important to watch - blessed is the match movie

I remember being taught about Chana Senesh z"l in high school, and I was surprised that some of my friends had never heard of her.

Chana was a Hungarian Jew living in Palestine, now Israel. At the age of 22 she and 36 other Palestinian Jews were trained by the British army to parachute into Yugoslavia during the Second World War in order to help save the Jews of Hungary, who were about to be deported to the German death camp at Auschwitz.

Senesh was arrested at the Hungarian border, imprisoned and tortured, but she refused to reveal details of her mission and was eventually tried and executed by firing squad.

She is regarded as a national heroine in Israel, where several streets and a kibbutz are named after her, and her poetry is widely known.

One of her most famous songs is Halikha LeKesariya (A Walk to Caesarea), commonly known as Eli, Eli (My God, My God). Many singers have sung it, including Regina Spektor and Sophie Milman. It was used to close some versions of the film Schindler's List:

My God, My God, I pray that these things never end,
The sand and the sea,
The rustle of the waters,
Lightning of the Heavens,
The prayer of Man.

אלי, אלי, שלא יגמר לעולם
החול והים
רישרוש של המים
ברק השמים
תפילת האדם

The voice called, and I went.
I went, because the voice called.