in. Everyone I ever talk about is this is the thing I can't get off that groove. Who are two of the most remarkable musicians Israel has today and have produced some of the most important music and I would even say culturally iconic texts of this moment of how Israelis feel. There's a residential building in the city of Batham near Tel Aviv that took a hit from an Iranian missile and there was damage and families have to deal with it and figure out how to rebuild and their lives have been changed. And there was a homemade banner hung up on the porch of the building of one of the apartments that read Manishar Raqava. What remains Only Love, which is one of the truly classic love ballads of Aya and Adam that are the vocabulary for Israelis talking about these moments and how and how we deal with these difficult times since the start of the war. Ayah and Adam have also created some of the ballads of this war, some of the, the voices of Pain, of hope. They put out a new album and we're going to hear some of that singing today, some of those, some of those actual songs, and some of the things that they have contributed to how Israelis think and feel in these difficult times. And that's why I have a new background. We're in a studio in Tel Aviv and I hope that this is something that we can do more of. And I'm really, really excited to get started. Before we do, I have to tell you that this is episode is sponsored by sponsors who have dedicated it to something really truly valuable. And I want to thank them for that. It's sponsored by Bennett and Robin Greenspan of Houston, Texas, who are strong supporters of Israel. They recognize Israel's centrality and vitality to the Jewish world. And they asked us to say that they are also proud to sponsor this episode and this podcast because its insights make understanding the Middle east our situation a little bit easier. Thank you for that. And the episode is dedicated to edut7ten en edut710.org a grassroots volunteer driven initiative established in the wake of October 7th to listen to, to document, to preserve, to share, to amplify the voices of survivors, first responders, and entire communities who experienced Hamas's brutal attack firsthand. With deep care and the highest ethical standards. Edut, which is the Hebrew word for testimony, and its hundreds of volunteers work to protect and elevate these voices for generations to come. Over 1600 testimonies have already been collected and recorded to this date. Many of them are accessible at www.edut710.org. Thank you so much. And I am going to hand the baton over to my wife and ally, Rachel to start our conversation.
- [05:15]
Rachel
Thank you. And thank you so much to Aya and Adam for being here with us. Perhaps you didn't mention, but like us, Adam and Aya are a couple, a family. And you can talk about how the ups and downs of being creative as a couple. But first, I think it's most important to, to start back, to go back to the beginning, right to where it all began. We're now, for the first time, we're beginning to see the end of the war. And it's an opportunity to remember October 7th, right where we all were when it all started. And you, Ayah and Adam, you do a large part of your career. And one of the many ways that I had the opportunity to Discover your work was through translations of Leonard Cohen. And Leonard Cohen, who obviously a Jewish audience will know as the great Canadian performer, but here in Israel, we know him as the performer who came after the 1973 war and sing to soldiers in the sinai. And after October 7, Ayah, who was the great translator into Hebrew and adapter of Leonard Cohen's songs for our generation, to some extent became Leonard Cohen. Right? As you took upon, you too, took upon yourselves to travel the country in those first terrifying days and to offer solace and entertainment and to lift the spirits of the soldiers of all of us in those first terrifying days. So, so take us back to October 7th and that first experience.
- [06:49]
Aya Korem
I remember waking up from the sirens in Tel Aviv. And after the initial shock, I went on Twitter and started reading and I slowly but surely started to understand, this is different. This is not a regular siren. This is not a regular event that we and our kids are unfortunately used to. And I told Adam, I think I want to go, I think I want to go to my parents house, they live in the north of Israel. And he didn't really understand why. And I didn't really had the words to explain myself.
- [07:30]
Adam Ben Amitai
Always slow to understand, that's true.
- [07:34]
Aya Korem
But we took the kids and we drove there. And all throughout that day, the resolution and understanding of what has actually happened actually dawned on me. And I just, only at the evening of that day really understood what happened.
- [07:53]
Adam Ben Amitai
Yeah, that's true. I mean, Aya took some time to really, we all were in shock and it took time to grasp what was going on for me took way too long because we were kind of sadly used to these kind of situations. I mean, it just happened two years before, three years before. You hear a siren, something's going on. There's. But this was obviously a whole different thing. And I, I, I took the job for the first day of being the guy who says, well, you know, we've been through it, it's not that horrible, it's not that big of a deal. Trying to kind of lie to everybody around me to try and calm things down, which obviously never helps. And I was like, are you, do you not see the news? And so we went to Aya's parents and tried to, because it's safer there and far. And I think at the morning then like on October 8, it was already kind of, okay, where are we going to perform? That was, we got up and all the musicians were already thinking and doing it and just thinking, okay, where's the nearest base? Or whatever group of people hiding In a shelter that we can go and kind of do our thing and just.
