Collective Effervescence with Or Taicher, Michal Shahaf, Ben Yaffet and Dr. Shira Gabriel
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Welcome to Stories of Impact. I'm your host, Tavia Gilbert, and along with journalist Richard Sergei, every first and third Tuesday of the month, we share conversations about the art and science of human flourishing. I hope your year is off to a peaceful, productive, energized start. I think today's episode is the perfect conversation to begin our programming in 2023.

This is a story of impact that I have been so excited to bring you. It hits me right in the heart, exactly as it should. Let me set the stage for you. Have you ever been in a group of people? Everyone focused on the same thing. A sports competition or a sermon or a performance. And you've had a feeling that you're being transported or transformed by what you're experiencing?

It's when you've been a part of a collective moment of being that is so powerful and so meaningful that you forget about any self-consciousness or shyness or hesitation, and you feel swept up in what might be called celebration or rapture or joy or love. I think many of us have had this delicious, positively consuming feeling before, but

Maybe watching the World Cup or a presidential inauguration celebration or a holiday church service. There's actually a term for those beautiful, resonant, collective experiences, occasions that can feel almost spiritual. It's called collective effervescence. And today we are exploring the collective effervescence of Kululam,

a social musical initiative aimed at strengthening the fabric of society centering around mass singing events. Mass singing, I love this so much. As a member of choirs for decades and someone whose entire professional career has focused on the voice, I love the idea of Kululam. Group singing with the intention to inspire peace and spread love, and I'm so excited to bring it to you today.

Let's start with Mikhail Shachaf, CEO and co-founder of Kululam, to tell us what exactly Kululam is and how it works. What we do actually is that we bring sometimes hundreds, sometimes thousands, and sometimes tens of thousands of people that has no background in music. And in less than an hour, we teach them a new arrangement of a well-known song.

And after 45 minutes of teaching each group with its own part of the vocals, we do the final performance of "Everyone Together". We film it, we record it, and we distribute it online. We did hundreds of events until today, actually all around the world, and our videos have their own life

on social media. Musician Ben Yifet, along with his co-founders, Mikhail Shachaf and Or Teicher, had the courage to innovate the creation of a group singing event unlike any concert ever experienced before. As Kululam musical director and conductor, Yifet was responsible for two key aspects of the experience. The first is actually technical.

to make sure that this song is available and accessible for people that are non-musicians and non-singers, which is how the ranges go, if it's too complicated or not. And the second thing, which is actually the more important thing, is what the meaning of this song or what we are aiming to bring with this event, the message that we want to bring with this event, the miracle that Kouroulam does

is to bring a lot of people that are non-musicians to sing together with different vocal parts, which will take like two weeks for most choirs to do. And they're going to do that in half an hour. They're going to learn this song in half an hour, 45 minutes.

And the reason that it's happening is because they had to go out from their comfort zone to be very alert, to be very present in the moment, that's what we are trying to do with them, with us, and to learn something that they understand they need each other to succeed, to have a big goal that they need to be very alert to get into together.

And the result of that intense focus and presence, learning the song in just 45 minutes? Truly beautiful music. When you take 3,000 people that don't know to sing and probably singing out of tone most of their lives, right? Like me, yeah? I'm one of them. When you bring them together and they're singing together, suddenly it sounds like this beautiful harmony. How can it be?

How can it be? Each one of us alone is not something you want to listen to. And the thing is, is that when we are doing it together, when we are part as a group learning and performing it together, we must listen and be aligned with each other. And this is what makes it sound like this beautiful harmony. Why did transcendent mass singing events come into being?

Filmmaker and Kululam Artistic and Creative Director, or Taicher, first came up with the idea. My inspiration first of all is people. I'm living in my country. I felt in those times that the social dialogue was really violent. I felt that everybody can push their agenda without considering the people that we are surrounding.

and without any sensitivity to our environment around us and the people in the society around us. One time I got a video clip of 100,000 people standing in front of the Western Wall in Jerusalem, the only place for the Jewish people, one of the only places. And I remember I saw these people and they all stand there, men, women, all colors, all ages,

And they pray in Hebrew, they said, "Khatanu lefanecha." It means, "Please, God, forgive me for my sins." And I thought to myself, like, this is all the people that I see fighting on social media, on the street, pushing each other on the line for the supermarket. But in one night, they all stand there,

and pray together like hoping for a better future. And I felt the hope. I saw this and I asked myself, "What if we'll take this religious prayer and what if we will do it as a social prayer?" Then I had a question: "If a musical harmony can create harmony in humanity?" And I didn't understand in the first minute what I'm trying to do.

