They finally returned home, after two years of silence, nightmares and waiting. In Tel Aviv, on Hostages Square, which over the months has become the beating heart of hope and national pain, where we pray, where we hope, where we wait, thousands of Israelis discovered the faces of the now ex-hostages, emaciated, silhouettes wavering, but standing.
The crowd cries and sings with one voice: Habayta (“ at home “). This song, born well before the war, has taken on the appearance of an unofficial anthem over the months. In December 2023, when the first hostage exchange agreement had failed, a thousand artists sang it on the stage of the Caesarea theater, surrounded by bereaved families. Their voices already carried the hope of a return that History, today, has finally fulfilled.
“Home, home, it’s time to go/From the mountains, from foreign fields/The day is fading and there’s no sign/Until the dawn, I pray for your sake/Caught in the manacles of fear/I hear footsteps/Home, home/For we still haven’t received/What we’ve been promised for so long.” »
An ancient story
Since 2006, Habayta has established itself as the song of return, the one that we sing like a prayer when all that remains is hope. It had accompanied the names of the hostages Gilad Shalit, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, whose capture had ignited the Second Lebanon War. However, this song was not written for them. Its history is much older.
In the early 1980s, Yardena Arazi, one of the great voices of Israeli pop, sang in front of soldiers in the First Lebanon War. Amid the noise, she came close to death several times. That evening, running out of songs, she improvised and sang Shir LaShalom (“ the song for peace ), learned during his military service. This pacifist song became the distant prelude to Habayta.
Shaken by what she had seen on the front, Yardena Arazi confided her dismay to lyricist Ehud Manor, a faithful friend and writing companion. He too bore the scars of war: his brother had died there, and from this wound was born Ein Li Eretz Acheret (“ I don’t have any other country ), an emblematic song in Israel whose text was quoted even in the Knesset hemicycle.
The lyrics tell the very idea of home, of homeland
From their dialogue was born Habayta. Manor wrote the words, and they both found the melody in a forgotten tune, Mananawhich means “ Tomorrow “. The song became a huge popular hit and catapulted Arazi to national icon status. Voted singer of the year in 1984, she became the voice of a generation, even if Habayta also earned him death threats from pro-war activists.
There is, in this song, a form of striking majesty from the first notes, especially when an orchestra accompanies it. The lyrics talk about the very idea of home, of homeland. The return “ at home » that she evokes is not only geographical. He speaks of a return to what is most essential to Israel: its founding values, the return to the Promised Land. And, by extension, the Law of Return, which makes the Hebrew State a refuge for all the Jews of the world.
In 2003, Ehud Manor took up his pen again. Twenty years after the First Lebanon War, he added new words: “The years pass, the years pick/And we still haven’t found comfort/The generations come and go, with wet cheeks/Cry a salty tear/Like a call: Home, home, it’s time to return/From the end of the roads, from a fight between brothers/Towards this same place in our hearts/At home, at home, the light has not gone out/Towards dreams without walls/Towards a night without pain/until dawn, I pray for your good/My homeland, guard, guard/The fragments of an Israeli dream. »
Last January, former minister Yossi Beilin launched a bold idea: making Habayta the new national anthem, instead of Hatikvahwhich means “ Hope » in Hebrew. In this song of return, he saw the symbol of an Israel united by the same fight: that of the return of the hostages and, beyond that, that of an entire country finding, step by step, its way home.
