Shuli Rand on His Brother Who Passed Away in Childhood: "Believing in the Absolute Good of the Creator is the Hardest Test"

In an in-depth interview with Makor Rishon, acclaimed artist Shuli Rant shares his long journey — a journey found not only in the piercing, soul-shaking lyrics he writes, but also in the many crossroads where he stopped to question, wonder, and recalculate his path. Rand explains that the death of his brother Aharaleh was a defining event that deeply affected him and even shaped his spiritual world as a child.

At the time, the family was on shlichut in Paris while his brother studied in Yeshivat Nehalim. “When I was around four and a half, it became clear that he was sick, and they sent me to live with my aunt in Moshav Nehalim,” Rand recalls. Until then, he had been considered something of a gifted child who could read without vowels, had a very rich vocabulary, and “seemed like he was going to be a good kid.”

“This question is a daily struggle — to believe that God is good”

But then his brother passed away, and when they brought him to the shivah, something in him changed. “My mother tried to explain the situation and told me, ‘God takes the good ones.’ Something broke in my faith right there. I told myself, ‘If that’s the case, I don’t want to be good — so they won’t take me too.’ And from that point, I became a difficult child. Aharaleh had been a successful, gifted, truly good child. And me — they couldn’t figure out. I wasn’t rebellious; I was actually very sweet. But inside, I carried this secret — this rupture with God.”

A year after Aharaleh’s death, his sister Yehudit was born — a sweet child with Down syndrome. “These events in my childhood definitely shaped me. In my mind there are different levels of faith: faith that God exists, faith in the Torah of Israel. But the hardest thing is to believe in the absolute goodness of the Creator. That question is a daily struggle — to believe that God is good.”

As he grew older, the internal struggle only intensified, accompanied by a ceaseless search for truth. “When my parents didn’t know what to do with me, they would send me to ‘Uncle Reuven’ — Professor Reuven Feuerstein. I would come to him, we would talk, and he believed in me deeply. He always told my parents not to worry and reassured them.”

“There were battles with my parents, but they embraced me”

But his parents were anything but calm. “When people ask me when I ‘left religion,’ I answer: at age five,” he says. “I continued along the regular path, but something inside me shifted — I became a troubled child. My relationship with Torah and mitzvot became complicated.”

Things escalated until Rand began traveling on Shabbat at age 11 — yet he hid the truth from his parents with all his strength. Even though people would tell them they’d seen him in various places, his parents chose to embrace him instead of fighting. “My parents received important advice from the Admor of Sadegur: to love me more, and that’s all.

“Today everyone knows how to say that, but back then it was a rare statement. There were battles, but they held me with tremendous acceptance. And precisely because they didn’t come at me harshly, I never walked near my father without a kippah. Everything with me stayed calmer because they had made a difficult decision to accept me — and in the end, it paid off.”

Rand describes the moment he returned to his roots and debated whether to publicly wear a kippah, letting his secret become known. It happened when he received a theater award for a Hanoch Levin poem. “I’m sitting in the car, torn apart inside: should I walk into the hall with a kippah or without? In the end, I decided to go up that way, and that was the moment I chose to return to teshuvah in front of the entire world. It was incredibly powerful.”