- [09:19]
Rachel
Understand this isn't something you weren't called by the army or by the state or asked to do things right. This is just spontaneous. You woke up.
- [09:27]
Aya Korem
We're used to. We're used to it because I think for us it's not only something we can do to contribute. It keeps us busy. So I'm always not only happy to do it for other people, I'm happy to do it for myself as well. And we drove up north because in the seventh, nobody knew what was going to happen. So it's better to be in a disclosed in a far away place. And then in the 8th or 9th October, I started making some phone calls and writing online. Who wants a concert? Because we can get a guitar and come. And people started reaching out and saying, yeah, please, please do, please come. We need some music right now. That's.
- [10:20]
Aviv
Everybody mobilized all of a sudden. A whole society.
- [10:24]
Aya Korem
Yeah.
- [10:25]
Aviv
So every story is different, but every story is a little bit similar in that way.
- [10:29]
Aya Korem
We found ourselves doing the same things in previous wars and operations, but this was different because the way we felt.
- [10:39]
Adam Ben Amitai
About it, I think we had no guitar because we just. I mean, we heard the sirens, packed a few things.
- [10:45]
Aviv
I'm sorry. There's a situation that would lead Adam Benam to leave home without a guitar.
- [10:49]
Aya Korem
Actually, most situations.
- [10:51]
Adam Ben Amitai
You be surprised, Mike, because I won't let you. No, it's like, yeah, this thing, whatever.
- [10:58]
Aviv
Adam is famously a very great guitar collector and player.
- [11:03]
Adam Ben Amitai
Yeah, but. So we didn't. We didn't. We didn't pack the guitar cuz we, you know, kids things. Let's go. And. And then we booked. Booked, right. Someone called and say, hey, you want to go? Come and play for us. We didn't have a guitar, so we just IR wrote on Twitter. Well, this is where we are. Does someone have a guitar?
- [11:23]
Aya Korem
Yeah.
- [11:24]
Adam Ben Amitai
And people say, I have a guitar. So we drove by, got this dude's guitar and went to play something.
- [11:29]
Aviv
I got to say, I would have lent him my guitar just to hear it played, just to hear my good. What my guitar can do. So we want to. We want to kick off with a first song and it's maybe, maybe your most powerful.
- [11:45]
Adam Ben Amitai
That.
- [11:46]
Aviv
That sad. Everybody prepare. This is going to be sad. Tell us about it.
- [11:53]
Aya Korem
I started translating Leonard Cohen's songs around 2017 or 2018 just because I had a writer's crisis and I couldn't write new songs. So I did what I love to do, always, which is translation. And Leonard Cohen is my biggest hero and my idol. He's part of my DNA. I think he's part of Israeli DNA, because people here are not only fans of his music. There are so grateful for his love and support during times of war. And we started doing this show of translations of Cohen back then. And then I found myself trying to translate who by Fire, the famous song who Cohen wrote after he visited the Yom Kippur War and went back home and wrote this inspired by the Piyut of Yom Kippur, Untanetokef, which is a wonderful, beautiful, horrible hymn about the many, many ways a person can live, leave this world, basically. And it's a beautiful pewt for Yom Kippur. And this was the inspiration for who by Fire. And I started translating and working on the song, and then I asked myself, why isn't there a mashup of both songs? The most popular melody to dispute in Israel is written by Yair Rosenblum as a gift to the members of Kibbutz Betashita after the Yom Kippur War. They had a memorial service in the kibbutz, and he gave the music for the kibbutz as a gift. So this whole thing is just so powerful in so many ways. The Yom Kippur War is a big thing at our house. My dad was a soldier and fought the Yom Kippur War in Ramata Gulan. And we decided. I asked Adam to join me in this work because he's the only one I know who can make these two songs work as beautiful together as they do.
- [14:12]
Aviv
Kibbutz Mehta Shetang had the highest percentage per capita of losses in 1973. Okay.
