“I Don’t Want to Leave You”: Esther Shamir’s Final Interview

Esther Shamir wrote the lyrics to “I Passed by Just to See” when she was only 21, fresh out of the Nahal Ensemble and newly married to Ephraim Shamir, who composed it using a melody he had written in his native Poland. Over the 50 years since their shared baby, and only child, stormed the charts, as people used to say then, countless guesses and interpretations have grown up around it. Many believe it describes life as a corridor in which the creator walks as a passerby until her time runs out. Recorded by the Center for Accessible Culture

Shamir never revealed what lay behind the lyrics. Even now she refuses to elaborate. “The beauty of the song is precisely in the fact that I do not interpret it,” she says in a soft voice, almost a whisper. “A corridor? Absolutely not. I wrote ‘I Passed by Just to See’ as an experience of observing the world, when I was young and searching for meaning. I have always seen the difficulty in life. I do not remember how old I was when I deeply understood that I was born into a world of suffering.”

A world of suffering? “Of course. You are born and you know that at some point you will die. This was not some sudden revelation that fell on me, and it is not a side effect of cancer either, for me it is built in. Until I gave birth to Hila, my eldest daughter, I never stopped asking myself what the point of this life was. As someone with enormous sensitivity, I tended toward depression, I experienced terrible crashes, and in those days there was no Cipralex yet. I always told Hila, ‘The moment you were born, the debate for me about whether it is worth living ended, because I am your mother and I am committed to you.’ And when Orly, my second daughter, was born, that feeling intensified.”

Can I ask how you are today? “Hard. Until a month ago I still went out of the house sometimes, in small doses. Since my physical condition worsened, I feel like a person hanging in the balance, between heaven and earth. I see the sky and it is vast, and I am not afraid of it, even when it draws near. On the other hand, I see the earth and I do not want to leave you. It hurts me to hurt the ones I love.”

In the past month the physical suffering has worsened. Before the interview, she stocked up on a double dose of painkillers, in addition to the morphine patch attached to her arm. Despite everything, a few weeks ago she arrived in a wheelchair at the studio of Yahal Doron, one half of Gai and Yahal, and recorded with him the duet “On the Other Side of Fear,” in which she wrote: “On the other side of fear / waits what is good to live for / to hold on all the way / to wait for the good to come.” Now it is important to her that as many ears as possible hear the line in the chorus, “And the sun will come!”, which moves between a cry and a promise.

“I felt that this song expresses everything I wanted to say now, in my current situation, that we need to go through the fear and slowly find the things worth fighting for. On the other side of the sorrow the sun will come someday, I do not know if now, I do not know if in my lifetime, but I find satisfaction in the feeling that I managed to do a little good for someone, and I am content with that.”

A chilling song. “Ugh, you are starting with the ‘chilling’ too? I got a lot of messages saying ‘goosebumps.’ Why?”

What is wrong with “chilling”? “Is it because the song really gives the listener goosebumps, or because I am now in the context of metastatic breast cancer?”

× × ×

Ten years ago she felt a lump in her breast, which was diagnosed as breast cancer. “I believe in doing what needs to be done, and that is what I did. I received drug treatment, and I had many full and good years. I loved a lot, I wrote, I created, I cared for people, I have wonderful grandchildren, there are many people I love, many people who love me. I did the best I could,” she sums up, as the title of one of her songs says.

Five years later, the first metastasis appeared, in the sternum, and Shamir signed consent forms for chemotherapy. “When the cancer returned I agreed to receive chemotherapy. Until then I had refused because I was holding on with drug treatment, but the chemo drugs did not work on me either. They did not win, they did not affect the cancer. I did another round of chemo, and another, and another, until I said, ‘Enough.’ As of now, neither conventional medicine nor alternative medicine has anything to offer me.”

When the war broke out, Shamir understood that her private battle was not over either. “On October 7 I told my partner that under the cover of the war the cancer would raise its head again, and I was not wrong. Now, despite the chemo and the radiation, there are metastases everywhere. The worst pains are in the bones, pains that the devil did not create.”

How do you deal with the pain? “Bones are the most painful thing there is, pains that make you want to die, and there are metastases in the liver too. I do not know whether it is worth going into detail, it seems a bit pornographic to me. Not that I am hiding it, but most people want a little denial, they really need it. There is also no reason for people to hurt me and with me, I do not want anyone to hurt because of me, so I prefer to avoid graphic details. On the other hand, we need to remember that we are here for a blink of an eye, all of us, even those who celebrated their 100th birthday, after all the world has already existed for millions of years.”

