Michal Greenglick, sister of Shaul Greenglick, who fell in action in Gaza, spoke to Israel National News - Arutz Sheva about her brother, life after his falling in Gaza, her family’s approach to happiness and her music career.
Michal tells how, “The family was notified the same day. Shauli was in Gaza for two months, from the beginning. He came home twice or three times during the time that he was there. He was leading a unit with his friend Shay Shamriz and they fell together in combat. In the morning, Tuesday December 26, they fell at 9:30 and they came to tell us at 3:30, the same day, two months after he went into Gaza. When they came to notify us, the first thing I said, ‘My father went shopping this morning and bought a lot of groceries.’ The kitchen was a mess, so I took one of the three officers who came, a girl, and I told her, ‘come with me to the kitchen,’ and we just cleaned the kitchen. I knew that people are going to come, so the kitchen should be cleaned up.”
Michal sadly says that, “I think my mother understood the minute it happened, because when you're a mother, you just know. For two months she knew that every day he's fighting in Gaza, so the possibility of this happening was on the table. When she came, I saw that realization on her face, that moment that it happened, for a second, and she fell on the floor and she cried and rushed to phone people and to my father, who was in the office, and they had to get to him too. My brothers were all over. My husband was in Gaza, and my brother-in-law was in Gaza, and my younger brother was in Gaza. So three more members of the family were in Gaza. But I think that it takes so much time to realize that it really happened, because Shauli was traveling in South America after he finished his service and he wasn't home for half a year. So now it's half a year and he should be back. I mean, we don't really get it that he's never coming back.”
So many soldiers have sadly been killed in battle in Gaza and each one touches our heart in a different way, but Shauli really conquered the nation because he was already known as a singer, a semi celebrity. Michal explains that, “Our parents raised us to be a happy family. We're laughing. My parents had their own struggles in life. My father lost his father in a car accident when he was 14. He was a bus driver. Twenty years ago my mom had severe breast cancer that almost killed her. She managed to recover and I feel like my parents say that, ‘life trains you with everything that happens, to choose to live and go on with your life and be happy, or to choose to just lean back and say, ‘I can't do this anymore.’”
Watch: Michal singing with a recording of Shauli from the music show on Keshet 12
Michal reveals that, “On the second day of the Shiva mourning period, my father said a sentence that a few days later became a sticker and we made 6,000 of these. It says, ‘In his death he commanded us to enjoy life,’ with a picture of Shauli laughing at my wedding a year ago. This is the motto. This is how my parents lived their lives and that's how they raised us. I think music is the way that we find to speak with each other, through music, through the sounds, through the words and the lyrics of the songs that we choose to sing. Everything gets a different meaning right now and it's crazy how songs that are not connected to the war fit exactly to what we feel. But my parents say and we all say, ‘you have to choose to go this path.’ it's not like, ‘We're a happy family, so it goes without saying.’ It's hard work to choose to live every day. This morning I struggled to get out of bed, because when you wake up in the morning and you say, “Oh, this is my reality. My brother is never coming back and I have to live with it the whole day. It's like 16 hours of being awake, that I have to deal with the fact that my younger brother will never come back. How do you even want to get up in the morning, but if you choose to live your life and think about the essence of life and make families and be happy. Today I spoke with each of my brothers five times. I have two brothers and one sister. I talked to my sister, I think, every hour of the day today, because we have a lot of things going on, but we just choose to stick together and to be happy. It doesn't mean that we don't have sad and unbearable moments, because it happens, like when I wake up in the morning and I call my mom and she cries on the phone that she couldn't sleep all night. It's sad. I mean it happens. We’re not super women and we don't have superhero powers, but we just do our best.”
Shauli was a lively person, his life was full of music and fun. Michal admits that, “He wanted to fight this war. It was his choice. I think that seeing him choose to go to the war and to leave the singing contest, in which he was ranked very high, everybody loved him and everyone really saw a big future for him, it was the first time that I saw him in his center knowing what's right and what's wrong. He didn't even hesitate for a minute and the commander that was with him, Shay Shamriz, told him, ‘Shauli, get out of the war. Go live your dream. Go fulfill your destiny. Go be a singer. Everybody believes in you.’ Shauli said, ‘you're insulting me. Do you think I'm going to leave the soldiers and the country to fight without me? This is where I have to be and it was so obvious for him what he had to choose. I think seeing him like that gave us so much pride and happiness to know that he was in his right place. If Shauli came into the room right now, first of all the room would be full of light, not because he was bald, but just because of his stunning blue eyes.”
