Tuesday, January 12, 2021

Shai Nehaisi - Tunis


A song that enters your heart and refuses to leave.

In Shai Nehaisi's words: My grandparents made Aliyah from Tunis in the 1960s. They were the last ones to come from their city because my grandfather was a Jewish Agency emissary and made sure that all the jews in his city immigrated safely to Israel. When they arrived in Israel with their seven children they were housed in a small three-room apartment in Netanya. Even though they experienced difficulties they never complained, they were always grateful for the right to live in the Holy Land. My grandmother belonged to a different generation, a generation of simplicity, human love, giving, innocent faith in God, and gratefulness for every small thing. My grandmother lived in that same old apartment until the day she died. The song "Tunis" tells her story and the story of an entire generation that is slowly disappearing from our country.

Tunis' sun shines
Hands join in prayer
In the silence of the house, this is how the day begins
Who is there with her?

Squeaks of a wobbly table
Knocks on a single mug
The doors of the house have for long been unopened
To voices

And there she sits in the same corner
And the kids are running around her again
Pots filled with love

The old apartment in the Aliyah housing
She looks out to the window, God give joy
Family

All of the pictures of tzadikim 
Memories in a bookcase
How he would sit with her
And bless at length

And there she sits in the same corner
And the kids are running around her again
Pots filled with love

The old apartment in the Aliyah housing
She looks out to the window, God give joy
Family

Tunis' sun has already set
Where are you, madam?

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