[Opinion. Why am I posting an 11 year old article. Because we need more of this. Rejecting wars, embracing peace. If someone can link me to the original Hebrew version, much appreciated.]

Schools to feature Israeli peace song during Remembrance Day memorials

Lay Down Your Arms “has Canadian content and a universal message,” says March Of the Living national director Eli Rubenstein

Paul Lungen

The Canadian Jewish News: 8 November 2015

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hNF9FGkgo4

www.laydownyourarms.ca/

On Nov. 11, Canadians will gather at cenotaphs, schools, churches, synagogues and other public places to mark the sacrifices of Canadian soldiers in armed conflicts around the world.

Schools are adding the video of a unique Israeli peace song to their memorials  – “Lay Down Your Arms”.

In the original Hebrew version, songwriter Doron Levinson incorporated text from the book of Isaiah, including the famous lines: “They shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall no longer raise up arms against nation, neither shall they teach their children war anymore.”

Working with Levinson’s melody, lyricist Lisa Catherine Cohen updated and modernized the words rather than simply translate the Isaiah text.

First recorded in Toronto more than 20 years ago by the Habonim Youth Choir, it was only recently made into a music video with new arrangements by  Habonim Cantor Aviva Rajsky and guitarist Tom Bellman.

The recent version featured the March of the Living Children’s Choir as well as the Habonim Youth Choir. It was performed on Holocaust Remembrance Day during a MOL ceremony at Auschwitz-Birkenau before 10,000 people. It was also performed at the Tempel Synagogue in Krakow and in Israel at the Mini-Israel park near Latrun, between Yom Hazikaron, which honours Israel’s war dead, and Yom Ha’atzmaut, Israel’s Independence Day.

In Cohen’s updated English-language lyrics, the song ends with the stanza: “Somewhere deep inside the soldier, there’s a dreamer/ Dreaming of a world of peace/ Lay down your arms/ Let time heal every wound/ And love will someday set us free.”

The last line of the song is meant as a counterpoint to the cynical message the Nazis incorporated on an iron gate at Auschwitz, that work will set you free.  And the line, “Every hand that holds a sword can hold a baby,” is particularly relevant.

Ironic as Israel bombs Iran.