- [14:20]
Rachel
And then after October 7th, I remember you telling me that you actually. One of your first performances of who by Fire, right, was the soldiers who requested it in a.
- [14:30]
Aviv
In.
- [14:31]
Rachel
In a performance at the gates of. Be the site of one of the worst massacres of October 7th. So share with us.
- [14:39]
Aya Korem
I. I remember this person who booked us asking this song, and I was just bewildered. Are you sure this is one? This is what. This is a song you want to listen to right now.
- [14:52]
Rachel
We're soldiers who are about to go into Aza.
- [14:53]
Aya Korem
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [14:54]
Aviv
Let me just explain. Ayah has some of the great pop hits of Israeli history, and a lot of soldiers wanted those.
- [15:01]
Aya Korem
Shira Vashulli, the Sad song of Leonard Cohen, and they just had to deal with it. But we were there standing on, you know, just grass and pine leaves and pine cones and performing in front of these soldiers, and they were sitting on these army beds in front of us. These were the chairs they were sitting on. And exactly 50 years before, Leonard Cohen, before us, performed to soldiers in the Sinai, and we were there outside of the kibbutz. Berry singing this song of all songs, was something we will probably never, ever.
- [15:48]
Rachel
Ever, ever.
- [16:08]
Aya Korem
Satay M f.
- [20:53]
Aviv
I think I would have been that officer asking for that one.
- [20:57]
Rachel
Khaviv and I processed the war, the trauma, the incredible bravery, the privilege of being part of a nation where everybody pitched in right? Overnight. Overnight, everybody, this whole people, this whole country came together from one of our most divisive moments to a moment of incredible strength. And Chaviv and I processed this war through words, right? Talking to Israelis, talking to Jews, talking to anybody who would listen, and telling the world and ourselves our story, that we are strong, that we are capable, that we are mourning, but that we will overcome this trauma. And you perhaps process the same trauma through music, through words. And one of them, maybe the most beautiful things that I saw, especially on this question of how do we talk about how do we process the war? Was the album that you put out during the war, describing to some extent your experiences. I remember there was one song talking about the laundry lines, right. The laundry still hanging in the kibbutzim that no one had collected after attack. A handprint on a sofa. Our longing for the hostages that are gone are our pity and our pain for our soldiers who are our children who are also stuck in this tragic and impossible situation. And you called it For Grace and Redemption. Drive Straight. Right. What could be a better title? Tell us a little bit about that, about how you came to this album, what you wrote, what you wanted to tell everybody.
- [22:46]
Adam Ben Amitai
Well, we're always working on new stuff and new songs. There's always, like, what's the next next thing? And I think just like two, three months into the war, it was obvious that whatever it is we were working on, it's going to. It doesn't matter now. It's like it's not interesting and relevant.
- [23:05]
Aya Korem
Yeah, we don't want it. We don't want to sing it.
- [23:07]
Adam Ben Amitai
Yeah. Who cares about whatever that was? Yeah, there's. And we need to do something that speaks about what is happening to us all. And I think that's like a privilege to be able to speak or do things that kind of matter, not just to us, but that we know that everybody's going through. So it was obvious that it's going to be an album about the war.
- [23:36]
Aviv
So let's let's just start with the COVID art, the title. The COVID art is the words for Grace and Redemption. Drive straight on a street sign with the street. Is that a real sign? Is that Photoshopped? What is that and what does it mean?
- [23:49]
Aya Korem
It's a sweet but sad story because the sign was something I encountered before the war.
- [23:57]
Aviv
It's a real sign.
- [23:57]
Aya Korem
It's a real sign out of. It's a real sign in the Irkon cemetery. Because at the Yorukon cemetery, there are places, burial places that are called. One is Grace, one is Redemption. And the people who are arriving to a funeral or a memorial, they want to go. They want to know where is the actual grave they're looking for. So I saw this sign. I was mesmerized by it, and I took a picture. And then when we started working on this album, it was so obvious that this is the name of the album before any actual songs were written.
- [24:36]
Aviv
So what. What is. What is that album about? What is it like to put out an album now that's about the war? That's about so many different experiences.
- [24:45]
Adam Ben Amitai
We had this idea that the album is going to be built like a kind of like a therapy session. One would my. Like, kind of like a conversation where it starts with just laying out the.
- [25:01]
Aya Korem
Most traumatic, horrible, like, memory.
- [25:06]
Adam Ben Amitai
Yeah.
