'God has become a pop star': Crowd in Tel Aviv stadium sings 'God always loves me' as air raid siren sounds
What do you do when the siren sounds in a huge stadium packed with 8,000 people?
With no hope of evacuation, or even the space to lie on the ground, Israeli concert attendees were trapped with no chance of escape. The crowd responded, instead, with a spontaneous outburst of singing.
The song of choice that erupted from within the stadium was “Tamid Ohev Oti” [God] always loves me.
The incredible moment was captured by several who shared it on social media, including the president and CEO of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews Yael Eckstein and American-Israeli tech business blogger Hillel Fuld.
Thousands of Israelis had defied the danger of the ballistic attack to attend an open-air concert during the Hanukkah holiday. There have been almost daily attacks from the Houthi terror group in Yemen, one of which left a huge crater in a Jaffa residential area – in a playground, no less.
The entire incident at the concert was an image of Israeli resilience under fire on seven fronts. While they waited to see whether the missile would be intercepted overhead, and hoped that no shrapnel would fall, the crowd turned to God in song, expressing faith with no other option available.
The song is a No. 1 hit in Israel and is rapidly becoming something of a national anthem. The lyrics express confidence in God’s unconditional love and care, and the hope that things will get better. It’s a song of faith and hope in God, and the fact that it’s become such a runaway hit speaks volumes about the zeitgeist here in Israel.
The Mizrahi artist Sasson Shaulov released the song in September and it has reached the top spot on almost every platform, garnering millions of views on YouTube. The Jerusalem Post describes it as “an amalgam of Mizrahi, Hasidic, and Mediterranean influences,” adding that, “the song transcends all of those genres to become quintessentially Israeli.”
The well-loved anthem holds out the hope of blessing: “There will be livelihood, wealth, matches for the unmarried, and complete health,” and essentially, “A beautiful, happy life, year after year.”
Musicologist David Peretz, lecturer on Israeli music at Sapir Academic College in Sderot, said the song “landed at a moment in which the cultural norms have shifted in the country.”
He explained, “In the past few years, with the rise of a type of music that could be called ‘religious pop,’ God has become a pop star.”
“It’s perfectly clear that not everybody who’s singing along to it today actually is a believer,” Peretz added, “but it doesn’t hurt. I’m sure that the song is a guilty pleasure of north Tel Avivians. They may not believe that ‘Hashem loves me,’ but [they feel] ‘Let me just enjoy this for a minute... because what else is there to do?’”
As Israelis are turning to God in song, we can pray that hearts genuinely look to Him to find answers and deliverance in this time of war. The light is shining in the darkness.
Jo Elizabeth has a great interest in politics and cultural developments, studying Social Policy for her first degree and gaining a Masters in Jewish Philosophy from Haifa University, but she loves to write about the Bible and its primary subject, the God of Israel. As a writer, Jo spends her time between the UK and Jerusalem, Israel.
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