Her fingers caress her head as if still searching for the mane of curls. “This is fresh hair,” she says excitedly. “Only two months ago I finished a year of chemotherapy during which my hair did not fall out at all. But there was one particular drug they told me, ‘That’s it, this one will definitely make you bald,’ so the night before I got it intravenously I decided to shave my head. Both daughters came, and one of the sons-in-law too, and everything was shaved off. Then, while I was debating ‘wig, for and against,’ new straight hair started growing.”

Are you waiting for the first curl to appear? “The new hair is still short, when it grows a bit more the curls will appear, and I have already started debating. Grow it long or keep it short? People say I look better with it short and straight. And I adore the fresh color, דווקא because it is so different from my original color, chestnut.”

Now she sits, or rather reclines, in a rocking chair, her eyes fixed on the slice of sea caught in the panoramic window of her apartment, practicing radical acceptance. “That means that every moment I accept what is happening to me and do not fight it, and there is something in this acceptance that gives me strength.”

When you do not fight, does that mean you let go? “I do nothing. I look at the sea and at the world, and I try not to add anxieties and worries to myself and to reduce the ones I already carry. I look and I am silent and I feel that I am really peeling away. From what? From everything. From my strength, from my ego, from my curls, from my singing, I can no longer take care of other people, I can barely take care of myself. I have peeled away from all the gifts I was given, so what is left for me to do before ‘bye-bye’? Observe. And breathe.”

Does observation also generate hope? “There is personal hope and there is hope for the country. To my mind it is like a pendulum, after it has flown so far along the bad path, it must complete the whole route in the opposite direction, toward the great light. The light must return, and it will return. When? I do not know. We think good means pleasure, and that is not necessarily so, because the great pains are the ones that awaken us. You do not become awake if you have not gone through something.”

She tilts her head back, searching for air. “It’s a shame people do not understand the magnitude of the gift.”

What gift? “You were given the chance to live a long life and you managed to realize it. Once the possibility of a long life did not exist at all, and even today not everyone succeeds in doing it, but you won! Be happy! Why are you complaining about old age? How lucky you are to have reached an older age. It is not self-evident. Smile, say thank you.”

Is that also an insight from the past period? “The truth is that more than a decade ago I went to visit Miriam, the partner of my father, Asher Hirschberg, who had Alzheimer’s. When they told her, ‘This is Esther, Asher’s daughter,’ she asked, ‘Where is Asher?’ When they answered, ‘Asher passed away,’ she smiled and cried out joyfully, ‘I won!’ It made me laugh at the time, what is the victory in continuing to live after him? But since then I understood that it is a privilege to grow old, not every woman gets to reach the age of wrinkles.”

I was דווקא impressed by your smooth skin. “There is no reason to be impressed. I am still amazed by the logic of creation. You start to wrinkle at an age when your friends, your age peers, already need glasses to see how you really look.”

In the late 1970s there were several singer-songwriters in Israel, but there was not yet a female singer-songwriter. In every interview they asked me, ‘Why do you need to write your own songs?’ I did not understand the question. Who else would write about ‘A Man for One Night’ and the Lebanon War? I had the courage to say different things, of a new kind.”

× × ×

On the entrance sign to her magical apartment, on the fifth floor in Herzliya, next to the old water tower, three surnames are engraved, not in chronological order, Shir, Shamir, and Weintraub. That is how it is in Chapter Three.

Shir is from her second marriage to Roni Shir, a journalist and the father of her two daughters. Shamir is from Ephraim. “We did not meet in the Nahal Ensemble,” she corrects the common mistake. “Ephraim was discharged before me, I am younger. We got to know each other on a bus when we traveled with the band Kaveret to perform during the Yom Kippur War, in Sinai and the Golan. We also had a terrible period then, like now.”

What drove you to get married at 20? “After the Yom Kippur War there was a feeling that the state would not survive and we had to hurry. By 22 I was already divorced. Our relationship was better in music than in life.”

The third surname represents Ofer Weintraub, 67, her partner for almost 30 years. “Actually only 29,” she laughs. “Ofer is a physicist, a computer and artificial intelligence man. And we have managed to stay together only because we did not get married.”

