In Jerusalem, young composers partner with bereaved families to create musical memories

Inbal Cohen-Or never knew Orr Katz, 20, a soldier from Maale Adumim who fell in battle in November 2024 in Gaza.

But when she learned that he loved the electronic sound of Odea, she started listening to the DJ’s tracks to create “Come in a Dream,” the song made in his memory as part of the Jerusalem-based Youth Creating Memory project.

“I wanted it to be in the style he loved, what inspired him,” said Cohen-Or.

The multi-faceted musical project aims to remember and memorialize those lost in war and battle. The program is an initiative of the Jerusalem chapter of the Tarbut Movement — a nationwide organization of artists, cultural advocates, and educators promoting social resilience through culture and art.

Two musicians and a poet work closely with bereaved families to produce and record a song about their loved one that is performed by a local youth ensemble.

The municipality-supported project came in the aftermath of the bloody Hamas onslaught of October 7, 2023, when some 1,200 civilians and the security personnel defending them were slaughtered by terrorists in southern Israel.

Following the massacre, Itamar Shochat, a musician studying at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, was looking for a way to help remember all those who were lost.

“We wanted to try and hold this huge loss after October 7, to offer some kind of solace,” said Shochat.

Shochat first reached out to the family of Cpt. Kfir Itzhak Franco, 22, a platoon commander who was killed on November 15, 2023, while battling Hamas in northern Gaza.

Franco’s mother gave Shochat a notebook of texts written by Franco while in mechina, a pre-army preparatory program. Shochat then turned to Avital Rolnik, a poet also from the Tarbut Movement, to help work the ideas into lyrics.

“We kept meeting with them, we tried all kinds of things on guitar, and eventually something came out that his mother loved,” said Shochat.

The song for Franco, “The Land is Still There,” was arranged and performed by a student band from Shacharit High School.

The project expanded to include other families, and Shochat now works with both Rolnik and Cohen-Or to compose, arrange, and record several songs each year in memory of those killed.

Each song features a youth ensemble from a different school in Jerusalem, whose members engage with the family’s story and arrange and perform the songs.

After every five songs are created and recorded, generally over the course of one school year, Shochat produces an EP, shorter than a full-length album.

The first album is titled “Beyond Time,” each song tracing the musical world of the bereaved family and their grieving process. It’s a short album with a range of musical genres, from Israeli rock and Hebrew song to a children’s choir, melodies, and liturgical poetry.

This year’s album includes “Beyond Time” in memory of Capt. Dekel Swissa; “Request” in memory of Dr. Eitan Menachem Neeman; “Speaking Openly from the Heart” in memory of Amit Cohen; “You Are There” in memory of Sgt. Hanan Drori and “Light” in memory of Neria Cohen.

“It feels like a vocation,” said Shochat. “They invite us into their living rooms and open their hearts, they cry in front of us, and I feel like it’s a place I can be in — it’s a privilege, and there’s something therapeutic about it for all of us.”

There was a lot of meaningful work involved in writing the song, said Adi Snir, whose brother, Amit Cohen, was killed along with his girlfriend, Norelle Manzuri, and her sister Roya in a field shelter at the Nova desert rave.

Cohen’s song, “To Speak With An Open Heart,” is one of several memorialization projects that the Cohen family is involved in to remember their son and brother, the third of the family’s four children.

“The song really reflects Amit. He was a very real, honest, and open person,” said Snir, the oldest sibling in her family.

 

After the song was arranged and sung by the choir at the Luria School, where Snir works as a homeroom teacher for fifth and sixth graders, it was added to the project’s Spotify playlist.

Now Snir keeps playing it for gatherings where she speaks about her younger brother. She’ll also play it when they gather at Amit’s grave in the Har Hamenuchot cemetery on Israeli Memorial Day, and again on October 7.

“The bereavement comes in waves — so when you hear something and connect to it, you’re in it,” she said. “We’ll be with Amit when the siren sounds; we’re closest to him there. And then we meet with friends and family and sit and eat together and tell stories about him.”

Cohen-Or, who also works with her own band, Tsuf Zohar Inbal, said she has developed an unusual kind of relationship with the bereaved families.

“They have their circle of fellow bereaved family members around them, and the professionals who envelop them,” she said. “And then I’m this young musician, and we create a kind of partnership. I’m working with families whose bereavement is very fresh, and I’m not there to hold them, but just to create something with them.”

The death of Michal Roi’s brother, Eitan Menachem Neeman, a reservist combat medic and senior pediatrician killed on October 9, was still very fresh when Cohen-Or began working with Neeman’s five older sisters.

“She just came with so much patience, and the song was so emotional,” said Roi, the third sister.

He was their 45-year-old little brother, a father of seven, and a senior pediatrician at Soroka Hospital in Beersheba.

“I listen to the song all the time, and wherever I speak, I have my audiences listen to it,” said Roi. “Tomorrow, when Memorial Day starts, it will be in my WhatsApp status. And then everyone can hear it and think about Eitan.”