Racheli Plant Rosen, knitted news12/14/22 10:07 p.m. in Kislo Tishpeg
(Photo: Tomer Namburg/Flash 90)
Yitzhak Banai, the father of the singer Avitar Banai, died yesterday (Tuesday) at the age of 92, and was laid to rest today in the cemetery in Shuresh. Hundreds of family members and friends accompanied him on his last journey, including Shuli Rand, Scout Grant, and Aviv Gefen, Avitar’s close friend.
“This morning I accompanied my brother Avitar who lost his father” Gefen wrote after the funeral. “At the height of his pain, I realized again how much I love him. For his family, his love, that in his old age he took his father under his protection until his last days.
May you no longer know sorrow, my beloved brother, continue to be a light and stretch the limits of music and the limits of the heart.”
(Photo: Rod Adir)
Aviv Gefen and Avitar Banai reunited for their first joint performance in 2012, which made them a one-of-a-kind musical duo. “An exciting project by a creator who followed God with a creator who has no God,” the advertisement for the show read at the time.
Aviv Gefen was then light years away from religion and tradition, and Avitar Banai, the repentant singer, was the complete opposite. What started as a musical connection, turned into a deep and long-lasting friendship.
Earlier today, Avitar paid tribute to his father in tears and read at his funeral the poem ‘Painters’ by Yehuda Amichai, which his father especially loved. “Dad had three most important things,” he said. “One of them is a synagogue. Last Saturday I opened the siddur and started reading, and he continued me with exactly the right flavors and pronunciation.
Yitzhak Banai (Photo: Yonatan Zindel/Flash 90)
The other thing was mom. When the doctor in the emergency room asked him what made him happy, he said ‘my wife’. For years he would wake up in the middle of the night, drink wine and write his mother a love letter – we have dozens of such letters.”
Avitar said that recently, his father asked him and his sisters to look after his mother and take care of her. “I promise you, father, that we will take care of her. You taught me about humility, modesty, honesty, loyalty to family and relationships.”
Orna Banai, his wife, wrote about him: “My father is gone. The great man, the wise, the humble, the funny, the one with the soul to spare.
Thank you father for the spiritual and cultural wealth you have given me. for your great and good love. I was privileged to grow up with such a special man, bursting with humor, knowledge, wisdom and the wisdom of the heart. How I will miss you, father.”
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