How Kinot Are Helping Israel Give Words to Its History
- My Old New Land
- 7 days ago
- 3 min read
If you’ve spent any time in Israel over the past few months, you’ve likely felt that strange, heavy way the past has of bleeding into our present. We are a country rooted in modernity, innovation, and a fast-paced life, but the moment a major crisis strikes, Israelis turn almost instinctively to our deepest roots to try to make sense of what is happening.
That is exactly what happened in the weeks following October 7. While media and social media overflowed with continuous news, a much quieter response took shape in synagogues, cultural centers, and music studios: the rebirth of the Kinot.
The Tradition of Kinot in Israel: From the Destruction of the Temple to Contemporary Tragedies
To grasp the scale of this phenomenon, you have to understand how Jewish tradition has processed grief for centuries. The Kinot, those mournful dirges chanted every year on Tisha B'Av, have never formed a static book.
While they first bewailed the destruction of the First and Second Temples, every major catastrophe in Jewish history has enriched this text over the past two millennia. The Crusades, the Spanish expulsion, pogroms, the Holocaust: in every era, rabbis and poets wrote new verses. Memory was not content with being archived; it transformed into prayer and song.
After October 7, this ancestral reflex was reactivated across Israeli society.
One of the most striking texts to emerge is Kinat Be'eri, composed by musician and paytan (writer of traditional Jewish liturgical poetry) Yagel Haroush just weeks after the tragedy.
He didn't write a simple commemorative song. He mirrored word-for-word the rhythm, structure, and opening of the biblical Book of Lamentations (Eikha):
אֵיכָה בְּאֵרִי
הָפְכָה לְקִבְרִי
וְיוֹם מְאוֹרִי
הָפַךְ שְׁחוֹרִי
“Alas! Be'eri has become my grave. The day that brought me light has turned to darkness.”
Hearing those words in Hebrew hits you in the gut. By opening his text with the word Eikha ("Alas" or "How"), Haroush directly connects the smoking ruins of a southern kibbutz to the broken walls of ancient Jerusalem. The message is clear: this pain is not isolated; it belongs to the long chain of Jewish history and memory.
Why Open with Eikha?
It is the very first word of the Book of Lamentations by Jeremiah. By adopting it, the author doesn't just make a simple biblical citation: he wrenches the tragedy of October 7 away from raw current events and inscribes it into Israel’s spiritual memory, joining that unbroken chain of tragedies that the Jewish people refuse to forget.
Writing the Pain of the South: From Attacked Kibbutzim to the Nova Festival
Haroush's text was only the beginning. Since then, an entire wave of new Kinot has emerged in Israel, penned by both religious and secular authors. Some recount the destruction of the kibbutzim, others evoke the suffering of hostages, fallen soldiers, or the youth cut down at the Nova festival near Re'im.
When ordinary language failed us in the face of national trauma, these ancient poetic forms offered people a shared vocabulary to express a grief they once thought impossible to verbalize.
Collective Memory in Israel: A Living, Updated Culture
This is also what makes Israeli society so unique today. Beyond the media noise and political tensions, we discover a culture where history is not locked away in a museum: it is alive, constantly updated, and it helps us navigate the present.
The Kinot written today remind us that every generation here ends up adding its own page to the national narrative. It is our way of keeping a silent, collective promise: we remember, and we will keep remembering.
Article inspired by an Instagram post written by Eliana Gurfinkiel
Journalist and co-host of the Podcast "Israelis"
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