When the spotlights lit up on Ester Rada during her international tour, BDS protesters who came to disrupt her show fell silent. “Their brains exploded,” she recalls. “They thought, I also love Black people, so what do I do? How do I protest here?”

In this episode of Song of Hope, Rada speaks ab...

“Hallelujah” became the song of the late field observer Roni Eshel. Her parents listened to it together when Roni was still in her mother’s womb. When Ran Danker arrived at Roni’s funeral, leaving his own one month old baby at home, he sang “Hallelujah” at the family’s request.
“I found myself si...

“It was strange for me that I have to clarify my position that I denounce murder and the horrible acts that happened on October 7,” says Valerie Hamaty. “To be in a place where you have to prove your innocence when you have done nothing wrong makes you wonder if you belong.”

Valerie Hamaty is a ...

Even when he fled with his wife and young daughters on October 7 from Or HaNer, the kibbutz he calls home in southern Israel, Jimbo J could not yet imagine the magnitude of the disaster unfolding around him. Only months later, when he drove through the quiet forests on his way back to the kibbutz...

With a little girl on her lap and a baby in her womb, musician Maya Belsitzman knew she had to do everything she could to avoid falling apart because of the war. She found herself returning again and again to “Shir Mishmar” (“Guarding Song”). Poet Nathan Alterman wrote this poem out of concern fo...

On October 7, “Your Song” by Dudi Bar David became “His Song,” the song of Staff Sergeant Omri Peretz, commander of a paratrooper squad who fell in the battle for Kibbutz Kissufim and who deeply loved the piece.
“When you play for parents who buried their son, and your song accompanied him on his...

“I remember the escape home. My legs gave out from fear, my muscles were not functioning. I was walking and shaking,” says Guy Mazig, recalling the kidnapping attempt he survived in Lod as a child. “He was probably a Muslim Arab who infiltrated Israel. He tried to drag me and a friend to an illeg...