Inbal Cohen-Or never knew Orr Katz, 20, a soldier from Maale Adumim who fell in battle in November 2024 in Gaza.

But when she learned that he loved the electronic sound of Odea, she started listening to the DJ’s tracks to create “Come in a Dream,” the song made in his memory as part of the Jerusalem-based Youth Creating Memory project.

“I wanted it to be in the style he loved, what inspired him,” said Cohen-Or.

The multi-faceted musical project aims to remember and memorialize those lost in war and battle. The program is an initiative of the Jerusalem chapter of the Tarbut Movement — a nationwide organization of artists, cultural advocates, and educators promoting social resilience through culture and art.

Two musicians and a poet work closely with bereaved families to produce and record a song about their loved one that is performed by a local youth ensemble.

The municipality-supported project came in the aftermath of the bloody Hamas onslaught of October 7, 2023, when some 1,200 civilians and the security personnel defending them were slaughtered by terrorists in southern Israel.

Following the massacre, Itamar Shochat, a musician studying at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, was looking for a way to help remember all those who were lost.

“We wanted to try and hold this huge loss after October 7, to offer some kind of solace,” said Shochat.

Shochat first reached out to the family of Cpt. Kfir Itzhak Franco, 22, a platoon commander who was killed on November 15, 2023, while battling Hamas in northern Gaza.

Franco’s mother gave Shochat a notebook of texts written by Franco while in mechina, a pre-army preparatory program. Shochat then turned to Avital Rolnik, a poet also from the Tarbut Movement, to help work the ideas into lyrics.

“We kept meeting with them, we tried all kinds of things on guitar, and eventually something came out that his mother loved,” said Shochat.

The song for Franco, “The Land is........

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