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 for his daughter, Tirza Atar, a gifted yet troubled poet in her own right.

In this episode of Song of Hope, Belsitzman and her partner Matan Ephrat give a deeply personal and immersive performance of Alterman’s poem. They speak about the desire to open closed rooms in the heart through music and about the comfort artistic creation can bring in painful times.