After 6-month music hiatus, Tuval Haim releases ode to younger brother killed in Gaza

Drummer Tuval Haim never considered composing or singing before October 7, 2023.

On that day, his brother, Yotam Haim, was taken hostage from Kibbutz Kfar Aza by rampaging Hamas terrorists. In all, 251 people in southern Israel were kidnapped to the Gaza Strip and some 1,200 brutally slaughtered. Two months later, on December 15, Haim, along with fellow hostages Alon Shamriz and Samer Talalka, was accidentally killed by IDF fire in Gaza.

But last spring, about six months after Haim, Shamriz and Talalka were accidentally shot in the Shejaiya neighborhood of Gaza City, Tuval Haim began writing lyrics and composing.

“It helps; it’s my way to tell my story, my pain,” said Haim, a professional drummer who performs regularly with Netta Barzilai, Ivri Lider and his own band, Pulkes.

Haim released two songs in the last week, part of an album he’s been working on in the wake of his brother’s death and the tragedy of October 7.

Last week, almost exactly one year after Yotam Haim’s death, his family gathered at his burial place in the Kibbutz Gvulot cemetery, in the southern community where the Haim siblings were born and spent most of their childhood and where their grandmother and other family members still live.

It was there, by his brother’s grave, that Haim and veteran musician Berry Sakharov, one of his partners in this musical venture, played and sang one of Haim’s new songs, “Wings of Spirit,” set to the words of Rabbi Abraham Kook, the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of pre-state Israel.

“It was very, very hard on Friday, I pretty much fell apart,” said Haim. “The cemetery isn’t where I find Yotam, but the reality just greets you there.”

Haim said he’s still surprised that he’s recorded something that hearkens from the religious world and speaks of beliefs and spirituality.

“My mom talks about our bubble of the kibbutz and how religion wasn’t ours,” said Haim. “But all those barriers just fell… These are words that belong to anyone.”

It was last May or June that Haim began thinking about music again, after not touching the drums or keyboard for six months following his brother’s death.

Haim, who excelled in music as a high schooler and spent a year at the Rimon School of Music in Ramat Hasharon, began composing his latest musical works at the piano, inspired by the Balkan and klezmer sounds that he plays with his band, Pulkes.

It was his producer who suggested that he sing the words himself.

“I wouldn’t have believed it before October 7, but it feels like it makes the most sense,” said Haim. “I don’t have anything left to fear. Yotam ran from his captors, and from his perspective, he returned home. I take strength from his superpowers.”

As he composed the songs, Haim reached out to Sakharov, one of many Israeli musicians who stretched themselves thin in the last year, performing at funerals, shivas, hospitals and army bases. Knowing Sakharov’s connection to Jewish texts in music, he asked if he would perform with him.

“It’s Yotam’s story and how he helps all of us,” said Haim. “All of a sudden, I’m not blocked from those kinds of words. They’re words that belong to anyone and their meaning means something to me now. We say that Yotam didn’t fall to his death, he rose.”

The younger of the two brothers, the red-haired Yotam Haim was also a drummer and living in the young people’s neighborhood of Kfar Aza when he was taken hostage on October 7.

On December 15, he emerged shirtless from a building along with fellow Israelis Shamriz and Talalka, waving a makeshift white flag. The three were shot dead by IDF troops who mistakenly identified them as a threat.

Haim’s parents, Iris and Raviv, immediately reacted publicly, saying that they bore no anger toward the military for his death and meeting with the young soldiers involved in the incident so that they could tell them it wasn’t their fault.

“Yotam went free. He left Hamas captivity,” said Iris Haim at the time. “Even if he didn’t make it to Israel alive, he was freed, and therefore he beat Hamas. And this was also important for me to tell the soldiers.”

“Maybe, I can even say, maybe, that Yotam chose deep inside him, that it would not be Hamas that killed him,” Iris suggested on TV. “It gives us some sort of closure.”

Haim released a second song on the anniversary of his brother’s death, “Dancing in the Sky,” sung with Echo, a singer who had briefly met Yotam, with a clip that features a redheaded actor playing the role of Yotam and reimagines the scene of the Supernova rave near Kibbutz Re’im where 364 revelers were among those massacred on October 7.

The song, released as a single, is also dedicated to Yuval and Noam Rabia, brothers and friends of Yotam and Tuval who were killed on October 7 at the Psyduck Festival, another music festival that took place near Kibbutz Nirim.

A drawing by Yuval Rabia was used by Haim as the cover for the single and
the song is dedicated to all the victims and survivors of Supernova, the broader October 7 attack, and all those who lived the pain of the war.

Haim is working on another batch of songs for this debut album and expects to release one more single this winter before the album is released in March or April.

“If you had told me before October 7 that I would compose an album and sing on it, I would’ve laughed at you,” said Haim. “But it feels like the thing that makes the most sense. The reality is so different, and I don’t have to fear anything after what happened.”