When the spotlight hit Ester Rada on her international tour, in the audience the BDS activists who came in protest fell silent. “Their brains exploded,” says the Israeli singer of Ethiopian origin. “They thought to themselves, ‘I also like black people, so what am I going to do? How do I protest here?’”
In a new episode of “Song of Hope”, Rada talks about the music that holds together her Israeli, Jewish and Ethiopian identity, and performs the song that accompanies her during the war, “Because of My Brothers and Friends”, a tune born from a meeting between Shlomo Carlebach and Nina Simon.
This verse from Tehilim (122:8), the Book of Psalms, sung with music composed and performed by Shlomo Carlebach, became a symbol of the battle for freedom fought for the Jews behind the Iron Curtain in the 1970’s. Carlebach even performed in Russia, which "earned" him close surveillance by the KGB. During the Yom Kippur War, Carlebach conducted performances for IDF soldiers and sang this song as a prayer for their safety.
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