40 | AUGUST 8 • 2024 

to write the protest single 
“Blood in My Hands.” 
The following year, he 
joined other artists on the 
song “God Help Us Now” 
about young Afghan women 
suffering under the new 
regime, and later he penned 
“Can One Man Change the 
World” about Ukrainian 
President Volodymyr 
Zelenskyy and his resistance 
to the Russian invasion of his 
country. Ondrasik performed 
the song in Kyiv last July.
Ondrasik says that writing 
the elegiac “OK” — in which 
he declares, “This is a time 
for choosing/This is a time 
to mourn/The moral man 
is losing/Forbidden, lost for 
long” — “took a long time. 
The tone had to be right. The 
lyrics wrote themselves, but 
the tone was critical.” 
He listened to classical 
funeral marches, Jewish 
music and other sources, 
eventually bringing in 
cellist Dave Eggar to add an 
additional texture.
“I needed the humanity. I 
needed the pain, and adding 
cello was key,” Ondrasik 
explains. “I showed Dave a 
couple pictures of the Nova 

concert; ‘I know you don’t 
want to see this; but look 
what these people did.’ That’s 
when he played what he did. 
That’s the human pain, with 
me telling the story. Like my 
wife said, it’s not supposed to 
be beautiful.
“I take no pleasure in 
this,” Ondrasik adds. “I wish 
I never had to write any of 
these songs. To me, they’re 
not political; they’re about 
humanity. None of them 
get played on the radio, 
but they’re heard by tens of 
millions of people and matter 
to a lot of people. You try to 
find ways where you can have 
an impact and write when 
you’re inspired to, or when 
you’re angry or frustrated 
and have something to say. 
That’s kind of where I am 
now.”
The music career is 
continuing; Ondrasik has 
been touring this year with 
both his band and with a 
strong ensemble he also 
performs with. He says he’d 
like to make another album, 
too. 
“Seeing the impact of the 
[recent] songs has made me 
a little more invigorated to 

do it,” he says. “I’m trying 
to build out some blocks [of 
time] where I can do it and 
do it the right way.” 
He’s still trying to rally 
other artists to support Israel 
and the Jewish community; 
“Ideally there’d be a kind of 
Concert for New York to 
bring people together and 
express solidarity,” he says. 
The spring trip to Israel 
had a profound impact, 
meanwhile, that’s led to 
more engagement with 
the community and even 
some engagement with the 
practices. 
“I’m trying to practice my 
own kind of Sabbath now,” 
says Ondrasik, who describes 
himself as more spiritual 
than religious and has sung 
at the odd simchah over the 
years. 
“I love the idea of putting 
your phone down, putting 
your computer down for 24 
hours and being with family 
and let the digital and crazy 
world go away for a minute. 
“It’s nothing really formal 
— my wife laughs at me — 
but I am trying to practice 
that because I think it’s a 
beautiful idea.” 

ARTS&LIFE
MUSIC

YOUTUBE SCREENSHOT

Ondrasik sang his hit 
“Superman” and his new 
song “OK,” inspired by 
the aftermath of the Oct. 
7 attack on Israel.

continued from page 39

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