The newest chapter of the Jewish story is told in song

At the end of the hit musical “Hamilton,” there is a song whose lyrics continue to resonate with me: “Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?” Alexander Hamilton remained in the shadow of the more prominent and famous founding fathers, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. His story only gained popularity thanks to the creative genius of Lin-Manuel Miranda: he brought an unknown story to life by reframing a periphery character, using contemporary music, drama, and characters. Besides the brilliance of the production itself, what Miranda did was demonstrate the power of a story.

Our legacies depend on who keeps our stories alive. When my daughter’s best friend was killed in Gaza, she and her friends, stunned at the news, sat around our kitchen table attempting to compose a eulogy for him, and struggling to bear witness to his essence in a few sentences. She asked: “How will we go on? How will we ever be the same?” I told her: “This is now your story.” There was the story of before her friend was and now there is the story of after his death. My daughter and her friends were now the keepers of his story. Even when pain seems unbearable, bereaved family and friends derive enormous comfort when others bear witness to their loved one’s story, as we all have witnessed over the last 10 months.

Stories define us. They shape us and endow us with identity. They help us answer the most central questions of existence: Who are we, where do we come from, and what do we live for? Stories provide ways of imposing meaning on what could otherwise feel like an arbitrary existence. This is true for the nation as well as the individual: Judaism is a story-telling religion. The Torah, more than a book of law or theology, is a book of stories. It is the most authentic form of identity.

And we recipients of the Torah make choices of how we tell our story. One such choice was the Book of Deuteronomy (Devarim), the final book of the Torah, which we begin reading this week. Devarim is Moshe’s storytelling to future generations – retelling events that the previous books of the Torah have already recounted. In some stories, he empathizes; others, he omit. Throughout, he conveys his viewpoint in recounting the events himself.

Deuteronomy is Moshe’s swan song, his parting message to the people of Israel on the cusp of a new chapter. The people will soon need to battle enemies and overcome unprecedented challenges. Moshe provides them with ammunition — not guns and chariots, but a story. In so doing, he not only pivoted to help them navigate unchartered waters, but stood at the top of the mountain and directed the people’s eyes to heaven with an illuminating script of who they were and where they were going.

Winston Churchill made some courageous decisions as wartime prime minister, but his legacy lies in the way he lifted morale and generated an ethic of national responsibility just through telling a story. Long before social media, he understood the power of narrative to mobilize the minds and hearts of a crowd.

The current war Israel is fighting has suffered from many failures, one of the greatest of which is the failure of the echelons of leadership to provide an effective narrative.

On October 7^th, we lived the story of how the first democratic sovereign Jewish state set up to protect its citizens from a “never again” reality came crashing down. Perhaps even more than the vital military and political responses, what the people needed in the cataclysm was a way to frame events that in turn would help them pivot from tragedy to triumph, from victimhood to action, from despair to hope.

Unexpectedly, it was US President Joe Biden who reminded the Jewish people of their story. On October 10th, just three days after the worst massacre the Jewish people have known since the Holocaust, he recalled his visit to a precarious Israel before the Yom Kippur War, and how Golda Meir had reassured him, “’Don’t worry, Senator Biden. We have a secret weapon here in Israel’ — my word this is what she said — ‘We have no place else to go.’” We can criticize our American allies for many things over the last 10 months, but we cannot forget that Biden was the first to evoke a sense of hope and remind us of our strength and resilience.

Ten months on and our elected leaders have not engaged in telling the national story. . Instead, a response has seeped into the national consciousness. Into the chasm of despair, fear, vulnerability and shock, Israeli artists have birthed a flurry of unprecedented creativity. Much the like the rabbi-poets in centuries past, whose words are eternalized in much of our liturgical prayer, today’s poets are the Israel singers, coming from across the religious and political spectrum, who seamlessly weave ancient words with modern sensibilities. Their lyrics and melodies have become the panacea to the nation’s bleeding heart.

An example: Hanan Ben Ari’s “Moledet” – Homeland – is a love song to the land of Israel. It blends the opposing sentiments of rupture and hope, faithfulness and betrayal, history and present in a way only poetry can: “So I sing to you an ancient song, I remain faithful to you always…. You will always be my homeland, even on the edge of the abyss, even in hell (Gehinom) itself, you are the garden of Eden.”

Some songs are shockingly visceral, cataloguing the experiences of survivors of the Nova massacre, such as Noam’s song (produced by Ashkenazi and Cohen). Recounting the experience of hiding in a bomb shelter, he sings: “I won’t ever forget the guy who prayed to God and his blood then splattered on my face…. At night I still have nightmares, but no one will take the smile from my face.” Simultaneously cathartic and earth-shattering, the song leads the listener through the singer’s experience, as he tries to process the events of that day.

In many songs, there are overt theological footprints, such as Choref 23 (Winter 23) by Odeya and Izi, whose composition is more theological treatise than rap:

I call my father and he is not there
With sorrow, it is a million times harder to believe
That there is God in the cemeteries.

These songs join a continuum of theological protest that began with biblical characters as far back as Abraham, Jeremiah, and Job, continuing through the centuries — prominently in post-Holocaust literature of Elie Wiesel, Primo Levi, and Zvi Kolitz.

Another moving song that emerged in the wake of the war is Lilmod la–uf (Learn to Fly) by “Akiva.” In contrast to the militaristic tone of songs like Charbo Darbo (by Ness ve-Stilla), it is more nuanced and obfuscated. It tells a complex story and asks difficult questions: “Another child in the world dies, how crazy. Is it really worth it? If only I knew what I wanted.” The chorus of single opposing words falling — rising, straight, bent, swimming, floating, learning to fly, seeing a bit of heaven — evokes a web of emotions felt in our souls.

These songs are an inventory of the differing perspectives of this war. Some are visceral and profoundly personal in their imagery and sentiment, while others offer a broader perspective, but each provides a cathartic framework, a lens through which to tell a story that the mind struggles to believe.

Eventually, we will process the events of the last 10 months (and counting) and October 7th will be integrated into our long, tumultuous national narrative. And it will be told, not in great speeches of would-be Churchills, but, as “Hamilton” highlights a lesser known figure, the music of this time tells the stories of the less known figures who are really the central piece of our national narrative.

These women and men do not shout through political megaphones, nor are they featured in the tabloids, they are our legacy. They are, in the words of the title track sung by Hatikva 6, Giborei Al — superheroes: “There is a model here who is a paramedic. There is an electrician here who is a MAG shooter. There is Yoni, a gifted saxophone player, who is first and foremost a warrior in Sayeret Matkal (elite unit)…. And it doesn’t matter if we are in the middle of living life or in the middle of a soccer game, everyone will drop everything in a second if the flag calls out to them. This is not a parallel universe, not a Marvel reel. These are the real heroes of our people. They are the story of our people.”

Today we do not have a Moshe to lead us through the wilderness and frame our story, placing the people and God as the primary actors. But we do have a nation of individuals who have surrendered everything to the mission of their people, to answer the national call of the hour.

I have often been asked, mostly by Israelis, why my family made aliyah. I explain that I wanted to be part of my people’s story. I didn’t want to watch from the sidelines and for me that meant living here in our ancient-modern land. I long felt that story was one of triumph –a Jewish state after 2,000 years. Today, that story is also one of tragedy, and one day, I will tell the story of this war to my grandchildren. I will integrate the the despair and the hope into our history. And we will listen to the songs of the hour of that story and we will remember the heroes who believed in our narrative, and died for us to tell it.