- [25:06]
Aya Korem
Just the heart of the issue you're trying.
- [25:09]
Adam Ben Amitai
This is what happens.
- [25:11]
Aya Korem
Yeah.
- [25:11]
Adam Ben Amitai
The first song is just this very, like, almost cold depiction of just the fact of what happened. And it's kind of cold and distant because you're not even able to process it.
- [25:26]
Aya Korem
It's just a song. It's called Gray Concrete Road, and it describes a house in the kibbutz where everything is left untouched after the Hamas terrorists came and kidnapped everyone from the house. And a good friend of mine who served in reserves after the seventh came to this house to clean it up so the owners of the house would be able to come back to it and not see anything too horrible. That was his job. He volunteered to this job, and this is what he did. And I remember him calling me the night after he did it. He just needed someone to talk to, and he just described everything. And I asked for him for his permission to write everything he said and then asked his permission to turn it into a song. And Adam wrote beautiful music to it. It's just. It's like a documentary. And this is the place the album starts in.
- [26:35]
Aviv
It's. There's a song titled Shalom Sister, which means hello and goodbye. 342 days. We don't have to explain that Too Much to Return Home is one of my favorites from it.
- [26:50]
Rachel
Xfresto is not just the experience of the kibbutzim, but it's also the experience of the hostages and how much there were songs there for them and how much we missed them. And there were songs there for the soldiers, for their loss of innocence in this horrible war. Right. It was kind of the story of everyone, not just the first moments, but the whole 21 month. Right. Everyone who was scarred, everyone who has suffered, everyone who has triumphed, everyone who has tried. Right.
- [27:20]
Aya Korem
I told Adam when we were working on this album, which was a huge privilege for us because it meant we can go inside the studio, close the door, and then only be with everything that's beautiful and just shut everything out and be consumed with music and everything that's good and beautiful in this world. And I remember we talked about the fact that every other album we put out was about the way we are feeling. Let's say I'm writing a love song that's about how I'm feeling at the moment. But this is the first album we are writing and composing for people who are feeling the exact same thing that we're feeling in the exact same time. And that's just so powerful for us as artists trying to encapsulate that. The only thing I think giving us strength and power and in these last 21 months is the fact that we are in this together and you feel that as an artist as well.
- [28:32]
Aviv
So I'm going to just deploy the prerogative of the podcast host and ask for from that album to come home where the first verse reads along the path behind the house at the edge of a worn out hill the scent of oil on my hands Eucalyptus in my hair after all these years together in the end I was left with myself. The streets are empty in the evening but you're always in them.
- [31:03]
Aya Korem
Rash.
- [32:40]
Aviv
That has become a ballad of longing Longing to return. It ends with. It's already late, Almost tomorrow. I want to come home. Thank you so much. I guess we're. We're starting to wind down here. There's an aspect of your lives that I think is really interesting to talk about the experience of this very strange period in Israeli history. You're both parents, which makes sense because you're married and they're kids that you share and you live in Yafo, in Jaffa, in. In a town that is Arab Jewish, it's part of the Tel Aviv municipality, and your kids go to a joint Arab Jewish school. And you are big and longtime believers in coexistence and have a deep, you know, concern for the future for Israel's minorities. I hesitate to use the word. You might even be considered a little bit toward the left of the political spectrum.
- [33:43]
Adam Ben Amitai
How dare you?
- [33:44]
Aviv
I, I just ruined it all for.
- [33:48]
Aya Korem
And.
- [33:50]
Aviv
And yet you have gone through this time like everyone else on left, on right, not just, not just with a sense of, of unity and sharing of this experience with everyone from deep across, you know, religious boundaries and I would even say ethnic boundaries and, and political divides. But I've really been a voice for that kind of unity in this time. And I didn't, I mean, I meant it to be a little bit funny, but not really because you really are very much in that world. You very, your kids are learning Arabic in school with Arab friends in their class, and that's not normal. Very few Arab families send their kids to schools with Jewish kids. Very few Jewish families send their kids to the language divide. There's a whole separate Arabic language school system and Hebrew language school system. And if anyone suggests, you know, dismantling them and unifying everybody, then everybody screams racism. Because the right to have your kids grow in that separate distinct culture is part of what it means in Israel having your own holiday. Right. So you really are part of, I would even hesitate to say it, and I don't want to impose this on you, but almost a movement to say no, actually we need much more shared life. And you see what's happening in Gaza to Gazans, and you see a lot more of this discourse than just what we can talk about right now, because right now we're talking about the Israeli experience. I just want to just put that out there. What has this been like for you and what has this been like for you as parents and what has this been like for you? I would say the most extreme moment of this war, just because I happen to, we happen to be friends and I happen to also follow your social media. So I also happen to know that the 12 day war with Iran caught you in London and then you had to get home.
