Lay Down Your Arms - Website: laydownyourarms.org
Scroll down to the next section and read about the idea and the site.
Lay Down Your Arms is a peace song with roots in Israel and Canada. The melody was written initially by Doron Levinson, an Israeli soldier, in memory of comrades who fell in the Yom Kippur War.
The Hebrew verses to the song are from Isaiah (2:4): "And they shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.”
When Levinson taught Hebrew at a local school in Toronto in late 1989, he met Eli Rubenstein, National Director of March of the Living Canada. The March of the Living, founded in 1988, takes Jewish students from around the world to Poland to study the history of the Holocaust.
On Holocaust Remembrance Day, the students march arm in arm with Holocaust survivors from Auschwitz to Birkenau. They travel to Israel to visit the birthplace and homeland of the Jewish people, where they commemorate Israel’s fallen soldiers on Yom Hazikaron and celebrate Israel’s independence on Yom Ha’atsmaut.
At the time, Rubenstein was looking for music connected to both the Holocaust and Israel. to teach the students and to include these songs in an educational album for them. Levinson’s song was ultimately chosen for the album.
Eventually, Toronto lyricists Lisa Catherine Cohen and Harry Lewis wrote an English version of the same melody, which became the song “Lay Down Your Arms.”
Since then, the song has been performed worldwide by various children's choirs and recorded many times.
Its timeless message of peace, dating back some 2500 years to the days of the prophet Isaiah, has never been more urgent than now.
Lay Down Your Arms: 2015 March of the Living
2015 marked the 70th anniversary of the end of WWII.
The March of the Living Children’s Choir and the Habonim Youth Choir, joined by other young people who love to sing and yearn for a peaceful world, recorded an exclusive version of the song.
This special version premiered in Auschwitz-Birkenau at March of the Living on Holocaust Remembrance Day.
On November 4th of that same year, 20 years had passed since the Prime Minister of Israel, Yitzchak Rabin, was assassinated.
The melody to Lay Down Your Arms was written by an Israeli soldier, Doron Levinson, in memory of his fallen comrades.
The Hebrew verses are taken from Isaiah 2:4: “And they shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they teach their children war anymore.”
Isaiah's words, written over 2,500 years ago, have spoken to peace-lovers in every generation. Today, those words appear on an inscription at the United Nations Peace Park in New York City. The video includes images from the UN Isaiah inscription and the Great Isaiah Scroll, part of the Dead Sea Scrolls currently housed in the Israel Museum. It is the oldest manuscript of the Book of Isaiah, estimated to be 2,000 - 2300 years old.
Elisa Goldman, Habonim Youth Choir member, performing with an Israeli band on CTV.
