"Chamsa Chamsa" and "Don't Kvetch- Your Life is the Berries"
Images and Quips from Returned Captives
Alongside repeated requests for their privacy (they didn’t ask to be famous afterall), interviews, articles and posts have begun to be shared about the young women released recently from captivity. Next week I will share more of what we are seeing in Hebrew, and today I bring you a small sampling of things that have moved me deeply.
Hanan Ben Ari is one of Israel's most beloved singers, and his first hit was a song called “Our Life is the Berries”. It’s an upbeat song that lists one difficult life reality after the next “The boss is tough, the landlord is tough, the mortgage is sky-high…” and then tell us: “But we have no right at all to complain, everything is tfu chamsa* and thank G-d, for our life is the berries.”
This week Hanan told his audience in a concert that he’d had the merit of performing for the five surveillance soldiers before their release from the hospital, and they shared with him that they had a notebook where they wrote poems and songs to lift their spirits. One of these was a rewrite of “Berries”, and their new version kept the original’s rhyme and rhythm:
“You have no right at all to kvetch, you’re not in captivity so don’t make yourself a wretch. For you life is the berries.” (Or a more literal translation minus the rhyme: "You have no right at all to complain, you are not in captivity, so don't make yourself a pity case.")
Hanan also shared with the audience, with the approval of Liri Albag, that at the beginning of her captivity she was with two women from one of the kibbutzim whose children were not with them and they did not know what was happening to them.
One of the mothers asked Liri to sing them his song 'Amen For the Children' every night and every morning. These women were released in the first deal, and discovered that their children were healthy and safe.
* This phrase above tfu chamsa can't really be translated, but it means something like “no bad spirits”; it’s a kind of grandmother’s way of warding off bad energy with words. Literally, though, chamsa means “five”, and the symbol for chamsa is a five-fingered hand, which is the perfect segue to what I want next to bring…
Emily Damari’s hand-minus-two-fingers quickly became a symbol of defiance upon her release. I imagine you have seen the photo below and maybe even some of the posts/reactions to it.
One of the most moving is this drawing comparing Emily’s hand to the symbol the Cohanim make with their hands when they give the Priestly Blessing, created by Moshe Shapira, the father of Aner Shapria who died protecting others on October 7th.
And one you might not have seen is this, which moved me deeply even though I’m not much of a sports fan, and although this guy is probably famous here I don’t even know his name. But that upon scoring a goal he did this as a way of saying “Victory!” brought home to me just how deeply everyone who loves Israel was just so happy to see these girls home and how moved we all are by their unbelievable strength.
Please God we will continue to welcome home more and more captives, and God will bless and protect us.