Saturday, October 25, 2014

Song For Eli

To listen to Song For Eli, click here




I had a friend who went to war
A man of peace and not the sword
They brought him home one day
A bullet in his chest
May his memory be blessed

In the name of all the winds
In the name of all his friends
From the east down to the west
May his memory be blessed

Then take this song as your bequest
May your spirit lie at rest
And from the east down to the west
May your memory be blessed




This was my first song on and for the piano. I wrote it about two years after Eli was blown up in an ambush in a bus taking milhouimnikim - Israeli reservists - to the Beqaa valley in Lebanon in 1982. The men who killed him were PLO fighters in the pay of the Syrians. The song took a long time, because I didn’t know who to blame for his death. The PLO I exonerated, since their cause was just and Eli had been sent into battle as a soldier to kill them. Their Syrian paymasters I exonerated, because they were themselves in the pay of the Soviet Union; just as I exonerated the Soviets, who were simply the victims of their own propaganda. The makers of the bullet I exonerated, since their aim wasn’t death but profit; God had declared Himself immune from prosecution; the driver of the ambushed lorry was only obeying orders; and War itself was far too abstract a phenomenon to bear the blame for Man's stupidities. In the end I had no one but Eli himself to accuse, since everyone else had been vindicated, and all men protest their innocence.












If you would like to include "Song For Eli" in your repertoire, either for paid public performance or to record for commercial purposes, or if you would like to re-use the recordings attached to this blog-page for commercial purposes, contact argaman@theargamanpress.com. 
Use of this song, and/or these recordings, for non-commercial purposes, is not simply permitted but invited.


Words and music by David Prashker
Copyright © 2014 David Prashker
All rights reserved
The Argaman Press

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