They met when she was 42, divorced twice plus two children. He was then divorced plus one. “I asked Shoshi, my friend, to introduce me to ‘someone from high-tech.’ Why? Because in high-tech they give employees personality tests, and I wanted someone who had passed the test. The next day Shoshi called and said, ‘You will not believe what happened. I was standing in the office smoking area and suddenly a guy came over and asked me, maybe you have someone to introduce me to?’ That is how I met Ofer, and the connection between us was fairly immediate, even though on the face of it we are the least compatible. What is the secret of our chemistry? Alongside inspiration and creation, there is something very rational in me, and Ofer also has a creative side.”

Now she feels she has reached a balance among the different sides of her life. “I do not know when life ends, but I know that while I am here I want to be as present as I can. During one of the long scans I sat under the machine and asked myself what the three most important things are that it is worth living for. Of course the first figures that came before my eyes were family, Ofer, the daughters and the grandchildren.”

The daughters are Hili Shir, 36, a nurse-midwife, married to Roi and mother of Lia, 10, “and now she has a baby in her belly,” Shamir beams. “Every time I say something about the end, Hili shouts at me, ‘Mom, we have a brit on Rosh Hashanah, stop with the nonsense.’” The second, Orly Shir, 33, is doing a master’s degree in criminology and works in information security. She is married to Yoni and mother of Ra’i, 6, and Mili, 3.

“Then I remembered various moments during the struggle with cancer when I had no air, and I said, ‘No, fresh air comes first. Without air you do not exist,’” she continues. “Then I thought about my life and said, ‘No, inspiration is the most important thing for me,’ because it is the key to songs, to painting, to a healing method, to writing a book.”

The walls of her apartment are covered with her paintings. Stunning landscapes, in turquoise and green. “I decided I do not paint bad things. I said, ‘In songs I already gave everything, in painting there will only be light.’”

“I believe in doing what needs to be done, and that is what I did when I was diagnosed. I received drug treatment, I had good years. I loved a lot, I wrote, I created, I have wonderful grandchildren, there are many people I love, many people who love me. I did the best possible.”

Meaning? “I understood that if we are deep in the blackness, at some point the light will shine, because good and evil cannot exist without one another. That insight gives me a feeling that good things really can happen. We were born in a fairly good period in human terms, after World War II, we are not in camps. We had good years here in the country, and now I do not know where this world is going, but it is relative.”

Are you worried? “For 30 years I taught ‘Kol HaRuach,’ a healing method I developed that brings people into a different state of consciousness, after which there is silence. Silence is the place of truth. One day it dawned on me that the word ‘ra’ is actually the opposite of ‘er,’ awake, and suddenly I understood what stands behind war. Today, when thoughts and anxieties surface in me, many times I simply tell them, ‘Shhh... quiet,’ because only silence is the truth. Everything else is like foam on the surface of the sea.”

How do you keep that silence? Through meditation? “People ask me if I do a lot of meditation, and I answer that I already did enough meditation in my life, today I am in a meditative place that is all peace. It is not the peak of happiness, because I do not want to float, I want to have my feet on the ground, and therefore I need to agree to be in this non-ideal life.”

× × ×

A week before October 7 she was invited to perform at a gathering marking 50 years since the Yom Kippur War at the Cameri. “I was still okay,” she notes. “I told the audience that only 35 years after the Yom Kippur War was I able to write about it, and even then without mentioning its name. Even in ‘82, when I wrote ‘Mid-September,’ recorded by Gali Atari, I did not mention the name of the First Lebanon War. I did not feel there was a need. Anyone who listened understood what it was about.”

This time she understood that reality was different. “I told myself, ‘Now you are not waiting and not answering to anyone.’ In the first week of Swords of Iron, I re-recorded, with Danny Bassan, ‘May You Know No More Sorrow,’ a 20-year-old song. On October 28, when I found myself scribbling something on a piece of paper I had picked up from the bedside table, I did not think it would be the opening of a spring of creation.”

On the first note she wrote: “At night, at night / the prime minister tweeted me / ‘It is not my fault / it is him and him and him’ / and my heart was soothed by his pain / and I was glad he had time to tweet / because surely that means / all the children came back.” She signed only her first name, “with a kamatz under the tav, I already gave my daughters easy names,” and posted a photo of the note, in her own handwriting, online. “From that moment on, the songs attacked me. I felt that it was my role. Regardless of what I was going through personally, almost every day a note-song was written.”

