Jimbo J: Nofel VeKam (“I Fall and Get Up”)

Omer Habron, known by his stage name Jimbo J, is an Israeli rapper, singer and songwriter who lives in kibbutz Or HaNer, located in the western part of the northern Negev, north of Sderot. When he fled from his home with his wife and two daughters – a toddler and a tiny baby – on October 7, he did not yet dare to imagine the magnitude of the disaster that was happening around him. It was the still forests he saw on the way home to the kibbutz a few months later, when he returned to fetch a microphone, that he started to grasp what actually took place there. The view reminded him too much of the horrible feeling of seeing the forests near Auschwitz at the age of 16 when on the traditional trip Israeli highschoolers take, visiting the concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during the Holocaust. Just like back then, now he couldn’t help but imagine the atrocities that had happened in those forests.

 

Kibbutz Or HaNer was evacuated in the days after October 7 along with the other kibbutzim and settlements in the area. Five months later, most of the Or HaNer community returned home, despite the trauma and the danger.

 

In the new episode of “Song of Hope”, Jimbo J talks about his return to the Gaza Envelope, and gives a beautiful and chilling performance of Nofel VeKam (“I Fall and Get Up”). The song is originally by Shabak Samech – Israel’s prime hip hop crew of the 90s. Although released in the year 2000, a few years after the assassination of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, this song still reflects a very different time – a time of hope for peace. This is a sentiment Jimbo J identifies with much more than with songs of mourning or songs of emerging victorious in a war. He finds it comforting to sing these words and remind himself that some day things might be different.