Michal expresses that, “If I didn’t have the faith in God that there's a bigger plan above me, I would literally not get out of bed, because I know that Shauli loved life. He lived life to the fullest. That's no cliché, he just did it. This can also make you feel like if he loved to live so much, how sad it is that he’s gone. I go to these dark places of thinking once a week and then I say, ‘okay, if there's God and if there's a bigger plan that I don't understand every little detail of it, I choose to believe that he is in a better place, that he has fulfilled his destiny in this world and he is now up there with God, with all the soldiers that died and the people that were murdered in the Holocaust, and thousands and thousands of people that died on Kiddush Hashem, so he's in a better place and he has his next role up there. But there are times that I think that he was the most living person I know and that's why I think it's also really hard to understand that he's never coming back.”
Michal states that she, “Has been a singer since I was 12. I learned music professionally in high school. Shauli was different from me. He wasn't a professional, but he was just the most amazing singer. So we were on very different paths. I was very conservative, doing it step by step and he says, ‘I'm going to be a singer,’ opens the door and goes out to be a singer. You have songs, ‘No, but I'm going to be a singer.’ So I was very hesitant about taking this path, because you know what they say about musicians, ‘How do you go to the grocery store? How do you have money? How can you pay rent? How can you raise children?’ Shauli didn't have all these blocks on the way. He just wanted to live his dream and when Shauli fell, during the Shiva there was a minute where I thought, ‘Why am I letting go of my real dreams, because of fears? Why can't I be as courageous as him and just go for it. So I quit my job as an organizational consultant. I'm very conservative, like very on track with what my parents wanted me to do, not because my parents wanted me to do it, because I was going on the safe side.”
Michal describes how, “The war really opened my mind. I was looking narrow, now I look differently and I say, ‘Girls my age are now being held hostage by Hamas. Now as we speak, girls my age were murdered while trying to celebrate life at a party or just sitting at home. Girls and boys my age are fighting now in Gaza and risking their lives for a bigger cause. Why don't I just chase my dreams? I feel like this war, and also the loss of Shauli, really focused me on what's life all about. Just to fulfill your destiny and I feel like my destiny right now in this war, and on October 9th I was thinking what is my role in this war. This was after two days of feeling who I am. I don't know who I am. What's my role in this war. Am I Hannah Szenes, am I Mordechai Anielewicz, am I Miriam the Prophet? Who am I? What is my role in this world? History pages are being written right now. What is my role? I feel like I understand that speaking, singing, trying to give strength and get strength from every audience I go to, now makes me feel so much alive. It also gets me through the day, because when I do something that I connect to 100% and feel like I'm on a mission, it goes both ways. The audience gives me power, I give power. We give hope to each other. We cry together, but we stick together and this togetherness makes me understand that there's a future for the Jewish people in Israel and all over the world, by uniting. I feel like if the music that I bring and the words that I bring can even help one person go through these hard times, then this is my mission.”
On the war, Hamas, Michal says that, “My parents say that because we're a bereaved family, because we lost our brother, it doesn't mean that our opinion is different from all the other families that their son is at risk of dying. So I'm not smarter than anyone also because my parents didn't give Shauli to the country, Shauli chose. Every soldier that goes into the war has the ability to choose. Even a soldier who is not in reserve duty, can say, ‘I don't want to do it,’ and go to jail and not go to Gaza. Every single soldier that goes into the war chooses. So my parents didn't sacrifice their son. He chose to go and he knew the consequences of going into Gaza; you can live and you can die. Knowing this, he chose to go in. So firstly, it was his decision and his decision only. We are proud of him, and we stick with him. We were proud of him then and we're proud of him now for choosing that, because that's how we grew up. My grandmother who survived the Holocaust and could have only dreamed when she was in Auschwitz and her mother was in Auschwitz, about soldiers wearing Israeli IDF uniforms, saving lives. I have goosebumps when I think about it, because that's the bigger picture. Secondly, I think that every war has bad things that happen, also about the country and the nation and military actions that happen. I have no clue what is happening now. My only goal right now is to take my reserve duty, what I feel, I don't have uniform. My mic is my weapon and if I can do good here and in London and in America and in Barcelona and in Spain and wherever I go, to try and help the people get hope and get more strength because this war is going to be long. We don't know when it's going to end. I have no clue what the monsters of Hamas are planning. I know that we are in good hands, because the Jewish people, it's not about the 76 years that we are here. So looking in the Bible and looking in the Jewish history books, we have sacrificed so much, but we still live. I'm 150% positive that no matter what will happen today, tomorrow, next year, in a few months, the Jewish people are here. It's a bigger picture. It's a longer story. We're here to stay and we will do whatever it takes to stay on this land and to be united and to believe that we are here for a reason.”