It was recently revealed that the musician and actor Asaf Hertz Repented. Now he has released a new song following the change in his life – “A simple man”, the song was written during the last period when he was renewing his Jewish roots and connection to God, about which he wrote: “Little by little I began to change the focus of my work from the theater to music which is the pen of the heart, crossing genders Communities of opinions and religions. The composition and study of the Torah created in me a sense of mission and partnership, refined me and my dreams and the understanding that out of simplicity darkness turns into light, with God’s help.” Hertz spoke with Iris Cole on 103FM and talked about what led to the process he went through and the process of working on the song.
How do you maintain kindness?
“I think that the process of repentance is a continuous process, it is daily, so every day I repent a little more with God’s help. I returned to my Jewish roots, the way to keep the Torah and mitzvot with joy and kindness. First of all, it is a daily job, every morning to get up anew and first of all Remember to give thanks, the first thing you do in the morning is say ‘I thank you’. First of all you are in a place of gratitude, of seeing the positive and looking at reality as something related to the way you think, the actions you do, the words you speak. All these things are very related to how That you act in the world and conduct yourself in it, and then reality changes accordingly. Because reality, if you change the letters, it is according to where you are, you can say.”
What led you into this place?
“I grew up in Herzliya, in a secular family, of course with tradition and holidays, but far from the Holy One, blessed be He, in terms of the fact that he is present, that you talk about him, that you understand that you are in his world. But since I was young I was drawn to spiritual things, if it was in music, which I started playing from a young age , something in reality was constantly missing. I would walk, talk and try to find things, something was simply missing.”
“The whole time my impulse was to want love, in this reality, what we are taught a lot is love, love, love. This is exactly the point, if we talk about how you repent then a very strong point that caught me that suddenly at a very old age, I am 31 years old, compared to The boy who wanted love for so many years. A year ago I suddenly started studying and then suddenly you learn that at the roots of our tradition, when you study the inner parts of the Torah, then it is not only love. There are two wings – one is love, one is fear. Fear is not from the language of fear but from the language of Respect, like you are with people you really respect, like there is a certain king or someone high up, we will feel some respect for him and respect ourselves and you behave accordingly.” “Before that I was in a world of only love, only of wanting good because your heart feels that you are good and you want to do good. And then I continue, and I also get a lot of slaps from reality because I want to do good and only want to love and I know that the inside wants to do these things And in reality it doesn’t happen.”
How are you with the change in your appearance?
“Listen, once again the preoccupation with the exterior has changed. Right now I feel very connected to myself and I now dress much more in a way that I actually emphasize, it’s the opposite. So I wouldn’t put anything on, everything is the way you are. This world that talks a lot about exactly the matter That of a lot of being, of myself, because fine, every human being is born the way he is and every human being has his own path, his own package. I always didn’t care to put myself on stage, so-called, but the world I feel I grew up in In it, when I put myself on stage in the end it was really only for myself, I thought I was coming to do good but I realized that there is no ground, nothing to hold you.”
“I am now studying Chabad Hasidism a lot and you begin to develop an understanding of what a person looks like and it happens on its own. All my life I would shave all the time because when they took me to positions I had to shave all the time and keep my hairdo and look like that. When I left the theater, I left one day, on Simchat Torah I got strength. When I left the theater and then suddenly I left the place where I behave according to how I worked and according to external and other things, then suddenly my externality starts to come out.”
Assisted in the preparation of the article: Noya Hasson 103fm