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Hostage ribbons, music, and art become symbols of hope and unity, connecting people worldwide to Israel’s fight to rebuild after tragedy.
By SABRINA SOFFER JANUARY 21, 2025 01:03
ALON OHEL’S family scattered yellow pianos adorned with stickers of hostages and fallen Israeli soldiers across cities, with the words ‘You are not alone’ perched above the piano.
(photo credit: Sabrina Soffer)
As I was immersed in the contents on the shelves of a small bookstore in Budapest, the faint sound of a familiar tune reached my ears. It was the theme from Schindler’s List. The music, however, was not coming from inside the store but from a nearby street corner. A middle-aged violinist wearing a knitted beanie was playing to the rhythm of history. The melody transitioned to “Hatikvah,” Israel’s national anthem. Those harmonies were much more than music. The Hungarian streets, once soaked in wartime atrocities – where Jews were torn from their homes and sent to Auschwitz or lined up and shot on the banks of the Danube – now hummed with the defiance of a people who have perpetually persevered and prospered.
This winter, my travels took me from Budapest and Warsaw to Israel. Everywhere, I felt as though I were walking through a chorus of memories. In every corner, whether among Europeans, Israelis, or foreigners, the echoes of October 7 and the Holocaust were present. One message rang clear: Healing from trauma and coping with our nightmares requires transforming crisis into creativity.
In some of Israel’s public squares, one can spot a yellow piano with an empty bench. At one such piano in Hostages Square in Tel Aviv, I couldn’t resist playing “Mi Sheberach,” the prayer for the Israeli Defense Forces. A young girl soon replaced me, tinkering a delicate, solemn melody. Those evocative tunes mourned the victims of October 7, cried for the return of the hostages, and blessed the young, bright Israeli soldiers who are risking their lives in Operation Swords of Iron – a war for humanity. That lyrical moment was also much more than music: It was a shared expression of sorrow and yearning. But even in those moments of grief, there was still music.
IN THE movie Oppenheimer, physicist Niels Bohr asks Oppenheimer if he could “hear the music,” alluding to the fact that his passion for quantum mechanics is something that should be internalized, rather than merely understood. We, too, need to “hear the music,” and feel it within, to dance again. It might not make sense to dance in these harrowing times, but as long as the music plays, we must carry on in high spirits.
Just like each melody, every one of those pianos has stories behind it. Among others, they carry the memory of 22-year-old Alon Ohel, taken hostage at the Supernova music festival. In his honor, Alon’s family scattered yellow pianos adorned with stickers of hostages and fallen IDF soldiers across Israeli cities, inviting others to speak to him and the hostages through music – Alon’s language of love. With each note, messages of remembrance and resilience echo the words perched above the piano: “You are not alone.”
Universal language
The language of music – and of art in the broader sense – speaks to all of humanity. Through its various mediums, art nurtures the soul by sparking the act of creation. Creation provides purpose, shaping thought and being. Amid distress, finding a way to contribute becomes a means of survival, strengthening mental health. Just as Holocaust victims expressed their pain through poetry and drawings, so too, Israelis have channeled their grief through art since October 7. Despite enduring persecution, the people of Israel continually channel creativity in the act of building life.
Israel moves forward with a collective consciousness that employs remembrance to rededicate itself to its values, personifying an eternal love for life. At a park in Ra’anana, a display of student paintings, reflecting on the events of October 7, carries a unified message to rebuild what was lost, to make the deserts bloom, and to nurture invaluable human bonds.
IN NETIV Ha’asara, along the northern Gaza border, I met the father of Tal Keren, a 17-year-old high school student who was tragically murdered while surfing at Zikim Beach on that dark Shabbat dawn. Tal’s father was wearing a necklace with a surfboard pendant strung on a simple thread – the same necklace that a prominent Jewish leader, who I later found out had been one of Tal’s teachers, had gifted me just months earlier.
