We are all a bit broken in Israel. After 16 months of war, we are tired, worried, anxious.

Last night, Idan Amedi repaired a tiny bit of that broken spirit, uniting us through his beautiful words and his incredible presence.

Amedi has come back to himself, and to all of us, after being gravely wounded fighting in Gaza in January 2024.

The show opened with images similar to these:

And with video of him pushing through his pain in physical therapy and working to recover. And then his song, “Superman” began. During the entire evening, I was mesmorized by Amedi’s stage presence, his grace, his clear love for his music and for the people who love it. And I kept thinking about how uniquely – how painfully – Israeli the concert was. Can you imagine Justin Timberlake, Taylor Swift, John Legend or Katy Perry walking away in the peak of their fame to fight in a war? As both a television star in Fauda and a famous singer, Amedi had every reason at the age of 37 to opt-out of service when the war was thrust upon us in October 2023.

But he would never have dreamed of doing so. He fought alongside his unit, as one of the soldiers, and was gravely wounded in an explosion in Gaza that killed others in his unit. When he reached the hospital, he was so badly burned that he wasn’t identified and the doctors weren’t sure, at first, that he would live.

One year later, he shared his pain, his hope and his music with all of us in a series of songs that had everyone on their feet singing along. Throughout the concert, he spoke about his experience; he introduced the mothers of his friends who were killed fighting; he shared pictures of his unit and details of his recovery; and he introduced one of his doctors in the audience.

While audiences typically throw flowers, notes, bras onto the stage at a concert, here people held up banners with pictures of their fallen loved ones; with pictures of Amedi’s unit; with phrases about war and hope and grief. Amedi stopped when he could in front of such people, reaching down to take the flag, the banner, the letter and to display it for all of us.

What grace, what beauty, there was in his performance. In his stage presence, in the feeling that he is truly one of us, the best of the nation with his sacrifices and his service.

As the concert was ending, Amedi played his song “It’s Over.” This is one of his older songs, about the end of his army service years ago; the song, of course, is all-too relevant today. As he sang, he was accompanied by a woman painting a picture on stage which slowly developed into the back of a small child standing among the red anemone flowers that blossom in the South at this time of year. The child was holding what, at first, looked like the sun, but soon showed itself to be a yellow balloon.

While she painted this exquisite picture, he sang,
“I’m sitting near the sky right now,
Trying to find answers to the question,
While also taking off my shoes.
Soldiers are now getting out of the Merkava.
Yes, I’m sitting there, thinking
About you a little, making my heart ache a bit.
The next sentence, of course, you’re quite familiar with:
“In a day or two, I’ll be coming back.”
It’s over…it’s over…it’s over.”

May these words prove true at some point soon for all of us.

And may we please, together, continue to feel the unity I felt last night in a crowd filled with regular Israelis who had all come together to sing, to remember, to cry and to dance for our past.

And for our future.