SA man brought music to Yom Kippur soldiers’ ears

When the Yom Kippur War broke out in October 1973, South African musician Dennis Feldman was on the Greek island of Crete. After reading about the unfolding war in an English newspaper, he made a decision that would take him from the tranquility of the Mediterranean to Israeli hospital wards and the Sinai Desert. 

Armed with his guitar, Feldman flew to Israel to entertain the troops, sharing the journey with another musician travelling with the same purpose, Leonard Cohen. Over the weeks that followed, Feldman performed for wounded soldiers, sang to troops stationed near the Sinai Peninsula, and even provided the music at a wedding held in the desert in the midst of war. 

More than five decades later, Feldman remembers the experience not through the war’s politics, but through the people he met and the role music played during an extraordinary period in Israel’s history. 

When Feldman had learned about the situation in Israel, he’d wanted to help in any way he could, so he phoned the Israeli embassy to see if volunteers were needed. At that time, they explained that they didn’t need any, but this didn’t stop Feldman from flying back to Israel from Athens anyway. 

American singer Leonard Cohen, then 39 and living on the Greek island of Hydra, had also travelled to Israel, eventually joining Israeli musicians performing impromptu concerts for troops in the Sinai. 

When Feldman arrived back in Israel, the mother of a volunteer suggested that he go sing to soldiers. So he went to the Israel Defense Forces Headquarters in Tel Aviv and auditioned. “For the first week, I was part of a small group that included a young man and woman who sang as a duo, a magician, and me. I sang and played guitar, and we spent that week performing for wounded soldiers in hospital,” he said. 

He recalled an unusual incident while performing in the hospital. The magician travelling with his group agreed to hypnotise a wounded officer and the man unexpectedly began speaking German and describing a neighbourhood in Germany. When he awoke, the officer reportedly said he couldn’t speak German, leaving Feldman astonished by what he’d witnessed. 

After a week working in the hospital, he decided that he wanted to do more, so he asked to be sent either to Gaza or the Sinai Peninsula. 

“On the Sunday evening, the duo, the magician, and I boarded a military transport plane. It wasn’t a passenger plane; it was more like a cargo plane, with seats running along the sides. The following morning we were taken by truck to the Sinai Peninsula. From there, some of us were allowed to cross the canal while others weren’t. The duo and I went across, and that was where we did our first performance,” he said. 

It wasn’t long before he was confronted with the realities of war. 

“I was in the middle of a song when a missile came overhead. I didn’t know what to do, so I just kept playing. When I finished, I asked if I should continue, and they all said, ‘Obviously, you must continue.’” 

Feldman recalled performing at the wedding of two Israeli soldiers in the Sinai during a stalemate in the fighting. Friends and family travelled by bus from Tel Aviv, Haifa, and elsewhere to attend, while the chuppah was held up using submachine guns. 

He was also taken with the singing duo to an air-raid shelter in no man’s land, where they performed as bombing continued throughout the afternoon. He said they were close enough to the Egyptian forces that, using a soldier’s binoculars, he could see one of their machine gun positions. He also remembered watching Israeli soldiers volunteer to travel through the area on a tractor to search for mines. 

Though Feldman volunteered for only about three months, it left a massive impact on him, and brought him closer to the Israeli people. 

“I had been in Israel for a couple of months before the Yom Kippur War and found it difficult to relate to Israelis. I found them very arrogant and abrasive. I remember speaking to a professor at a university and telling him, ‘I don’t like the Israeli people.’ He said to me, ‘You have to understand where we’re coming from. We’re fighting wars all the time, so we’re always on alert.’ 

“When I returned to Israel after the war broke out and volunteered to sing for the soldiers, I saw a completely different side of Israelis. They couldn’t do enough for me. They were phenomenal, and that’s when I began to understand what they were really about,” he said. 

On his return to South Africa from Israel, Feldman became one of the pioneers of its professional sound industry, providing sound for stadiums, theatres, opera houses, and musicians until 2011. 

In 2018, he began distributing Israeli health products produced by bees fed different blends of herbs.