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

On the occasion of his new album 'Ratzoh Vashov,' Shuli Rand reveals sides of his life story you may not know, including a faith crisis that began when he was just a five-year-old child with the death of his brother Ahar'le.

In an extensive interview with 'Makor Rishon,' the esteemed artist discusses his long journey, punctuated not only by his penetrating and moving song lyrics but also by numerous moments of reflection and recalibration. Rand noted that his brother Ahar'le's death was a seminal event that influenced him greatly and defined his spiritual world as a child.

At that time, his family was on a mission in Paris, while his brother was studying at the Nehalim yeshiva. "When I was around four and a half years old, it became clear that he was sick, and they sent me to be raised by my aunt in Moshav Nehalim," he explains. Up to that point, he was considered a kind of gifted child, able to read without punctuation and possessing a very rich language. "It seemed like I was going to be a good child."

"This question is a daily struggle, to believe that Hashem is good" 

But then his brother passed away, and when they brought him to the shiva, something changed in him. "My mother tried to explain reality to me and said, 'Hashem takes the good ones.' Something broke in my faith, and I said to myself, 'If that's the case, I don't want to be good so they won't take me too,' and from then on, I became a problematic child. Ahar'le was a successful, very talented child, truly the good child. But they couldn't understand me. I wasn't a rebellious child, rather a very nice child. But I held this secret of a crisis with Hashem."

A year after Ahar'le's death, his sister, Yehudit, was born—a sweet child with Down syndrome. "These childhood events undoubtedly shaped me. In my view, there are several levels of faith: there's faith in Hashem's existence, there's faith in the Torah of Israel. But the hardest thing is believing in the absolute good of the Creator. This question is a daily struggle, to believe that Hashem is good."

As he grew older, the internal struggle over this question intensified, along with a constant search for truth. "When my parents didn’t know what to do with me, they would send me to 'Uncle Reuven'—Prof. Reuven Feuerstein. I would go to him, and we would talk, and he had great faith in me. He always told my parents not to worry and reassured them."

"There were battles with my parents, but they really contained me"

But his parents were far from reassured. "Whenever someone asks me when I became secular, I say at the age of five," he says. "Since then, I continued on the regular path, but something within me changed—I started becoming a problematic child. My connection with the observance of Torah and mitzvot became complicated."

The deterioration accelerated, and Rand found himself beginning to drive on Shabbat, already at the age of 11—but he hid the truth from his parents with all his might. Despite people telling them they saw him in various places, his parents chose to embrace and accept him. "My parents received good advice from the Rebbe of Sadigura—to love me more, and that was it."

“Today, everyone knows to say that, but back then it was a very rare statement. There were wars with my parents, but they really contained me, and precisely because they didn't come down hard on me—I never stood near my father without a kippah. With me, everything was more relaxed because they made the difficult decision to contain me—and in the end, it was worthwhile," he concludes.

On the moment he decided to return to his roots and hesitated whether to wear a kippah in public and let the secret be revealed, Rand said it was when he received a theater award for a poem by Hanoch Levin. "I'm sitting in the car, torn inside whether to enter the hall with or without a kippah," he recalls. "In the end, I decided to go up as is, and that was the moment I decided to return to faith in front of the whole world. It was a very powerful moment."