- [35:41]
Rachel
Yeah.
- [35:42]
Aviv
And flights and the airport was closed, you had to swim. And so from that perspective of parents, from the perspective of people who care across many divides, I, I, I don't know if more intensely, but more actionably than most people. What have these 21 months been? And tell us that cool story about, you know, the whole train to a boat, to a plane to a boat kind of getting home in the middle of a war. What was that like?
- [36:13]
Aya Korem
I think, first of all, raising our kids in Jaffa is a very unique experience. And for me, it's something that I can't really imagine my life without now that I've experienced it. It seems strange to live in a town that's only Jewish or a town that's only Arab, which is many of the places I'm used to. I grew up in Nazareth, so I think you get to see the whole picture, which is really unique because there were a few months in this war that my brother was a soldier in Gaza, and I have friends that have relatives that live in Gaza, they're actual cousins live in Gaza. And it doesn't get more complicated than that. But I think that the majority of people who live in Jaffa are people who want to find a way to live together. And they go to extreme lengths to put the effort and to be considerate of one another, because there's no one, absolutely no one who understand the Jews need to stay in the place where we belong to than the Arabs who actually live here together with us. They feel the same connection to this land, and this is their only home. And when you live together, you get a chance to see it in its basic simplicity of facts of life. And these are times that our kids get to be kids together. If you take out the parts of the sirens and running to the shelter, and they get to be kids together with Arab children. And for the parents, it's just keeping it all, you know, very simple for them. And it's. It's a kind of effort that we can unify around no matter what the differences are in politics.
- [38:29]
Aviv
As the Gaza war is happening, the Arab families, the parents and the Jewish parents, you're all in WhatsApp, right? Yeah, because every class in has to have six WhatsApp group. And you're trying to communicate with people whose cousins are Gazans fleeing the Israeli, essentially war, the war effort. And that's a thing where everyone's just focused on the kids taking care of the kids together.
- [38:56]
Aya Korem
You don't want to talk politics. It doesn't come at a time like this.
- [38:59]
Adam Ben Amitai
It's too painful, I don't think. It's just not wanting to talk about the painful subjects. So we don't fight. It's also because everybody kind of gets it the same way. I think there's no huge divide. I don't feel anyway, that there's like this huge elephant in the room that you can't speak about. Everybody knows what's going on and kind of agrees that that's What I feel in Jaffa, I mean, no one wants no one to suffer, and everybody wants Hamas out. So I don't feel like it's even this. How is it possible for you all to get along?
- [39:42]
Aviv
That's actually possible.
- [39:43]
Adam Ben Amitai
We're all like, it doesn't matter you're Jewish or Arab if you have your heads, relatively speaking, screwed up. Screw screwed.
- [39:51]
Aviv
How do you say it? Screwed on right, Screwed down right. So good euphemism, good news.
- [39:59]
Adam Ben Amitai
People I found in our neighborhood pretty kind of have the same take on the situation, which is a very different take from the take that.
- [40:10]
Aviv
Which is a dramatic thing to say, because from the Jewish side, it means a real focus on Palestinians, and from the Arab side, it also means a sense that really, Hamas is not the future of Gaza, which. So both sides are much closer to the other side than what you would.
- [40:25]
Adam Ben Amitai
Think if you would watch the news.
- [40:27]
Aviv
Right?
- [40:28]
Adam Ben Amitai
It's like, yeah, no one. No one wants no one to suffer. And everybody wants Hamas out. And.
- [40:36]
Aviv
Tell us the story of coming back from London in the middle of a war. I. I gotta say, you know, very few missiles hit the Jerusalem area. A lot of missiles hit Tel Aviv, the Tel Aviv metropolitan area. And you live in the heart of it. And that was. Must have been terrifying. We reached out and said, you know, send the kids to us, but they were at their grandparents that were friends and all that. But that. I mean, I was terrified. So you then started this mission of getting back at all costs. What was that?
