{"id":160615,"date":"2024-09-23T14:37:01","date_gmt":"2024-09-23T11:37:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.nli.org.il\/?p=160615"},"modified":"2024-09-23T14:38:06","modified_gmt":"2024-09-23T11:38:06","slug":"aner_shapira","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blognli2026.moonsite.co.il\/en\/aner_shapira\/","title":{"rendered":"Life After Death: On the Works of Aner Shapira"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The young man\u2019s head rests on the window pane. It\u2019s raining outside, but he doesn\u2019t see the drops pouring on the glass beside his cheek, nor does he hear the groan of wheels on broken asphalt as the bus makes the long way north. Large headphones cover his ears, and he is busy with his phone. He isn’t idly scrolling through social media posts, he’s writing. Fragments of thoughts, shards of his soul being formed into words. This is his art. His songs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He is young, but he already has great dreams of the musician he wants to become in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aner Elyakim Shapira was born and raised in Jerusalem by a family with deep Zionist roots, the eldest of seven children born to Moshe and Shira.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He was born on the 17th<\/sup> of the Jewish month of Adar, which was also the birthday of his grandfather \u2013 Haim-Moshe Shapira, one of the leaders of the religious Zionist Mizrahi party and a signatory to Israel’s Declaration of Independence. In an unsettling coincidence, his great-grandfather was seriously injured by a grenade thrown into the Knesset building, the same month that Aner was killed by a grenade on October 7, 67 years later.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Aner’s grandfather Haim-Moshe Shapira. Photo<\/a>: the Boris Carmi Archive, the Meitar Collection, the Pritzker Family National Photography Collection at the National Library of Israel]

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Already as a small child, Aner was creating and writing. In those early years, he wrote stories rather than songs: piles of notebooks filled with imagination and hair-raising tales of monsters and dragons, accompanied by lively illustrations. He also played classical piano from the age of six and was exposed to the works of the great composers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A bit later on, during his early adolescence, Aner began to combine his creative imagination with his musical talent. This is when he found his way into the world of hip-hop and rap. The youth possessed a serious mind, walking this earth with a sense of justice and social awareness which burned within him. Having been exposed to entirely different types of music at home, Aner discovered that this musical genre, with its biting social commentary, fit him like a glove.<\/p>\n\n\n

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One of Aner’s fantasy-inspired monster drawings. Photo courtesy of the family<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

When he enlisted in the army, he dreamed of serving in the IDF’s elite Sayeret Matkal unit, but was wounded during tryouts. Twice. The injuries led to a year and a half of rehabilitation at home. During this period, he bought recording equipment, researched how to build a home studio and then proceeded to build one for himself. He started recording the texts he wrote and composed using his own voice, and also began to dream and plan how he would one day release them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alongside music, Aner continued to work on drawing and art, designing a logo and a visual language for himself which was meant to accompany his future music career.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Not just a musician. \u201cRed Marker,\u201d by Aner Shapira. Courtesy of the family<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

On October 6, 2023, on the eve of Simchat Torah, Aner \u2013 then a soldier in the Nahal Brigade\u2019s Orev Company, came home for holiday leave. After the family holiday dinner, he joined a group of friends, including his good friend Hersh Goldberg-Polin, and made his way to the Nova festival – a dance rave being held near Kibbutz Re\u2019im.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the attack began, he got a phone call from his army commander \u2013 it\u2019s war, come quickly. Aner gathered his friends and they left the rave, but then came under heavy fire while on the road to Re\u2019im, which would later become known as the \u201croad of death.\u201d Then they stopped and entered a public bomb shelter placed beside a bus stop, which already contained almost 30 other young people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hours later, most of these panicked young men and women were murdered. Three of them, including his good friend Hersh, who was wounded by the grenade which killed Aner, were taken captive to the Gaza Strip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But in the meantime, as they huddled in fear in the small space, terrified at the sounds of shooting and shouting in Arabic, Aner took charge. He stood at the entrance, with a broken bottle as his improvised means of defense, and tried to calm the terrified people around him. \u201cI\u2019m in the army,\u201d he said, penetrating the fog of anxiety behind him, \u201cI spoke with my commander, and they\u2019re on their way.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He explained to them very simply, as though he was doing something entirely routine, what he was going to do: When the terrorists throw the grenades inside, I will grab them and throw them back out. If something happens to me, someone else will have to do it instead of me. A picture that was published later on shows people lying on the ground, protecting their heads with their hands, with Aner standing tall and waiting for whatever comes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He managed to throw back seven grenades with his bare, stable hands. The eighth took his life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aner left behind hundreds of texts and dozens of recorded songs at various stages of completion and production. These were complex, sensitive, soul-baring texts. In them, he never spared himself or the world any criticism, but he also imbued these writings with hope and faith.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aner never admired anyone blindly, but he greatly appreciated art itself. In his work, he drew from an enormous range of influences and inspirations. His songs, full of intelligence and wordplay, contain a heartening and amazing mixture of musical, cultural, and historical references from a range of genres and periods \u2013 Psalms alongside Jerusalem hip-hop slang, classical French composers alongside sentences like \u201cchildren in the [Gaza] Perimeter, in the shelter on their butts.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among the songs he left behind, his parents found a simple sentence which became his will and testament: \u201cIf I die, publish this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first single to be released was Jerus<\/em>, just weeks after his death. This is a song entirely devoted to the city which was Aner\u2019s great love, Jerusalem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Aner \u2013 Jerus<\/em> (classical version)<\/strong><\/strong>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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