Oct. 7 survivors offered rare respite from trauma at Los Angeles rock camp

”They tried to kill us. We survived. Let's eat.” Alan King's joke about Jewish holidays gets to the essence of Jewish persistence in the face of horror. He might have added, “Let's sing.” Music has accompanied the Jewish people for millennia through periods of joy and sorrow. Moses and the Israelites praised God for His salvation from the Egyptians in the “Song of the Sea.” Weddings, the Shabbat table, and kumsitzes all come with joyous soundtracks.In times of overwhelming devastation, songs have expressed survival, determination, and memory. During the Holocaust, Jews continued to compose and perform them in ghettos and concentration camps, including Theresienstadt. ”The Partisan Hymn,” “Zog nit keyn mol” (“Never Say”), was composed in the Vilna Ghetto.Three years ago this week, music and tragedy once again intertwined when Hamas-led terrorists attacked the Nova Music Festival as part of the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel.