Iraqis in Pajamas\u2019 new album is a tribute to the victims of the Oct. 7 massacre.<\/i><\/p>\n
In the wake of the Oct. 7 massacre of Israelis\u2026. And the celebrations that followed worldwide \u2013 glorifying the raping, burning and decapitating of my people\u2026.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n And the subsequent mass destruction of posters raising awareness of Israeli hostages being tortured in captivity by Hamas\u2026.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n And the simultaneous call for a violent uprising against Jews worldwide\u2026.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n And the astronomical spike in hate crimes against Jews \u2013 among other things, leading to incessant harassment, assaults and death threats of students at my alma mater, Columbia University, and additionally leading to the murder of a kind Jewish man I knew in Los Angeles\u2026.<\/p>\n And the international mob chants of \u201cFrom the river to the sea,\u201d harkening back to the harrowing cries my father heard on Arabic radio stations as a child in Iraq, \u201cWe will throw the Jews into the sea.\u201d…<\/p>\n And the palpable terror I then felt as a Jew, whose family had seen this before, had fled this before, in a pro-Nazi uprising in Baghdad, where a similar massacre had taken place during my father\u2019s childhood\u2026.<\/p>\n And the deafening silence in the wake of all this \u2013 not even one word of care or kindness from the vast majority of non-Jewish people I had loved, had lived with, had broken bread with\u2026.<\/p>\n And I felt as if I had died.<\/p>\n I stopped journaling, stopped writing poetry, stopped writing music, stopped singing, stopped playing bass, stopped dancing. I got sick repeatedly and continuously over the course of two months, even ended up in the emergency room with symptoms of a possible stroke at 2 a.m. one night \u2013 this, after years and years of never getting sick, not once, not even when my ex got COVID and I nursed him back to health.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I couldn\u2019t sleep, had nightmares, woke up in the middle of the night, lying awake for hours, my mind circling around and around, imagining the horror and terror the hostages must be suffering through. I was haunted by the video image I accidentally had seen of a young Jewish woman who was naked and chained, publicly being dragged around by Hamas, as they filmed her \u2013 one of the many Jewish women they gang raped and mutilated that day, often next to the dead bodies of these women\u2019s friends \u2013 filming that violence, too, in something akin to snuff porn.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I could feel it in my body.<\/p>\n I couldn\u2019t breathe.<\/p>\n I couldn\u2019t move.<\/p>\n Despite the impact on me, I felt that, somehow, by energetically experiencing and, by extension, by physically experiencing the pain that my people were enduring, I was communicating a telepathic message to them: I will not forsake you, I will not forget you.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n No, I will not frolic on the beach beneath the misty grey soothing skies. No, I will not enjoy the quiet, peace and comfort of the vast rainforest just outside my door. No, I will not detach myself from something \u201chappening on the other side of the world,\u201d as a non-<\/p>\n Jewish acquaintance kindly advised, because there is no \u201cother side of the world\u201d when it comes to Jews. You are me, and I am you, and we are connected. I cannot control the world\u2019s response, but I can control mine. I will face, see, hear and feel your pain, until it is gone.<\/p>\n But wait\u2026. That\u2019s exactly what Hamas wants, isn\u2019t it? To demoralize and destroy Jews. To suffocate us, hijack our imagination. To strip us of our dignity, safety, peace and, perhaps most of all, joy.<\/p>\n So, to reclaim my joy is, in fact, a radical act of Jewish power and solidarity. To flip imagination on its head \u2013 instead of visualizing all the horrors and shrinking in my body, to instead expand in my body and visualize all the hostages, injured people and\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n grieving families as resilient, grounded, surrounded by love, and the dead as soaring freely and peacefully, wrapping their loved ones in comfort.<\/p>\n Nothing is black and white, but this is an article, not a book, so I\u2019m trying to keep it short and sweet. Suffice it to say, I actively and repeatedly attempted to turn the images around over the course of two months \u2013 to send white light, to bless the hostages, to emit some kind of protective energetic shield, but it kept seeming silly, foolish, without actual impact, perhaps just making myself feel better, like a hollow New Ager. My prayers would not stop a psychopathic Hamas gunman with absolute control over a hostage, I reasoned, because G-d gave humans both the gift and curse of free will.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n But then\u2026.<\/p>\n But then I went to a concert of Yemen Blues, which was more of a primal howl of freedom than a \u201cperformance,\u201d and which featured an Israeli woman dancing with a defiant, raw ferocity that brought back to life the sanctity, dignity and power of the Jewish female body \u2013 and, with that, permission to dance.<\/p>\n And, after that, I started dancing again. And, after that, I started singing again. And, after that, I started frolicking with my beautiful dog beneath the misty grey, soothing skies on the beach, and through the vast rainforest just outside my door.<\/p>\n And I came back to life.<\/p>\n In this very difficult but transformative journey, I learned that life begets life begets life, and artistic self-expression is not an indulgence, but rather, a superpower.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n As I danced on the beach with my dog over a couple of days, a vision emerged \u2013 a global movement of Jews and our allies taking videos of ourselves dancing joyfully, and sending those videos to the people wounded in the Oct. 7 massacre, the families of those who died, the families of those taken hostage, and the young women and men on the frontlines defending Israel from further attack \u2013 turning \u201cwe will dance again\u201d into \u201cwe will dance for you until you can dance again\u201d \u2013 sharing whatever strength, freedom and joy we have to uplift those who are in the thick of it, struggling and suffering.<\/p>\n Having snapped out of an emotional coma of sorts, I then picked up my bass, and out poured both the melody and lyrics of a new song, \u201c\u2019Til You Can Dance Again.\u201d That same day, I finally finished the song I had started a few weeks after Oct. 7, \u201cDear Hostages.\u201d Not having touched my bass for the better part of three months, I played until my fingers were blistered and almost bleeding. Over the next 24 hours, I wrote two additional songs, and then worked with my band on developing a full album, \u2019Til You Can Dance Again<\/i>, offering both my journey and my joy as a catalyst for healing and transformation.<\/p>\n It is through song, dance, story, prayer and food that Jews historically have not only overcome tragedy, but have taken that very experience and transmuted it into an vehicle for joy \u2013 the ultimate \u201cf*** you\u201d to those who have tried to destroy us. For this reason, my band released our new album on March 23, at the start of Purim, a holiday marking one of many historical traumas that the Jewish people have turned on its head and morphed into a cause for celebration. My heartfelt prayer for this album is that, as broken as we may feel right now, we shall once again rise up, sing and dance ourselves back to wholeness, and honour the victims of Oct. 7 not only through our grief and pain, but also through our fierce and irrepressible Jewish joy \u2013 emerging, once again, like that unstoppable phoenix, soaring up and out from the ashes.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n