She did not celebrate her 70th birthday because of the situation, but marked the round number with two gifts, the book “War Notes” and a new song, “One More Breath.” Yaakov Gilad passed along the request from the families of the hostages, and Roi and Shmulik Neufeld composed it and joined her in recording “One more breath, my child / one more breath to reach us / hold on, my girl / do not fall, do not break, you are our heart.”

Politics was never a dirty word for her. Even at the beginning she did not try to be likable and endearing. “And not because I did not want people to love me. It was more important to me to remain faithful to my art.”

Ephraim Shamir, your first husband, became a loud voice against the prime minister. “And rightly so, but I do not want to talk about his actions. We have not been together for 50 years.”

Are you in touch? “Yes, sort of friendly. I love Dganit, his amazing wife, with all my heart. She was with me in almost every protest in Hostages Square. I also have some difficult statements in ‘War Notes,’ and they have become sharper as the war dragged on, but I have no interest in entering into people’s personal layer. I am interested in sharpening what is happening here, instilling hope, and calling for action.”

Are you sorry you signed the artists’ petition during the war in Gaza? “I am not sorry and I do not regret a single moment of my life. As for the petition, most of the public did not even read it and has no idea what it is about.”

I am all ears. “There is a terrible war going on here, and in war terrible and immoral things also happen. The IDF is not entirely pure. These wars need to stop, peace needs to be made, agreements created, everything done so that it will be good for people. I hope this trend will spread. Yes, Hamas came to kill us and massacred us, but before that someone filled them with money.”

What would you say today, if you could, to Netanyahu? “That life is terribly short and even he will not live forever, so it would be very worthwhile for him to use his remaining years for an awake life of love and doing good for others. I would tell him that all the millions and all the palaces he accumulates and all the titles become meaningless when a person is lowered into the grave. Therefore, every person, and especially the prime minister, needs to take stock of how much sorrow he brings people and how much joy.”

Is there still a chance for the left in this country? “The division between left and right is long gone. Today there are people who want to live in an equal, liberal and enlightened state, and there are people who want to live in a totalitarian, fascist and messianic state. State of Israel or state of Judea.”

Domestic issues also seep into the drawer of anxieties she works so hard to empty, and does not always succeed. “Thanks to my mother, Tchiya bat Oren, who was the first Israeli feminist, I grew up with awareness of discrimination between women and men. Even 20 years ago I saw the trend of not letting women go on stage. Suddenly they started organizing rock shows with no women at all. Now we are marching, slowly but surely, toward a dark state. Women are being pushed to the back of the bus. Allah protect us.”

Looking back, did your political activism hurt your career? “And if it did,” she shrugs, “so what? Could I have done otherwise?”

Who will you vote for? “I really love the people who were with us in the streets, all those in Democrats. There are good people in Lapid’s camp too. In general, there are wonderful people in our country, and I do not understand how they allowed strange people to become Knesset members. No names.”

What, at 71 and a half, fear has fallen on you? “Do you think so? I cannot refer to specific figures because I put myself on a news diet, why should I hear all the curses and obscenities? At first I watched a lot of thrillers to stay awake and alert. Now I look for light things that will stroke my heart and not put my nervous system under stress. On YouTube there are fascinating films about philosophers and painters. I do not always have an appetite, but I try to eat good things, carrot juice and celery juice, Ofer makes me a salad with tahini. Just let the pain be a little less.”

× × ×

Her connection with Yahal Doron was formed in meetings of ACUM, where both are board members. “One day we discovered that we were born on the same date and I said to him, ‘Come on, let’s do something together.’ After a while he sent me a melody. When I listened to it I felt I wanted to leave behind some optimistic song, but not one that just arouses hope.”

What is “just arouses hope”? “To say ‘everything will be good’ is cheating. ‘Everything will be fine’ is the root of the Israeli tragedy. What, did people in the gas chambers say ‘everything will be good’? No. When it is bad, it is bad. Life is not happy-go-lucky, good and evil are intertwined, and that is what we need to deal with.”

Yahal, she says, was the one who pushed for a duet. “I told him, ‘You sing beautifully, release it like this,’ and he said, ‘No, I want it to be with you.’”

In the studio, did it occur to you that this might be the last song you record? “Of course, how could it not, but I do not want to say that because it will provoke shouting. Why? Because people do not want to hear painful things, and rightly so. In fact, even now I am not saying this is my last song because I will continue to write. Let’s say I do not see myself recording, certainly not performing, unless suddenly a great miracle happens here.”

