_edited_edited.png)
Sing a Song of Peace
- Rabbi Sarah Weissman
- Apr 24
- 5 min read
April 24, 2026
In the summer of 1998, right before my senior year in high school, my sister and I went to Israel with NFTY, the Reform youth movement. We spent six weeks touring the country and spent some time with Israeli teens. One night, sitting around a campfire, we decided to sing American and Israeli songs for each other. The American teens had trouble coming up with a song we all knew the words to – I think we ended up trying to sing “Lean on Me,” before realizing we only knew the chorus. The Israelis sang “Shir LaShalom,” the song we just sang tonight. I remember thinking how much more mature and sophisticated the Israeli teens seemed, singing a serious song with such emotion. Plus, they all knew the words.
“Shir LaShalom” was written years before any of those teens were born, in 1969, by Yaakov Rotblit. It was set to music by Yair Rosenblum and first performed by the group he directed, Lehakat Nachal, a musical ensemble of the IDF. You heard that right: “Shir LaShalom,” “Song for Peace,” was first performed by the military for the military, two years after the Six-Day War. It became a popular Israeli song even amid controversy; there were those who thought the song was “defeatist.” Later, it became associated with political groups who advocated for a negotiated peace with the Palestinians, most famously Shalom Achshav, Peace Now. But it will forever be remembered as the song sung at a peace rally on November 4, 1995, minutes before Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated. A copy of the song’s lyrics, stained with his blood, was found in his jacket pocket. Three years after Rabin’s assassination, a group of Israeli teens sang “Shir LaShalom” for their American visitors with total sincerity, not a hint of irony. We still believed that peace was possible.
It’s difficult to imagine a similar scene today. Today’s teenagers only know Israel under the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu, who’s been Prime Minister for over 15 of the last 17 years. During that time, support for a two-state solution has dropped from 63% of Jewish Israelis in 2009 to 21% in 2024. Today’s teens have seen the number of settlements in the West Bank increase significantly, along with the number of Israelis who support annexation of the West Bank – 42% of Jewish Israelis currently support “annexation of the West Bank without equal rights for Palestinians.” Today’s Israeli teens have lived through the trauma of October 7 and the wars that have followed, and know that in just a few years, they will be in the military themselves. So I wouldn’t be surprised if Israeli teens don’t sing “Shir LaShalom” anymore. They probably consider it foolish or naive. After all, a recent survey showed that two-thirds of Jewish Israelis currently believe that peace with their Palestinian neighbors will never be achieved.
Given the events of the past two years, if not the past 78 years, it is, perhaps, understandable why so many Israelis have lost faith in the possibility of peace. But at the risk of sounding ridiculous or just chutzpadik, I want to say to Israel – to Israel’s leadership, to Israel’s citizens, and to the People of Israel (that is, all of us): we can’t give up on peace. We can’t give up on peace because the Land of Israel itself demands better. Eretz Yisrael is actually supposed to be allergic to idolatry and transgression. As we read in Leviticus, “[T]he land became defiled; and I called it to account for its iniquity, and the land spewed out its inhabitants. But you must keep My laws and My rules… and let not the land spew you out for defiling it, as it spewed out the nation that came before you” (Lev. 18:24-28). In the Torah, the Israelites aren’t given the land with no strings attached. Living in Eretz Yisrael is contingent upon obeying God’s commandments.
We also can’t give up on peace in Israel because the people living there – Jews and Palestinians and everyone else – deserve better. Fighting war after war after war – is unbearable. Even for the victors, it is physically, financially, emotionally, and spiritually exhausting. It is also futile. The only war that would end the conflict “once and for all” is one that leaves no survivors. And it’s not just for its inhabitants that Israel needs peace. We can’t give up on peace because the mission of the State of Israel demands it. War in Israel makes Jews inside and outside the country less safe. Israel simply cannot live up to its aspirations of being a safe haven for the Jewish People if it doesn’t find a way to make peace with the Palestinians. We can’t give up on peace because our lives depend on it.
And finally, we can’t give up on peace because the identity, the purpose, the very soul of the Jewish People depends on it. We were given our mission long ago, as the Prophet Isaiah said:
And [God] has said:
“It is too little that you should be My servant
In that I raise up the tribes of Jacob
And restore the survivors of Israel:
I will also make you a light of nations,
That My salvation may reach the ends of the earth” (Isa. 49:6).
It is too little – it is not enough – for the Jewish People to live only for ourselves, or even only for our special relationship with God. We are called to be l’or goyim, a light to the nations of the world, shining so that all can see God’s redemptive power. And what will we see when that day of redemption comes?
“In the days to come, the Mount of the Eternal’s House shall stand firm above the mountains and tower above the hills; and all the nations shall gaze on it with joy…. For instruction shall come forth from Zion, the word of the Eternal from Jerusalem. God will judge among the nations and arbitrate for the many peoples, and they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, and they shall study war no more” (Isa. 2:2-4).
The day the Jewish People give up on peace is the day we cease to be the Jewish People. So we must still say, “Lift your eyes with hope, not through the rifles’ sights, sing a song for love and not for wars. Don’t say the day will come; bring on that day, because it is not a dream, and in all the city squares, cheer only for peace.
.לכן רק שירו שיר לשלום
So just sing a song for peace.”
_________________________________________________________________________
