By Esti DeAngelis, Opinions Editor
One day in December 2023, Israel Defense Forces combat medic Ben Ronen climbed a hill in Gaza to get better reception. He sent his Spotify login information to a friend and asked him to post a song. The song, called “Eich Sarafti Gesher,” or “How I Burned a Bridge,” soon went viral in Israel. The production is sparse and the lyrics simple (translated from Hebrew):
“It happened again
I made a mistake
And there’s no going back
Again I said things
That I didn’t mean
They’re wrong
And how I burned a bridge
How I burned…”
The soft voice on the track belongs to Tamar Samet, who was killed at the Nova festival on October 7.
A year after her murder, I found myself researching Samet’s story. I learned that when Ronen, also a musician, was 17, he composed the melody for the song and played it only for his friend Samet, whom he said was the person he trusted most in the world. She told him it was the most beautiful melody he had ever written and that he should write lyrics to it. Two years later, he finally did, and the two of them realized they had something special and recorded the song. They never released it. Samet was killed not long after, at the young age of 20, while hiding in a bomb shelter near Nova. Ronen decided to release the song two months after her death.
He called it, “the souvenir I have from my best friend.”
I wish I had discovered the song earlier. In truth, I came across Samet’s picture, guitar in hand and curly blond hair in a bun atop her head, multiple times while scrolling through The Times of Israel’s “Those We Have Lost” page, and I was always drawn to it. But I never took the time to learn her story until October 2024. That was when I discovered how much we have in common.
She was killed at 20, the same age I am now. Samet, like me, was usually quiet, but she knew when to use her voice. We’ve both been deeply impacted by our experiences working with at-risk children or teenagers, Samet with an organization called HaGal Sheli, myself with one called Kfar Yeladim. Tamar lived and breathed music. So do I.
“Eich Sarafti Gesher” is the only song I can play on a pretty much infinite loop; I can listen to it over and over again without getting sick of it. I actually put it on to work on this article. It must have played fifteen times by now. There’s something so calming about it. I never met Samet, but the song feels so familiar, like some fuzzy article of clothing you’ve had all your life and never grow out of. Or like a secondhand sweater you pick up and suddenly cannot live without. Samet loved secondhand clothing.
The song exudes her essence, an essence I imagine the way her mother described it. “Tamar was able to be around people and to create around [her] circles of light,” she said. “Only later we found out how much love she created around her, and how many loved her, how she was a light for so many people.” I grasp onto this essence in the aftermath only, through her music, the thing she loved so much.
After learning Samet’s story and hearing her music, I began collecting other songs that help tell the story of the past year and a half. They’ve become a kind of soundtrack for me, allowing me to access not just the stories of those who died, but something essential of their lives. I think of “Shir Al Shir,” “A Song About Shir,” by Israeli singer Ohav, which commemorates Cpt. Shir Eilat. Eilat was the commander of the female observers on the Nahal Oz base, almost all of whom were either killed or kidnapped on October 7. She led her soldiers until her final moments, and, when five of them returned from captivity in January, her friends and family felt her mission was finally complete. “It’s over my angel,” wrote her sister Nir. “You can rest in peace. Your soldiers have returned.”
“Shir Al Shir” will always tell this story, a story that will continue to unfold through Eilat’s soldiers, Agam, Daniella, Karina, Liri and Naama. Because music has something infinitely adaptable in it. Its tone changes and it takes on new meanings over time, the sound waves morphing to glide over and embrace new chapters as they unfold.
I often regret that in the early months of the war I did not pay attention to the things going on the way I do now. Maybe it was all too overwhelming, but that’s not an excuse. I regret that the narrative in my head skips from October 7 to perhaps mid-2024. Music fills in small parts of this gap. On October 12, 2023, Staff Sgt. Adi Baruch was killed in a rocket attack on Sderot. She was a reservist and insisted on being drafted after October 7.
Not long after she was killed, a delegation of Chabad rabbis on a solidarity trip to Israel met her parents, who shared a poem that she had written that was discovered on her computer after her death. Among the rabbis there that day was Rabbi Ruvi New from Boca Raton, who decided to put the poem to music in a song called “Hashir Shel Adi,” “Adi’s Song.”
“And if one day I die before my time has come, I want you to celebrate life and do not grieve over my death,” wrote Baruch (translated from Hebrew). “That you wake up each morning with a smile and longing in your heart.” Baruch asked that her loved ones not waste a single moment and that they see the world for her. “And every once in a while, smile up to the clouds – I will be there.”
Her poem, set to music, brings her story into a present where she herself is no longer here. It invites me into her world, and I invite her into mine.
The soundtrack grows, and I both access grief that before was blocked off by my unfamiliarity with so many stories while also feeling parts of worlds that might otherwise be inaccessible. I listen to “Gaya,” a song written in memory of Gaya Halifa, who was killed at the Nova festival. A whole world opens up. I think about the heroism of Ben Shimoni, who was killed while rescuing Gaya and her best friend Romi Gonen, who was recently released from captivity, along with Ofir Tzarfati, who was killed and taken to Gaza and whose body was later recovered. It was Shimoni’s third rescue trip to and from Nova. Halifa loved music, and I think she would appreciate that a song exists as an access point to this story.
I listen to “Outside My Home,” a song performed by singer-songwriter Keren Peles and a group of children impacted by October 7, released on October 7, 2024, one year later. Among them are friends and captivity survivors Emily Hand and Hila Rotem-Shoshani, as well as Yuval and Adi Sharabi, nieces of recently released hostage Eli Sharabi, whose wife and two daughters were killed on October 7. The body of Yuval’s father Yossi remains in captivity. When they sang, they were still waiting for Eli to come home. Yael Yahalomi is also featured in the song. At the time she was still waiting for her father Ohad to return. Since then he has, but not alive; he was killed in captivity, but no one knew until just before his body came back. The song takes on these meanings retroactively.
The stories continue, and the music, beyond the temporality of life, swells around them…
Shimon Elkabets grieves his murdered daughter Sivan, writing the lyrics to “L’olam Lo Od,” “Never Again,” by Israeli rock band Avtipus. Singer Ohad Moskowitz and an acapella choir sing “Elokai Neshama” in honor of Yehuda Becher; a video of Becher singing this prayer in his car a few days before the Nova festival went viral after he was killed.
I learn Frédéric Chopin’s “Minute Waltz” on the piano and think of Maj. Tal Grushka, who was killed on his way to defend Kibbutz Kfar Aza on October 7. Channel 12 in Israel later uncovered footage of an interview he had given on the channel fifteen years earlier, as a ten-year-old piano prodigy preparing for a competition. The piece he played in the interview was this waltz.
I collect the music and the stories, and I come back to Samet. She sings of a finality, of irreversible mistakes and burned bridges. Death is like that too, and yet Samet reaches beyond her own to envelop everyone, those who knew her and those like me, who wish they had, in comforting song.
Music cannot fill the void, but it can reach out, touch it and compel our souls to carry the tune.