In this episode of “Song of Hope”, contemporary singer-songwriter Alon Eder gives a personal and raw interpretation of a Shlomo Artzi classic – and describes how the war removed his last remaining layers of cynicism.
Alon Eder was born into a successful entertainment family; his father is guitarist Yehuda Eder, who was a member of leading rock bands “Tamouz” and “Doda” in the 1970s and 80s, and his mom is actress Miki Kam. For this project he somewhat surprisingly chose to sing Shlomo Artzi’s song Menagev Lach Et Ha’dmaot (“Wipe Your Tears”), from Artzi's double album Shnayim (“Two”), released in 1996.
Shlomo Artzi is one of the top singer-songwriters Israel has even known. With a career spanning six decades, he is one of the country’s most successful and influential artists and biggest stars. He is also of Alon Eder’s father’s generation, which explains why many of Artzi’s songs can be perceived today as macho and “mansplaining” – including this one. This made it difficult for Eder to choose it, but he maintains that in today’s context Menagev Lach Et Ha’dmaot can be perceived differently than perhaps Artzi originally intended. Eder explains in this episode that this song means something else when you imagine not a man saying to a woman that his job is to wipe her tears, but a child singing these words to its country. Nowadays it is all of our job to wipe the tears from the face of our weeping and broken homeland.
