KIRYAT GAT, ISRAEL – After more than a year and four months in captivity in Gaza, some freed hostages are sharing tales of horror as well as testimonies of how they stayed alive.
Less than two weeks after his release from Hamas captivity, Israeli-American, Sagui Dekel-Chen recorded a song, “Keren Shemesh”, which is Hebrew for “sunbeam” or “ray of sunshine.”
“I’ll put on songs that you love. I’ll give you a day to relax,” Sagui and other singers sang, with his wife and daughters together in the living room.
“I’m not a singer, I’m a father who sings,” Sagui says in the video. “Music drew me my whole life, and especially the year and a half that I was in captivity. I was singing in my head all day long.”
This singing dad recently only met his third daughter, Shahar Mazal, who is now 15 months old, after his release.
In his video, Sagui says he would sing this song to his first two daughters, Bari and Gali, before being kidnapped, and that he kept singing it to them even during his time in captivity.
Sagui’s father, Jonathan Dekel-Chen says his son has always had an interest in music.
“He’s not a musician, but a musical guy for sure,” Jonathan told CBN News. “He wrote a number of songs that will be actually performed at some point. They’re now being put to music, and at some point, he will be performing them.”
Jonathan adds singing this particular song, written by Benaia Barabi, is Sagui’s way of giving back.
“He had an urge to give hope – to give hope, to Israelis who support the cause of the hostages, which is well over 80% of our population in Israel. And to somehow, perhaps give hope to, as he said in that video, to those hostages who he left behind,” Jonathan said.
In the video, Sagui speaks to the hostages:
“Your soul needs a strong body. Your body needs a strong soul. Wipe (away) your tears, go to a corner, and sing with me.”
The Dekel-Chen family shares a history with music and helping others. In 2014, Jonathan, Sagui, his brother, Etai, and a young woman, Tamar Kedem Siman Tov, established the Bikurim Youth Village for the Arts.
“We created together a national village for the arts in Israel, a residential boarding school, whose purpose was to offer and provide to highly talented, highly motivated high school aged kids in Israel, from the vast part of the Israeli population where the have nots, in the geographic and socioeconomic peripheries, (could) get a really great arts education. 16:48>
On October 7th, Hamas terrorists murdered Tamar, her husband Johnny and their three small children in their home in Kibbutz Nir Oz. That led to her former students’ desire to honor Tamar’s memory and sing songs on behalf of Sagui and the other hostages. When they chose to sing Keren Shemesh, Sagui decided to join them.
“The musicians that you see in it playing with him and singing are all alumni of that school. They created something called the Tamari Project, and they’ve already produced, I’d say, about a dozen songs, original songs, among them – and some people that weren’t on the screen – and it’s dedicated – this project – to the memory of Tamar Kedem Siman Tov. She was also the first director of the youth village, and in hope for the release of hostages,” Jonathan explained.
“So, it was kind of a perfect fit. And it’s the way that Sagui is communicating. His message is going to be more through art than straightforward media or things like that.”