- [41:03]
Adam Ben Amitai
Yeah, I mean, it was the same. And now that I think of it, it's the same kind of structure, like on what we talked about on the day of the 7th of October, because, like, the morning the war started, I was like, this is horrible. What's going on?
- [41:18]
Aviv
She always knows if it's.
- [41:19]
Adam Ben Amitai
Yeah, yeah. And I was like, oh, come on. It's with be from that. Come on, don't make a big deal of it, Adam. Fed up.
- [41:29]
Aya Korem
I don't want to. I don't want it. To stay in London and book us tickets to Le Miserable.
- [41:35]
Rachel
Yeah, I was like.
- [41:36]
Aya Korem
Like, are you crazy?
- [41:37]
Adam Ben Amitai
No. Okay, so the thing is, we wait.
- [41:39]
Rachel
And this is while your children are in Tel Aviv.
- [41:41]
Adam Ben Amitai
Okay, so we.
- [41:42]
Aviv
We would also have done that. No.
- [41:46]
Adam Ben Amitai
So the situation was this. Aya booked us a flight to London for my birthday as a surprise. We were three days just having a good time, and our parents took care of the kids. And then the work broke out, and I was like, okay, so you're telling me we can't go home? And our kids are with my parents, and they can't do anything about it.
- [42:09]
Aviv
So let's see a show.
- [42:10]
Adam Ben Amitai
Yeah. It's like, is this my dream come true right now?
- [42:15]
Aviv
And I said, geopolitics are not going to keep me away.
- [42:19]
Adam Ben Amitai
She.
- [42:19]
Aviv
Yeah, the whole collected armies of the world.
- [42:21]
Adam Ben Amitai
Yeah.
- [42:22]
Aya Korem
For Adam's defense, I have to say this is. This is a conversation we had before the. The first missile hit Tel Aviv. And this is like when we don't really have a clear understanding of what's about to happen. We know that Israel attacked in Iran, which is huge, but nobody knows what's next.
- [42:44]
Adam Ben Amitai
And the moment the first missile hit, that was like, oh, this is a whole different kind of thing.
- [42:52]
Aya Korem
And I basically did what everyone who has kids in Israel did at the same time, which is go on five different Facebook groups of skippers and captains of boats and five WhatsApp groups, and started to look for someone who could take us from Cyprus to Israel, which is a thing that people did around the seventh. It's so funny to think about people trying to get back to a war zone and paying so much money and putting up so much effort just trying to get back to a war zone.
- [43:31]
Aviv
Yeah, it's Israeli.
- [43:34]
Rachel
Yeah. Very Israeli. It wasn't just you was. What were the number? 60,000 people? More 70,000 people. I mean, and even those might be low. Right. Of people just streaming back towards the ballistic missiles.
- [43:48]
Aviv
Right, Right.
- [43:50]
Adam Ben Amitai
No flights in the marina in Cyprus kind of boarding the boat, and people were trying to find spots. Just walking around the marina and asking skippers, can you take me to Israel?
- [44:04]
Aya Korem
Were so lovely. They were Israeli people just trying to help others and saying, I'm so sorry, I'm already booked.
- [44:10]
Adam Ben Amitai
I'm already booked.
- [44:11]
Aya Korem
Please talk to my friend.
- [44:13]
Adam Ben Amitai
Just people walking around trying to get home to where all the missiles are falling.
- [44:18]
Aviv
But yeah, yeah. I want to. To wind down with a question that we have to ask after. After all the. The drama and the pathos and the sadness and the. And. And it's. It's been. It's been a. It's been a couple of years now. Those are some strange years.
- [44:40]
Rachel
Maybe now it's the time to end with the hope.
- [44:42]
Aya Korem
Right, so.
- [44:43]
Aviv
Exactly. So you. You know, most of your music is. Is fun and it's funny, and it's about having uncomfortable conversations with your mother and going on on dates and taking too much time to put on makeup. I'm sorry to do this in public. You guys are fun and funny and the special kind of funny that's kind of sarcastic and a little bit mean, which is like really like, like fun, funny, not like. And you nevertheless can produce these anthems of resilience and hope. I want to end with the story that we started with, which is this apartment in Batya. We have no idea who these people are, but this photograph of an apartment in Batya hit by an Iranian missile, where they put up this huge banner that's drawn by hand that says, what is what remains? Only love, which is your most famous love song that you will tell us a little bit about where it comes from and then we'll hear it and that'll sing us out.
