Award-winning singer brings message of hope to Birthright

Over 6,000 young Jews from all over the world flocked to Israel's cultural and business metropolis last week for Birthright Israel's Tel Aviv Week. During this annual event, participants learn about the city's role in shaping modern Israeli society and its impact on the international community.

This year, Birthright Israel celebrated reaching 600,000 participants since its inception in 1999. This symbolic number -- identical to the number of adult Israelite men who left Egypt in the biblical Exodus, as well as the Jewish population of Israel when its independence was declared in 1948 -- reflects the scale and significance of Birthright Israel and its influence on how Diaspora Jews connect with Israel and their own Jewish identity.

Although Birthright has been criticized in some circles for an alleged right-wing political bias and for failing to expose participants to the complexities of the Arab-Israeli conflict, among the programs offered to Birthright participants during Tel Aviv Week was a music workshop by the award-winning Canadian-Israeli singer-songwriter and peace activist Yael Deckelbaum.

Speaking to a group of about 60 Birthright participants at Tel Aviv's OzenBar Club, Deckelbaum recounted the story of her musical career, interspersed with live and recorded music.

Born in Jerusalem in 1979, Deckelbaum grew up in a musical family as the daughter of Canadian-immigrant dentist and banjo player David Deckelbaum, a pioneer on the local English-language folk music scene.

At 16, she was named best young singer-songwriter in Israel. Two years later, she entered one of the IDF's prestigious military entertainment troupes.

In 1999, she performed with the Israel Philharmonic in a tribute to the Beatles conducted by Sir George Martin. Also on the bill was legendary Israeli rocker Shlomo Artzi, whom Deckelbaum describes to her young Birthright audience as "the Israeli Bruce Springsteen."

Deckelbaum has a knack for making the unfamiliar relatable. She refers to the rock group Mashina as "the Israeli Guns N' Roses" and folk rock singer Chava Alberstein as "the Israeli Joan Baez."

Artzi invited Deckelbaum to sing a duet on his next album, a major break and "a great privilege for a 20-year-old."

In 2004, Deckelbaum, together with friends Dana Adini and Karolina, formed the vocal trio Habanot Nechama. (Though she doesn't say so, consider them "the Israeli Dixie Chicks.") The group's eponymous debut album, featuring the hauntingly beautiful hit song "So Far," quickly went platinum.

Deckelbaum enjoyed further success with two solo albums, and toured for two years with Mashina.

But, in her early 30s, at the height of her professional success, something bothered her.

Deckelbaum realized that her lifelong ambitions for fame, public adulation and money were not her own, but were tied to her father's dream of having her become an international star. And while she was respected, famous and successful in Israel, she was not going to become the international star that her father had hoped for.

But then she realized that while worldwide fame had passed her by, so too had the heavy toll that such a meteoric rise often takes on young artists.

"I realized," she notes, almost wistfully, "that I wasn't going to join the 27 Club," the long list of musicians who died tragically at the age of 27, such as Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, and Amy Winehouse. This realization inspired the song "Twenty Seven," which she sang for the Birthright group.

It also inspired Deckelbaum to seek a source of deeper fulfilment than the business of music -- as opposed to music itself -- was providing. The first step was to disconnect from "the money people" and connect directly with her fans. Thus, her third solo album was crowdfunded through Headstart, a Kickstarter-style site for Israeli entrepreneurs.

As Deckelbaum's girlfriend filmed her in 2014 singing in her backyard for a music clip that would accompany the Headstart campaign, an air-raid siren began to sound. Operation Protective Edge had begun, and missiles were heading toward Tel Aviv. Undeterred and defiant, Deckelbaum continued singing, and that is how the clip was uploaded, showing Israel's complex, conflict-ridden reality, warts and all.

This spurred Deckelbaum to ask more questions about conflicts inside and outside the country, and how to move toward a better future. Together with social activist Daphni Leef, Deckelbaum set out on a 45-day tour to play for, speak with, and most importantly, listen to Israelis throughout the country. What she discovered was that she had many prejudices about people different from herself, such as religious Jews, right-wing Jews, settlers, and Arabs -- and that, peeling away their superficial differences, many people share the same hopes and dreams for themselves and their families. She found a deep, untapped potential for building bridges between communities and working together on common goals.

From this was born the March of Hope, a two-week event in October 2016 for which Deckelbaum served as artistic director. The event, sponsored by the NGO Women Wage Peace, saw tens of thousands of women and men marching throughout Israel and the Palestinian territories for peace. The March of Hope succeeded in recruiting participants from a broad swath of the Israeli and Palestinian populations -- left, right and center, secular and religious, including settlers.

"Every woman who was present in that march will never be the same again," Deckelbaum said.

Deckelbaum specifically mentioned the participation of Michal Fruman, the daughter-in-law of the late Rabbi Menachem Fruman, the rabbi of Tekoa who was known for his close contacts with Palestinian religious leaders. Months before the march, Michal Fruman was wounded in a terrorist attack in Tekoa.

The March of Hope also gained support from abroad, including the participation of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Leymah Gbowee, who was among the leaders of the nonviolent women's protests that brought an end to the Liberian Civil War in 2003. The "Prayer of the Mothers" video from the march, which has been seen by millions throughout the world, features a message from Gbowee, as well as the music of Deckelbaum, Palestinian-Israeli singers Lubna Salame and Miriam Tukan, the Rana Choir, and many other contributors.

Asked why she supports Birthright, Deckelbaum answered, "You are the future of the world. And any place that lets me bring this message of peace, of hope, of positive change ... especially with young people like you, I see it as an opportunity."

The writer was a guest of Birthright Israel.

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