Singer and songwriter Hanan Ben Ari shared a personal post this week after a TikTok video circulated showing hundreds of people singing his song “Hashiveinu,” based on a verse from the Book of Eichah [Lamentations].
According to Ben Ari, the video - filmed in the narrow alleys of Jerusalem’s Nachlaot neighborhood - was particularly moving for him.
“I saw this video of ‘Hashiveinu,’ and it moved me deeply, and I want to explain why,” Ben Ari wrote. “I grew up in an environment where biblical verses were mainly sung, less personal emotion, to the point that at a certain stage my heart became full, even blocked, and I dismissed anything that resembled Hassidic music.”
He went on to describe a personal journey he has undergone in recent years. “I was looking for something new. A completely new Judaism, a completely new Israeli identity. I distanced myself from the verses in order to find myself. Then, in the past two years, something remarkable happened - I found myself within the verses. Maybe it’s because of the seventh [of October], maybe because the time had simply ripened. Somehow the resistance and cynicism were removed, and suddenly I am discovering these words in a different and new light. They speak to me in a deep way that is hard to explain.”
Ben Ari also recounted how he came to compose music for the verse, “Hashiveinu Hashem eilecha venashuva, chadesh yameinu kekedem” (“Return us to You, G-d, and we shall return; renew our days as of old”), which concludes the Book of Eichah, and how moved he was by the public response to the song.
“Melodies began arriving for various verses, including the verse that closes the Book of Eichah, the book of destruction,” he wrote. “And then to see this video on TikTok-how a song released only two months ago feels like an ancient melody, and how hundreds of people in the alleys of Nachlaot in Jerusalem are singing it together, tightly packed, from the heart: ‘Renew our days as of old’-that we should be new like we once were. Completely new and completely ancient. What a wondrous paradox. And what a wondrous and moving people.”