Jewish reggae singer Matisyahu dropped a new single and official music video titled “Ascent” on Friday, with the music video shot in Israel following the October 7 Hamas massacre.
Filmed on the festival grounds, the music video for Ascent features survivors of the Nova Music Festival massacre. On Oct. 7, Hamas terrorists raided the festival and killed 370 people and took 44 others captive back to Gaza. Matisyahu also shot the music video in southern Israeli neighborhoods, where Hamas broke in and killed and kidnapped countless others. On that fateful day, Hamas killed over 1,200 people and kidnapped over 250 others.
Matisyahu raps in the song about fighting against “waves of deniers… liars [who] start fires that blaze, but truth is the water that stands in its way.”
In an interview with Billboard News earlier in March, the musician, who began his musical career as a Hassidic Jew, discussed the inspiration for Ascent. The One Day singer revealed that he wrote the track’s title as a tribute to the Hebrew liturgy “Song of Ascents,” also known in Hebrew as “Shir Hamaalot”, in response to a significant surge in antisemitic hate crimes worldwide since Oct 7.
