Am Israel Chai! has become a rallying cry for Jews and lovers of Israel everywhere, especially since the terrible days that have followed the October 7 attack. It literally means the people (am – עם) of Israel (ישראל) live (chai – חי).

In stark contrast to cries of “death to the infidel”,  or “death to the IDF”, the heart cry of Israel is a simple determination to stay alive. The love of life is hard baked into Jewish culture — Israel doesn’t want anyone to die, but will do what is necessary to stay alive. And it’s really quite a miracle that the Jewish people are alive, given the number of attempts there have been to annihilate the entire people group. I mean, we can almost say it with awe and wonder: how are we still here?! We’re alive! Am Israel Chai!

Every Jewish holiday is celebrated with more or less the same winning formula: “They tried to kill us. We won. Let’s eat!” It’s a miracle the people of Israel are still alive, and we have to give God all the credit. Indeed, there’s a blessing called the Shehechyanu which we say at all important occasions:

Blessed are You, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who has kept us alive, sustained us, and brought us to this season.

Still alive, against all odds

There should be at least 200 million Jews in the world today but because of the constant persecution and murder there are less than 15 million, according to the expert calculations of James Carroll.¹ Hebrew babies were thrown into the Nile by Pharaoh not long after the beginning of the Bible, then came the Amalekite attempt at annihilation soon after that, followed by numerous existential battles throughout the Hebrew Scriptures. Haman plotted to wipe out the Jews in Persia and Herod went on a baby-killing spree in Bethlehem. There was mass slaughter at the hands of Greeks, and then the Romans. From the seventh century onwards there were the massacres at the hands of the Muslims, such as at Khaybar, and severe persecution from Christians, especially during the Middle Ages. Thousands were killed in the Crusades and there were multiple massacres, for example in England (1189-90), Germany (1298, 1336-38), France and northern Iberia (1320-21), and during the Black Death (1348-1351).² Jewish people were forced to abandon their Jewishness and assimilate for most of church history, and then of course there’s the more blatant and numerically extreme phenomenon of Holocaust. Today Israel is being attacked on multiple fronts, once again fighting for life against the Iranian regime and its proxies who are determined to wipe out every Jew on earth.

Simply staying alive has been quite the challenge. Without God’s saving power and miraculous deliverances, there’s no way we’d be here.
God is a covenant-keeping God.

He promised Israel would remain as long as the sun, moon and stars:

Thus says the Lord, who gives the sun for light by day and the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar—the Lord of hosts is his name: “If this fixed order departs from before me, declares the Lord, then shall the offspring of Israel cease from being a nation before me forever.” (Jeremiah 31:35-36)

Am Israel Chai: An anthem since Oct. 7

Shortly after the horrific attack of October 7, Eyal Golan wrote a song based around the expression, “Am Israel Chai”, releasing it on October 19, 2023, and it quickly became an Israeli anthem. He wasn’t the one who came up with the phrase, but when you look at the words to his song, you can see the main desire is simply to stay alive and live in peace:

The sun will shine soon we’ll know better days that these
the heart fights with worry – everyone will return home
we’ll wait for them, hopefully we’ll know good news

Because the eternal people never fear – even when it’s hard to see
we’re all together, no one here is alone when the wars rages

Am Israel Chai!
So long as we don’t forget always stay united
Am Israel Chai!
Through up and downs, even in the hardest times

G-d, the blessed one, it’s He that watches over us
so who can triumph over us?
Because we have no other country [to go to]
We will make peace amongst ourselves, watch over our children
because we haven’t lost our faith

Ho my land is our heritage
around us, swords of iron
and the dove will spread her wings
the hope of two thousand years
we’ll go out in the streets to sing again

Because the eternal people never fear, even when it’s hard to see
we’re all together, no one here is alone
we’ll go out in the streets to sing, our spirits will not fall now

 

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The song that started it all

It was another song that first gave birth to the phrase “Am Israel Chai”. Despite the fact that the struggle to survive is as old as the people of Israel themselves, the phrase was originally coined by famous songwriter, Shlomo Carlebach back in the 1960s. He composed a song around the expression as an anthem for the Jews of the former USSR, at the request of Jacob Birnbaum who founded the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry (SSSJ).

Birnbaum later explained he wanted to “generate movement songs” to inspire people for the cause. He wanted to hold a rally on April 4, 1965, in front of the Soviet U.N. Mission in New York. The plan was that seven people would blow seven shofars, “Jericho style,” before leading a crowd to the U.N. headquarters. He wanted a song for the march including the words, “Am Israel chai.” Just two days before the march was to take place, Carlebach called him saying, “Yankele, I’ve got it for you!” Carlebach wrote and first performed the song, “Am Israel Chai” with a group of young people in Prague.

The song has only two lines really:

“Am Israel chai” (the people of Israel live – עם ישראל חי)

“Od Avinu chai” (our Father is yet alive – עוד אבינו חי)

The words “Od Avinu chai” are adapted from the story of Joseph when he asks his brothers, “Is my father still alive?” (Genesis, 45:3). Carlebach took the question and made it into a statement, a declaration: “Our father is yet alive!” Of course that can also be interpreted to speak of our Heavenly Father, the ever-living God, and His ability to keep His covenant people.

While it was originally an anthem for post-Holocaust renewal of Jewish spirit, lately the words “Am Israel Chai” have been sung, said, and brandished in defiance of those driven by that age-old demonic desire to wipe out the people of Israel.

A marred origin story fitting for a flawed nation

The late Shlomo Carlebach was one of the most significant songwriters of the Jewish people, and many of his songs have become well-loved anthems. However, there is a sad story here. Carelbach was a very compromised character. He was accused of multiple counts of sexual abuse and molestation. Knowing this fact mars the otherwise joyful and beautiful songs of Carlebach.

The singer’s daughter wrote an open letter, identifying with the victims of her father’s abuse and revealing that she had also suffered abuse as a child. She said, “I accept the fullness of who my father was, flaws and all. I am angry with him. And I refuse to see his faults as the totality of who he was.”³

And perhaps there’s a lesson here for us too. We need to “accept the fullness” of an imperfect Israel, flaws and all, if we want to see Israel as God does.

While some seem to worship a whitewashed Israel in an almost idolatrous way, there are plenty of people who only ever see Israel’s faults. Many Christians criticize the nation for not being “holy enough”, assuming this disqualifies them from being chosen any longer. However, as someone pointed out,⁴ that’s the whole point!

God doesn’t require perfection in order to cherish and love His people, and He never has done.

The Bible is about HIS love, holiness, and faithfulness, not ours.

The people of Israel are still alive, still chosen, and still here not because they are especially good, but because God is.

Am Israeli Chai – why? Because our Father, the Keeper of Israel, is still alive and on the throne. The fact that the people of Israel are still alive is down to His decision, His prerogative, and His stated commitment to keep Israel, no matter what. That’s the unconditional, covenant love of our God, your Father and mine. He is alive, and so are we.

Psalm 124: A Song of Ascents. Of David.

 

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1. James Carroll, Constantines Sword: The Church and the Jews (Mariner Books, 2002)
2. Maya Soifer Irish, Genocidal Massacres of Jews in Medieval Western Europe, 1096–1392, in The Medieval World and Early Imperial Expansions Part III (Cambridge University Press, 2023)
3. http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/my-sisters-i-hear-you/
4. https://www.instagram.com/p/DKSUkqiu2bk/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link