Joseph Heartland has been involved in “projects” throughout his adult life. Some have revolved around his scientific training and some were related to his psychology background. Others combined the two, such as his innovative reading program.

His current project was inspired many years ago when he was a young student studying in Israel and working in agriculture at Kibbutz Shaalvim. His passion for Israel has remained strong and even increased with the passing years.

During COVID, Heartland used the lockdown time to address a social problem that he saw was growing in alarming proportions. The increasing numbers of college students joining anti-Israel protests along with Palestinian students was alarming. And most frightening was that these students, many of whom were Jewish, were simply falling prey to propaganda being disseminated by Palestinian students who were being paid for their agitation. Heartland felt that an antidote to this baseless hatred of Israel would be a glimpse into the “real” Israel, the optimism and positivity of its population and the reason that it ranks among the top countries in the world in its Happiness Ratings.

Heartland’s love for music, and especially Israeli music, directed him to look into the Koolulam initiative, which has become very popular in Israel over the past few years. Koolulam is a gathering of people, sometimes numbering several thousand, into a large space, where they are given the lyrics to a Hebrew song and divided into groups to learn one of the harmonies. After approximately an hour of preparation, they reconvene and sing the song together, often with hand and body movements. The exhilaration of singing with so many others, adults and children, previously strangers, in one voice, is an experience to be treasured.

Heartland’s “project” was to offer the misguided anti-Israel college students the opportunity to view the people of Israel engaged in this unifying spiritual experience by watching these Koolulams in booklets he distributed on thumb drives. His thought was that after viewing these performances, these students would better be able to stand up to those confronting them with negative stereotypes about Israel.

Heartland scoured YouTube for the best of the Koolulams available. He also searched other social media for mass singing events such as in communities, hospitals, schools and universities. He even found some groups where teachers, students and parents sing together. He then utilized his knowledge of Hebrew to translate the lyrics into English and provide an introductory commentary to each song, which added to the meaning of the lyrics.

Heartland has created four booklets of songs, and is now working on his fifth. Introducing this booklet is a song called “Shamayim,” meaning heaven. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2qLZ6NPSvQ The opening stanza presents an upbeat statement: “Here heaven is mine, Here I feel like I am myself, I want to be among the hopes that are ever changing, Here heaven is mine.” In his introduction to the song, Heartland said: “‘Heaven’ might as well have been specifically written for Kibbutz Sde Eliyahu’s 80th birthday. The elderly people pictured in the video are the second-generation founders of the settlement. That they continue to live among the vital workers and children of the Kibbutz community is a blessing that few people get to experience at the end of their lives. They have not been thrown away or warehoused. The song is about a stability that so many people seek. Troubles abound, problems are solved, failures are absorbed, and life goes on against a background that remains both recognizable and beautiful. Someplace between a small town and a family. Sweet!”

In his first booklet, Heartland includes many well-known Israeli songs that have been enlivened by mass singinging. One such tune is called “Chai.”  https://youtu.be/Vuh1-jDi7Qw On March 21, 2018, coinciding with Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, more than 600 men, women and children gathered in Beit Avi Chai in Jerusalem to sing about survival and determination. The video, showing grandparents holding on to the little hands of their grandchildren and adult children with their arms around the shoulders of their elderly parents, was an emotional image even before the song began as it was evident that the older individuals had survived the horrors of the Holocaust to create families and future generations in the Land of Israel. The song proclaims, “Ani od chai, I am STILL ALIVE.” Heartland commented: “In spite of their trauma, here they are, singing with their families. This is amazing! But it also gives me much pain, not just happiness, because I cannot help imagining what was lost.”

In the fourth booklet, Heartland has included a song entitled “Mothers From Time to Time,” a tribute to a young mother who was killed by Arab terrorists in 2020.  https://youtu.be/o_mG2j-xAAo Upon going out for a run in a local forest, Esther Horgan was brutally murdered, leaving behind her adoring husband and six children. The song to her memory was sung by a group of women from Samaria. In the video, the women sing this haunting tribute beginning in Horgan’s kitchen and then moving to the road in the forest where she was murdered. The bond between the friends who are so bereft is an image that will remain vivid in our minds. The lyrics are haunting. “Mothers must from time to time, Go out alone to the forests, To gather quietude inside them. Mothers must from time to time, Leaving everything behind, To remember how to laugh.”

To learn more about Joseph Heartland’s Mass Singing Booklets and how to access them, email [email protected]

By Pearl Markovitz