- [45:52]
Adam Ben Amitai
Well, two of our best friends got married, so they had a big wedding and we wanted to give them something special. Plus we're musicians, so money wasn't to your poor.
- [46:04]
Aviv
Yeah, right.
- [46:06]
Adam Ben Amitai
So we hoped giving, writing them a song might kind of get us off the hook with the check. It didn't, it didn't work. But we did write the song and I, I wrote the lyrics, I composed the melody.
- [46:24]
Aya Korem
I remember singing this, this song. One of our first concerts after the 7th of October was in a unit. There's a special unit in the IDF that's basically their responsibility is to go to the families of wounded and killed soldiers and tell them the news. They're the people who are knocking on the door at 4am and this is the unit that was unfortunately so busy in these first few weeks after the seventh, and they asked for a concert and we went there and gave one and we tried to keep it light and fun because these people, you know, they deal with the absolute worst. And you had like young soldiers who are just in charge of the logistics. And you have the older ones, 40 and 50 years old, volunteers that they're in charge of the actual delivering of the news. And we sang them this song and it was just so, so, so special for us, knowing that we are there with them and we can't help in any other way. This is the only way we know how. So we sing this song and they sing with us and it's. And it's so, so, so special.
- [47:54]
Aviv
What's fun about the song? I'm just going to give a tiny bit translation bit just before it starts. The song is about all kinds of things going wrong, but what's left Only love an old horse End of the race the last go around I would once go and sing when the city was small and I've already seen fall people falling apart we knew to continue, carry on but we were young then, you know, What? Everything is sick, everything breaks, everything airs, everything comes to an end. Only love. That's the only thing that's left when everything else breaks down.
- [48:25]
Aya Korem
Sa.
- [48:54]
Aviv
Foreign.
- [50:12]
Adam Ben Amitai
Father.
- [52:37]
Aviv
I. I think our length, our love language is debating government policy.
- [52:43]
Rachel
There sounds so much better. So much better. It's good that we don't share ours right?
- [52:48]
Aviv
In public.
- [52:49]
Rachel
Yes, it's much better that way. I wanted to end just maybe, just first of all, thank you. Thank you so much for taking the time and for sharing something that, that. That we love so much. Khavib and I grew up as. What is important to say. I think your. Your first hits were. Were when we were soldiers, right? We're all about the same age.
- [53:11]
Aviv
We promised ourselves we wouldn't like just fan over them. That was.
- [53:14]
Rachel
We did. But. But it's. But it's. Now it's gratitude. We can do it.
- [53:17]
Aviv
What are they going to do about it now? Right?
- [53:18]
Rachel
They're stuck. We can edit it out afterwards. And, and we're. I guess we're all about the same age, right? We're all in our early to mid-40s.
- [53:29]
Aviv
Early 20s, early 20s.
- [53:31]
Rachel
And that means that we are in essence children of the second Intifada, right? We came of age during the bus bombings. And everything that we have known has been the peace doesn't work, right? The peace negotiations end in just. In rivers of blood. We've been in an endless conflict, maybe first as soldiers and then as adults, then as parents trying to eke out normalcy in a, in a. In a non normal world. And now for the first time that I can remember, right, since Maybe I was 11, when Rabin was assassinated, for the first time there's talk perhaps not of peace, but of expanding the Abraham Accords of a world right, where we could travel, we could go to vacation in Lebanon, we could see the archaeological wonders of Iran. Maybe, maybe the Middle east that we were born to is not the Middle east, right? That we will leave our children. Maybe it'll be something that is more open. Peace is a loaded word. But maybe it'll be a place of cooperation, right? A place of stability, a place of prosperity. And maybe that stands on the horizon and that tentative optimism, right? As we come out of this most.
- [54:46]
Aviv
Difficult period, our mission is to open that window that transforms Israelis from cartoons and somebody else's morality play into real people and all their complexity.
- [54:58]
Adam Ben Amitai
I just want. This will probably be the first episode of Ask Khabib. Anything that I'm not going to listen to. You don't listen to your own playing no way. No.
- [55:10]
Aviv
Thank you for joining us and thank you to the Patreon community, which helps us do what we do. Feel free to join patreon.com asklevanything and we'll see you in the next episode.