The first person plural pronoun here refers to members of the male gender. The other group is the distaff side of the world. Women’s rights, and equality, unfortunately continue to be highly pertinent topics. Media outlets across the globe regularly run articles and reports about abuse of women and highlight the ludicrously lenient sentences handed down to men found guilty of such acts.
There is also a financial aspect to the sociopolitical imbalance. Over five decades after the Equal Pay Act was passed in the US, there is still a marked gender pay gap with women, on average, taking home only 81% of their male counterparts’ salaries.
While Maayan Rabani Neeman is not happy with the remuneration shortfall, she is far more concerned with the physical abuse meted out to women on a regular basis around the world. That, frequently, ends in death.
Thirty-something singer songwriter Rabani Neeman recently took part in the “Hashmii Kol” (Make Your Voice Heard) conference at the Hechal Hatarbut performing arts center in Jerusalem organized by the Influential Women’s Committee, under the auspices of the Jerusalem Municipality. The conference program featured speeches and various panel discussions, with one including a man with a violent past and who, thankfully, has mended his ways. There were also calls for the Knesset to establish a comprehensive rehabilitation basket for victims of domestic violence and their families.
Rabani Neeman’s contribution included a performance of her new song, which gave its name to the conference, against a backdrop of the emotive She’s Gone art installation created by Keren Yehezkeli Goldstein. She’s Gone comprises clothes worn by women who were victims of gender-based violence and were ultimately murdered by their partners or other family members. The installation was launched at the official residence of President Reuven Rivlin, and has since been exhibited at the Knesset, and across Asia and Europe and is due to be displayed at the UN building in New York.
The opening lines of “Hashmii Kol” make for chilling listening – “Don’t want to hide away again. Empty desert. Want to rise somewhere else, before I vanish. You are not alone.” The second stanza ends with “The child is asleep, the knife is in the cupboard.” The video of the song was directed by Rabani Neeman’s musician husband, Shalev Neeman, who also plays piano and drums. The video production was also supported by Sheleg Ben Sheetreet, who is very active in the feminist political arena, and was raped as a 13 year old. Her attacker was a convicted rapist who was out on parole at the time. Ben Sheetreet was also one of the driving forces behind the conference.
“Hashmii Kol” is not just a succinct song title. It references a horrific very real life situation Rabani Neeman experienced herself around five years ago. “I came home one day and I heard a woman crying out from the next door apartment building,” she recalls. It was immediately clear to her that this was no ordinary incident. “It was a cry of a woman for help. I knew it wasn’t just a matter of someone being startled by a mouse or a cockroach.”
Clearly there was not a moment to lose. “I ran down to the street and I started to shout myself, so the woman should know she could be heard and that she was not on her own.” But Rabani Neeman encountered a disturbing social phenomenon. “No one outside grasped how critical the situation was. Maybe they thought I was crazy. I couldn’t understand why no one was reacting, and helping. They weren’t bad people but, I don’t know, perhaps there wasn’t the awareness then of what might be happening.”
The singer was under no illusions herself. “I knew that every moment that passed was a matter of life or death. It was very scary.” It transpired that Rabani Neeman’s understanding of the drama taking place in her neighbor’s home was spot on. The police eventually arrived to find the woman had been stabbed by her partner, thankfully not fatally. “Perhaps my shouting stopped him in his tracks, and made him think,” she says. Basically, she saved the woman’s life. “I suppose so,” she says, reluctant to take too much praise for her quick thinking. “I don’t really know what might have happened had I not been there. I also don’t know what happened there a week later,” she adds grimly.
The conference, and the song, she hopes will help to spread the word of the hardly credible state of affairs, worldwide, whereby women of all ages are assaulted, murdered and treated as second class citizens. And, to add insult to injury, legal systems tend to make light of such crimes rather than issuing strong statements by handing out stiff punishments to deter offenders.
It is something, she feels, that should be taken on board on a universal basis. “We have to realize that there are people in distress everywhere – including men – and that we have a responsibility to help them.”
The incident with her neighbor made a lasting impression on her and resurfaced this past year, as more and more reports came out that there had been a sharp rise in domestic violence as families had to deal with repeated lockdowns. “I wrote the song a few months ago and I got in touch with Keren [Yehezkeli Goldstein]. I knew there was an exhibition she was involved in at the former Pussycat Club [striptease joint at Atarim Square in Tel Aviv] called “Loh Tirtzach” (You Shall Not Murder) and I told Keren I’d like to contribute to the exhibition as well, to sing at the opening.”
This clearly was not going to be some common or garden entertainment slot. “Keren asked me not to sing just any old pleasant song. She asked me to do something meaningful.” Initially, the muse seemed to be having a day off. “I looked for a song, but nothing came to me. Then I remembered what had happened that day, with the neighbor, and I had the song ready, with Shalev’s help, within a couple of hours. It was a moment when everything came together, and which resonated with the terrible [domestic] situation brought on by the pandemic.”
She simply had to make her own voice heard.