The young man’s head rests on the window pane. It’s raining outside, but he doesn’t 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.
He is young, but he already has great dreams of the musician he wants to become in the future.
*
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.
He was born on the 17th of the Jewish month of Adar, which was also the birthday of his grandfather – 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
On October 6, 2023, on the eve of Simchat Torah, Aner – then a soldier in the Nahal Brigade’s 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’im.
When the attack began, he got a phone call from his army commander – it’s war, come quickly. Aner gathered his friends and they left the rave, but then came under heavy fire while on the road to Re’im, which would later become known as the “road of death.” Then they stopped and entered a public bomb shelter placed beside a bus stop, which already contained almost 30 other young people.
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.
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. “I’m in the army,” he said, penetrating the fog of anxiety behind him, “I spoke with my commander, and they’re on their way.”
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.
He managed to throw back seven grenades with his bare, stable hands. The eighth took his life.
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.
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 – Psalms alongside Jerusalem hip-hop slang, classical French composers alongside sentences like “children in the [Gaza] Perimeter, in the shelter on their butts.”
Among the songs he left behind, his parents found a simple sentence which became his will and testament: “If I die, publish this.”
The first single to be released was Jerus, just weeks after his death. This is a song entirely devoted to the city which was Aner’s great love, Jerusalem.
Aner – Jerus (classical version):
“I never understood,” his mother Shira said, “how you can love a city like that, to consider it your identity,” but something about its scrambled and complex chaos captured his heart. The Jerusalem experience of a meeting of worlds was also his. He believed with all his heart that this friction, this passion, was a great opportunity for repair and growth.
Less than half a year later, with the help of his friends and producer Avri G., the album Introduction to Anerchism was released. It will not be the last.
One of the people who helped produce the songs on the album was Sha’anan Streett, lead vocalist and rapper for the well-known Israeli hip-hop group Hadag Nachash. Streett, a proud Jerusalemite himself, came across one of the songs Aner wrote, Sin’at Achim (Brotherly Hatred), and asked permission from his parents to add a verse to the song, and to effectively join in on Aner’s project, in a kind of posthumous duet.
I’ve never done a duet with a dead person
And to tell you the truth, Aner
I’m not sure that was something I needed
At first, they didn’t feel comfortable with this addition, which underlines the great absence and void left by Aner’s death. Aner’s music was about life, not death, his parents told Sha’anan. It speaks of our world with open eyes, adopting a bright worldview. But in the end, Streett managed to convince Aner’s parents to let their longing for their child to also enter into the song.
The following lines (originally in Hebrew) refer to Aner’s favorite hangout spot – the Sirah pub located in downtown Jerusalem:
And they’re still saving you a seat at the Sirah
So don’t worry, if you come there’ll be someone there you know
We’re saving you a seat at the Sirah
And there’s one chair for you at the bar, and one chair for Hersh
The last line in the song refers to Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Aner’s friend who was with him in the bomb shelter. When Sha’anan Streett wrote these words, Hersh was still a hostage in Gaza. After the album’s release, Hersh was murdered in captivity, and this line, the last line of the last song on the album, has become even more chilling.
Aner – Sin’at Achim (Brotherly Hatred), feat. Sha’anan Streett:
Aner’s parents do not intend to let his voice disappear or be forgotten. They spend their time these days selling his drawings, as well as prints based on them, in a shop they’ve set up, while also working on producing the next album.
One of the songs on the next album is called “Just Believe”, and its chorus speaks to all of us, in Aner’s name:
I’m a person who believes in change
Forget change
It’s enough to be a person who just believes.
Well,
So I’m a person who believes.
Forget belief.
It’s enough to be a person…
Lives Lost: The Works of the October 7 Fallen – A Special Project