Maya Belsitzman and Matan Ephrat: Shir Mishmar (“Guarding Song”)

Musicians Maya Belsitzman and Matan Ephrat are a couple in life, as well as a musical duo. Belsitzman is a cellist and singer; Ephrat is a drummer; and together they create their own extremely unique sound.

October 7 caught the couple with one little girl on their lap and a baby on the way. Being pregnant, Belsitzman knew she had to do everything in order to not fall apart because of the war. Like so many other musicians, she knew that music would be her savior – and hopefully her audience’s as well.

Belsitzman and Ephrat found themselves returning again and again to Shir Mishmar (“Guarding Song”), which is the song they chose to perform for this episode. The words were written by poet, playwright, journalist, and translator Nathan Alterman – one of the most revered writers of modern Hebrew poetry. Alterman wrote this poem out of worry for his daughter, Tirza Atar – a talented, albeit deeply troubled, poet in her own right.

In the early 1960s, when she was very young, Atar married actor Oded Kotler. The two went to New York together, to study theatre, where Atar suffered a nervous breakdown. Her protective father flew to New York after her and after a while brought her back to Israel. That’s when he wrote this poem to her, to ease her pain and cheer her up. Some years later, an abbreviated version of this poem was set to music by Sasha Argov, for the stage musical Chagigat Kaitz (“Summer Celebration”) which the two had created for the Cameri Theater in Tel Aviv. The song has since become a classic and has been performed and recorded by many different artists.  

In the poem, Nathan Alterman implores his daughter to take care of herself. The same plea is sung now in the context of the current war. Maya Belsitzman sings the song to herself, because she knows that for the sake of her daughter, of the new baby, of her partner