In the wake of the atrocities that occurred that October morning, Tal’s friends and fellow beachgoers began creating these necklaces, using whatever resources were at hand. Now distributed around the world, they are symbols commemorating the surfers who were murdered that day. Akin to the popular dog tags worn by many thousands globally, they are much more than simple necklaces.
We often forget that it is the small things that support a nation’s spirit, such as the photos of October 7 victims and Israeli hostages that are present everywhere you turn, from the halls at Ben-Gurion Airport to banners hanging from highways; the empty chairs that many Israelis have been accustomed to place at their Shabbat and holiday tables and in public parks; bomb shelters painted in vibrant colors that have now been covered with loving messages, photos, and memorials representing the vibrancy of those we have lost; yellow ribbons tied to the door handles of nearly every Israeli car, that flutter in the wind.
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Then there is that pile of 1,560 burnt vehicles that resides in the Tkuma lot, known as “The Car Wall,” where vehicles evacuated from the roads after the terrorist attacks are kept – originally for insurance companies to attempt to identify them so that their owners could be compensated. For over three weeks, the cars were vacuumed daily, from sunrise to sunset, to collect the remains of those who had been burned to ashes, so they could be given a proper Jewish burial.
Tkuma has now become a memorial site. Behind each car is a family and the history of a journey – as there are behind all those shoes that memorialize the Holocaust on the banks of the Danube River or even at Auschwitz or Majdanek. Cars and shoes symbolize lives taken and sacredly remembered, or lives saved and backed by tales of incredible courage.
The post-October 7 world may feel like an empty desert, but, like the stacked shelves of the bookstore in Budapest, it is filled with an oasis of artisanship and legacy. The Nova site, completely ravaged on that Simchat Torah morning, is filled with posters containing stories amounting to what would be thousands of pages in the history of a people.
Those people, the people of Israel, are remembered through their passions and aspirations, their favorite sports and songs, and the slogans that commemorate their lives: “The proudest Jew there ever was.” “Don’t go, ray of sunshine.” “Laugh, smile, fight, dream.” Amid the wreckage, the Jewish soul continues to light up the world.
THIS POSITIVE face of today’s Israel is its defiance. The traditional pre-Shabbat Thursday nights at Jerusalem’s beloved Mahane Yehuda market are still booming. Shoulder-to-shoulder, parties across Israel carry on with blasting music and high spirits.
Such spirits manifest in deep discussion, too. While the political environment has grown tremendously polarized, conversations about current affairs with taxi drivers, dentists, or complete strangers are a daily reality. Whether over coffee and knafeh in the Druze village of Osifiya or on the plane from Europe to Israel, there is a thread that ties the Jewish nation together.
This thread has manifested as a yellow ribbon after October 7. It is a prevailing symbol not only in Israel but around the world. In Budapest and Warsaw, yellow ribbons are tied to trees, street poles, and Holocaust memorials. The Hebrew language, too, both spoken and inscribed, is present at every corner.
The yellow ribbon ties together people who care about humanity in a way that no war can destroy. Many of those who crowded around places bearing the yellow ribbon visited the Dohany Synagogue in Budapest or chose to spend their days at the extensive exhibits of the POLIN Jewish Museum in Warsaw were not even Jewish. Their curiosity about Jewish culture and history and thus, their homage to the people of Israel, communicates what one young Polish-Jewish lady remarked: “There is no Polish history without Jewish history.” Her words speak for the history of almost every nation.
Jewish history teaches us that the people of Israel are not defined by what happens to them but by how they respond. It is through our responses to these trials that we find and develop ourselves. Yellow is also the color of hope. While yearning, especially for our loved ones – victims, hostages, and soldiers – often fills us with sadness, Jewish tradition teaches that yearning enables us to connect with fundamental love.
We can transform the fire we feel in our souls into flames that propel us to care, connect, and create rays of light. The intimacy between the people of Israel, whether living in the Jewish state or in the Diaspora, and of all Israeli citizens: Druze, Arab, Christian, or Jewish, is a glimmer of light.
The writer is a senior at George Washington University.
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