Ronit Banit is a young musician with a dream and she has the talent and drive to put that dream into effect. Banit studied music at the Music Academy in Jerusalem and had no trouble finding work teaching music and organizing choirs in many settings. She set up and directed choirs in work places like government offices, and even in the Knesset where parliamentary representatives of differing parties sang together instead of fighting together on the debate floor.
But she especially enjoyed initiating and directing choirs for the residents in sheltered housing facilities and in old-aged homes.
“Since I was a young girl I always had an affinity for the elderly,” says Banit. “I always found it so interesting to hear their stories and get to know them.”
She also found that music was a wonderful tool for this population, and had tremendous therapeutic benefit for all age groups, but especially for the seniors.
She organized performances by these choirs in their institutions, and in public halls. It was wonderful to see how the residents no less than the singers loved the production. “We achieved quite a professional standard at these shows . We had many rehearsals, so they were well trained, the singers closely followed my direction, they held the songsheets in their hands while they sang in unison and were uniformly dressed. Some of them sat in wheelchairs or needed to sit during the performance but that didn’t effect the quality of the music. Both audience and performers were entranced!”
One of the community choirs Banit led every week was located at the Jerusalem Music Academy, although not all the participants were associated with it. Of the 60 members, Banit “infected” some of the choir members with her desire “to do something for the older generation, using music to enhance their lives, especially once the pandemic broke out and set such horrible limitations on this population.”
“We thought of establishing a nonprofit organization involving instrumental and vocal music to give a boost to the quality of life for all kinds of elderly – Holocaust survivors, chronically ill patients, those with dementia and even those who were well, but lonely,” she says.
The organizing committee included a number of choir participants who formerly occupied high government, finance or commercial positions. “We were all united by our love for music and a desire to help the elderly,” says Ehud Tirosh, a co-chairman.
“We called our amuta (NGO) Hakol Zahav (Voices of Gold). Tirosh is a scientist and entrepreneur, but music is his passion and inspiration. He and the prestigious committee found time and energy to organize mini-concerts, individual performances and musical evenings in sheltered housing facilities, senior citizen institutions and in the homes of private citizens recommended by Yad Sarah volunteers. His brother, Moshe, and sister-in-law, Jenny, also joined. Jenny, a leading social worker, does inservice training for volunteers in the organization.
“We closely identified with the residents who were locked behind closed doors, isolated from their families, and fearful of getting infected, and that gave the needed impetus and made the need for our programs all that more important,” says Tirosh.
Other active members of the NGO include Hakol Zahav Co-Chairman Zvi Raviv, a prominent community leader in Jerusalem. Raviv is also a Board Member in the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, a board member of the Jewish Agency. Back in the seventies, Raviv drove the government of Israel to launch the struggle for the Soviet Union Jews. During the nineties, he led the worldwide Jerusalem 3000 events and celebrations.
Other members include Frida Albaranes, whose career is equally vast and varied, as director of human resources for a medical organization, initiating a music conservatory in Mevasseret and as a leading member of the 50+ organization. Albaranes organizes the performances of HaKol Zahav.
Some members of the group are not even musicians. Motti Friedman, a former founder and director of the Herzl Museum, is involved in setting up lectures and discussions, not necessarily musical performances. Another well-known personality, former head of the National Religious Party, Zevulun Orlev, and chairman of Melabev (a non-profit that provides services to people with dementia and Alzheimer’s), is also active, as is Hani Or, former director of human resources at the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics (where Banit leads another choir), who takes care of the financial concerns of the group.
The required comptroller committee is headed by Motti Friedman and agronomist Israel Galon, who has a rich history of training Israel’s farmers and setting up community gardens like the one at the Nature Museum.
Perhaps the most famous member of the group, from its very initiation, is Ruhama Raz, a popular singer who for more than 40 years has been known to many as “the Voice of Jerusalem.” Raz was attracted by the opportunity to help our older citizens and gives freely of her time and talent. She has sung medleys of Eretz Yisrael songs on balconies and in gardens during the pandemic and gets tremendous and heart warming ovation from these audiences.
One of the most stirring initiatives has been the cooperation between Hakol Zahav and the Jerusalem Symphonic Orchestra. During the first lockdown when the atmoshphere in homes for the elderly was tense and cheerless, thirteen musicians from the Orchestra performed classical concerts gratis for gatherings of residents in Neve Shalem, Migdalei Yam Hatichon, Beit Moses and others.
These musicians who give individual performances in private home or in senior facilities for shut-ins have had a tremendous effect on the locked in generation. “It was a kind of compensation for the harsh restrictions placed on residents in these homes,” says Ehud, “and helped the most depressed or dejected.”
But the group’s initiative did not stop with music. Banit always felt there should be more contact between generations, for the mutual benefit of both younger people and the elderly and during her career has organized several inter-generational choirs, where 18-year-olds sang together with grandparents of 80.
The NGO, instigated by one of the founders, Dr. Shaiela Kandel, did outreach in that direction. Kandel comes from a most interesting combination background of science, medical clowning and animal rescue, but her own passion for music led to her being a founding member of Hakol Zahav where she arranges for soldiers in the Givati units to adopt a lonely elderly person, a Holocaust survivor for example and through Zoom learn about their lives. And when it becomes possible, they will meet with them face to face in a hall made available by Ahuzat Beit Hakerem.
This led to another intergenerational initiative when Dr. Kandel made contact with girls from abroad studying Torah and Israeli studies for a year in a seminary called Kedma. This too will be a mutually beneficial project when the girls meet individually with a senior citizen and get to know the “real Israel” that way and the elderly find a young friend from abroad.
It’s amazing that sometimes good can come out of the tragedy of the corona epidemic. Banit and the members of the organization Hakol Zahav have found that through music and through people of different generations meeting together they are helping in some measure to disperse the feeling of isolation and estrangement that causes emotional havoc and physical illness in too many older people.
Banit is quick to give credit to the illustrious members of her committee who devote hours and much thought to brighten the lives of the elderly. They meet at least once a month and have set up a website, chosen a logo and been formally recognized as a nonprofit organization. For their part each choir members recognizes Banit’s dynamic drive and enthusiasm that has given impudent to Hakol Zahav, an initiative to be emulated and praised and one that will hopefully continue to enhance the lives of the elderly long after we’ve all forgotten the corona era.