And do you believe in miracles? “Most of the things that happen in our lives are the most unexpected, so I see them as some kind of miracle, for better or worse, but on that point I do not know what will happen. One of the things I know most clearly today is that I know nothing. I have joined Socrates. For decades I studied and taught, I was a naturopath and a spiritual teacher and I knew and knew, today I know that we know nothing.”

She has ten albums behind her, including “Milk Songs,” which contains innocent and sweet children’s songs. In 1982 she released her first solo album, “In the Lowest Place in Tel Aviv,” singing in a deep, rough voice that was considered groundbreaking in terms of female rock creation in Israel. Three years ago she received the ACUM award for her contribution to Israeli music and culture. She is proud of the long list of artists who recorded her songs, Gali Atari (“Stronger Than the Wind,” “The Day After”), Rita (“Station of Time”), Yehuda Poliker (“Today You Are Laughing,” “Shining in the Dark”), Harel Skaat (“The Wind Will Change Its Direction”), and many more. For Shlomo Artzi she wrote and composed “An Unnecessary Pact,” which she also sang alongside him.

Do you feel you have received the recognition you deserve? “As a creator? Yes, absolutely. It was always clear to me that my strongest part is the words. I have a few good melodies, but musically I did not break through my own glass ceiling. At the beginning I was considered a trailblazer, because by the late 1970s there were already a few singer-songwriters in the country, but there was not yet a female singer-songwriter. In every interview they asked me, ‘Why do you need to write your own songs?’ I did not understand the question. Who else would write about ‘A Man for One Night’ and the Lebanon War? I had the courage to say different things, of a new kind.”

And as a singer? “When I performed, I received a lot of appreciation, but I have less drive to perform. It is not stage fright, but personal limitations in my ability to arouse love in the audience. Before the army I performed at the Theatre Club in Tel Aviv, and some director passed by and said, ‘You need to smile here and smile there.’ Until then it had never even occurred to me that you can both sing and smile at the audience. Over the years I understood that I must create communication with the audience because I do not sing only to myself.”

“Stronger Than the Wind” was composed by Corinne Alal. Do you think about her lately? “I try to minimize thoughts about meetings with those who are no longer here. I think more about a meeting with the light, with the One, with the presence of love and infinity. Then our parting is not so hard. Because I remain in their heart, and they remain in mine.”

Is that what you tell your grandchildren now? “No, they are too small. My daughters know that I feel we will never part. The knowledge that we will always be together on an energetic level does not prevent the sorrow and the pain, but it gives me meaning and pushes me, with my waning strength, to create a life with more joy and happiness and love and acceptance.”

What do you know today about love that you did not know when you were young? “That when love appears in your life it is a great privilege. Not everyone can love.”

And what do you know today about creation that you did not know when you were young? “That songs also have a fate. One goes to the cemetery and another becomes king of the world. On every one of my albums there were wonderful songs that were not discovered, and I asked myself how can that be, is it possible that no one listened to them? In my last three albums there are treasures that have yet to be discovered. After...”

Which of your songs are you most proud of? “From time to time I quote one line or another and say, ‘Wow, you wrote that.’ Sometimes Ofer quotes a song and when I say, ‘Wow, beautiful,’ he smiles, ‘Yes, you wrote that.’ Someone once told me that the answer to this question is the song that was the most successful, and if that is true, then it is ‘I Passed by Just to See.’ That was also the name of the painting exhibition I presented. I am happy to discover that even today these words still arouse so many guesses and questions. At 21 I looked at the world as a place that contains so much pain, today that song echoes in my ears as a song of victory. I am already 71 and a half, and every day added to my life is a gift. I am happy and proud in every moment and every minute.”

Did you leave instructions? What would you want them to sing at your funeral or write on your tombstone? “What, do I also have to exercise complete control over those details? True, there were artists who produced their own farewell parties, but I prefer that other people also have a little work to do. My main task now is to be happy. About what? Usually my happiness is created when I love and when I give.”

What is the best advice you can give to someone reading this article right now? “Find joy. Invent joy. Bring joy into your life. Suffering comes in large quantities and on its own. Joy is a life mission. Our brain, by its very design, is programmed to think negatively, from age zero worries and anxieties are put into us so we will stay in line, and you do not need to reach my age and condition to practice how to be happy. There are people to whom joy comes naturally. I have to work on producing it and bringing it into life.”

And do you work on it? “I do not know if the joy of life is still on my menu.”

Published for the first time: 00:00, 21.05.26