6:29 a.m., October 7th, 2023. Kobi pulls his children from their beds and flees to the nearest bomb shelter. The massacres and atrocities are already underway. As Israel and Gaza descend into chaos, the world Kobi spent a lifetime trying to build begins to collapse around him. The Jewish Muezzin is the remarkable true story of Kobi Farhi, a boy from Jaffa who grew up amid conflict and tribal hatred, yet defied the odds to form one of the most improbable cultural phenomena in the Middle East – the award-winning band Orphaned Land. As founder and frontman, Kobi built something that brought generational enemies together. Long before it became a global symbol of activism, he took to the stage with the keffiyeh as a call for reconciliation. But Muslim fans have often paid a price. One was imprisoned because of his connection to the band. Others tattooed the band’s forbidden lyrics and symbols onto their skin. This is Kobi’s astonishing account of what it feels like to build bridges through music, to bring light under the darkest of shadows, to find Palestinians and Israelis singing together – an inspiring glimpse of coexistence in one of the most fractured places on earth.
