Power born out of tragedy: Musician-psychologist Yoyo helps get October 7 trauma out

Like the rest of us, Jonathan Yoyo Stern-Novizki – aka Yoyo – was shaken to the depths of his soul by the events of October 7, 2023.

The 34-year-old musician sprang into action as quickly as he could, drawing not only on his sonic craft. Yoyo also trained as a clinical psychologist and combined both pursuits to good effect in the immediate aftermath of the apocalypse that overtook our communities near the Gaza Strip.

Soon after the Hamas attack, Yoyo was gainfully engaged at a hotel near the Dead Sea running a writing workshop for evacuees from kibbutzim and other locations near the border with Gaza. The idea was to help the men, women and children who had experienced severe trauma, just days earlier, to let off a little emotional steam through literary exercises.

“I think that was first time I appreciated that I had the opportunity to take advantage of an integrative combined possibility of bringing my two [professional] identities into play,” he notes.

And, as per the wont of all good artists, Yoyo did not just guide the participants through their literary paces, to help them process and unload some of their oh-so-fresh anguish. He perused the contents of their writing and, in time, how it may lend themselves to musical interpretation.

Before long, he began to see potential in the workshop outcomes, potential that might lead to a fruitful musical bottom line.

Thus, the Kulam Chutz M’mee Sh’haser (“Everyone Except For Those Missing”) album came to be. That and a live performance of the vicariously accrued material which is due to take place, on September 28 (doors open 8 p.m., show starts 9 p.m.), at the Isis brewery cultural venue at Moshav Deckel, all of 20 km. southwest of Gaza.

Yoyo says there was no initial ulterior creative intent behind his volunteer work with the evacuees. In fact, he didn’t even know how he would handle the venture and somehow manage to juggle his musical and his science-based curative professional nous. In the event, it went surprisingly well.

“Being a musician, performing on a stage, is very different from the intimate environment of a psychology clinic,” he observes, adding that he had planned on delineating the two fields of activity. It was going to be very much – to cite Rudyard Kipling’s late 19th-century assertion – a “ne’er the twain shall meet” state of affairs with some added value for all.

“But then, October 7 happened and I found myself involved in workshops and the vision of making an album stemming from the musical side merged. During the course of the workshops, I began to appreciate the healing process that was taking place there. And there were all these texts being produced [by the evacuees].”

One thing led to another and Yoyo started making regular trips to the Dead Sea from his home in Tel Aviv, to work with the evacuees. “Then I began traveling to Eilat to meet others,” he says. “And then there were even more texts.”

Yoyo began contemplating synergies with some of his brethren in musical arms, for the good of everyone concerned, including the wider circles of those connected to the victims of that terrible October day. All the artists joined in the voluntary collaboration with gusto, including stellar singer-songwriter Leah Shabbat, as the album began to take shape.

“Leah was the first to join in,” Yoyo recalls. Shabbat responded to the call for musical action with alacrity. “She said just tell me what you want me to do.”

Kulam Chutz Mimee Shechaser is the result of an unsuspected yet naturally evolving synthesis between a bunch of people desperately trying to offload and work through some of their pain and anguish, and seasoned artists equipped with the talent, skills and experience to do the visceral lyrics justice.

Shabbat’s contribution involved her taking words written by Kibbutz Magen resident Keren Caspi, scoring them and then recording the finished item in her trademark emotive style. The number, Mishala Petzua (Wounded Wish), opens evocatively: “I have a wounded wish, a silent prayer which is a little old, that we will rediscover the hope that was forgotten today.” That was quite a marker, and the rest of the artists had similarly heartfelt stirring texts to inspire them.

Singer-songwriter Noam Rotem opted for lyrics crafted by professional colleague Yedidia Balachsan who comes from Moshav Talmei Eliyahu, while pianist-vocalist Boaz Krauzer went for lyrics by Or Gal Or from Moshav Ein Habesor to produce a song called Tirkedee (Dance).

The first stanza immediately grabs you by the heartstrings: “Dance my love; no don’t dance; so you don’t forget your home.”

The emotional content never lets up as the second stanza comes through: “Close your eyes; no don’t close them, so the ground does not shake.”

“When your anchor is shaken, there is no home, everyday new names come through, the pain is unbearable,” says Gal Or is the album notes. “I realize that none of the coping tools I had were of any use anymore, and every intake of breath and every time I breathe out are a challenge! It’s not at all simple. I have to breathe, for everyone who is struggling right now. To hold onto life.”

There is no missing the angst in Gal Or’s every word, but she musters all her physical and emotional wherewithal to, somehow, look to the future with a glimmer of hope. “In some sense, this little activity is not just for me. It is the start of my coping,” she declares

Powerful words indeed, born of deep and violent trauma. That is a leitmotif of the entire exercise, with lyrics to other tracks provided by Mori Nevo from Moshav Prigan, performed by pop singer Sharon Rotter, while Yasmin Daboosh worked off a text produced by father-of-five David Seneh from Moshav Shuva.

Yoyo’s contribution to the record, as a musician, is “Kumkum Tea.” The words came from Dana Hershtig Levin, a resident of Moshav Sdei Avraham who, as fate would have it, happened to be elsewhere on October 7. She was abroad for the first time in her life, leaving her two children behind. They endured the long tense wait in their safe room together with some neighbors while the Hamas terrorists went about their murderous business.

Hershtig Levin made it back the next day, via an emergency flight, and the family decamped to quieter climes, first in Kadesh Barnea, then Eilat and eventually Moshav Ein Yahav in the Arava.

“Yoyo’s chores pushed me to look for the simple things in life,” she says. That found a literary outlet when she drew a slip of paper from a hat as part of Yoyo’s workshop at Ein Yahav with the word kettle – kumum in Hebrew. “The song basically wrote itself,” she notes. “It depicts the most mundane thing, drinking tea at the end of Shabbat.’

The song with a simple yet powerful image: “The kettle sits in the center of the table. A hot kettle. Everyone drank tea. Everyone drank hot tea. Everyone, except for those missing.” That gave the album its title, and a video clip of the reggae-leaning number ensued.

“It is a sort of absurd choice, to choose to carry on living,” Yoyo comments. Extreme emotion naturally, in the right hands, also spawns quality creative output. “That also arouses inspiration more than anything else. And there are musicians – not musicians in general – who experienced October 7 first hand. They carried on with life. They have kids and coped with the trauma.

That is the most inspiring, to see how powerful life is and activates the wheel and shows us the beauty. It is so important to surround yourself with beauty and art and creation.”

Yoyo discerns an oxymoronic dynamic within the most desperate of situations. “There is all this death and depression, and there is movement of hope, life and light. Those forces confuse you, but there are those minor decisions and choices.”

That includes Yoyo’s decision to help some of the evacuees regain some semblance of emotional stability and find renewed hope.

“The writing workshop at the Dead Sea, only a week after October 7, produced such powerful texts, with beauty. It was so powerful. I realized it just had to find its way into music, and get out there back into life.”

No doubt there won’t be many dry eyes in the house on September 28.