But I had a really deep feeling that this activity can change people's perspective, can change people, can open people's heart. So maybe in that way we will

start to open our perspective and maybe inspiration will fill, you know, our mind and our soul. I understand that a good idea is not enough. I need the right people with me to create this vision. I met Ben after I met 12 conductors that told me that this is the most stupid idea that I've ever heard.

How we can teach thousands of people to sing a song in three vocals in less than 45 minutes? Never can happen. Oh, and another thing I heard: "Oh, this is boring. Nobody will come to this." Michal, Ben and I started to build this vision, what everybody knows today as Kul Ulam.

Entrepreneur and digital strategy expert Shachaf took on the Kululam project because she wanted to use her talents and business experience to make a positive impact in her nation and around the globe. There wasn't a specific inspiration. There was more a very violent dialogue in the society that made us all understand

that something needs to be changed in Israel. But not only. We get hundreds of emails from people all across the globe. Everyone writes the same words,

which is we feel that our people are separated, there are a lot of violence, we need something that connects people, to remind people the things that connect us. It doesn't matter who we are, what we do, who we go to sleep with at night, all that matters is that we want to reconnect.

And we really feel privileged to provide this platform for a lot of countries. But first we provided it here in Israel. People want to be part of something that is bigger than themselves. People want to be part of a group, part of a mission, want to bring their voice to a group, want to be active. People want to be active.

They needed to call themselves something. So where did kululam come from? Kululu in Arabic means kululation. Kululation, like happiness. And in Hebrew, the word kulam is everyone. So it's like kululation for everyone, which is kululam.

And inside the word "Kul Ulam" there are a few hidden words also, which is "kol" in Hebrew, which is "voice", and "olam", which is "world". So everything together connects to it. But the idea is that actually the word doesn't mean anything because we want to create like a new language of singing together.

So, with the idea, a team, and the name, how exactly did these social mass singing innovators begin to realize their vision? We knew that we wanted to do a co-existent event and got approached from an NGO in Haifa. And Haifa in Israel is one of the most combined cities, you know. And we thought, what will be the right song?

For this kind of event, you know, for this coexistence event, we need something that is very, very delicate. So we invited 3,000 Muslims, Christians and Jews to sing together the song "One Day" by Matisseau in Hebrew, English and Arabic. "One Day" is one of the most monumental, inspirational events of Kul Ulam.

The founder's dream was big. It was audacious. It was bold. What would actually happen? No one quite knew. If we want that this event will happen, it's death or life. Yeah, sure, bring Muslim, Christian, Jews. No problem, no worries. Oh, God. This is felt like...

Mission Impossible. I didn't saw a different reality. I understand that we have to do it. I understand deeply inside me that this event will be the game changer of Kul Ulam. This event can show the world that we can do it differently.

The team made a music video documenting the February 2018 event, and the video is as inspirational and beautifully produced as the events themselves. We'll link to the video in the show notes, but for now, let me share what I saw in the viral video of that inaugural Hululam experience, with 3,000 people singing Matis Yahu's song "One Day."

The five-minute music video opens over Haifa, then pans to people on the street, in transit, on their way to the performance space, and then the camera snaps to conductor Ben Yafet. He spreads his arms wide as he invites all the participants, children on their parents' shoulders, old men, young women, Christians, Jews, Muslims, together to sing Haifa.

Evocative lights sweep over the darkened performance space, illuminating the faces of the singers. They close their eyes and hold their hands over their heart, move with the music, and raise their faces to the sky as if to offer the song to the heavens.

They grin at each other, lean into each other, put their arms around each other's shoulders, then jump with the beat of the drums. And an ecstatic and confident Yefet, flanked by live musicians, jumps too, his mouth stretched wide as he sings along. It is so ecstatic that you don't have to be there to feel the irresistible, joyful, heart-expanding energy.

But this video makes you want to be there, to be even more connected to the collective effervescence of this magical, transformative, mass singing experience. Yafet describes the transformation that happens for the people who come together to create the experience. What we are doing is to create an environment for a specific time that you can understand the power of us

of our community together. When you are in a Kululam event, from the beginning you come like a stranger, but then because you did something with so many people, it's like to go on a trip and you go with a lot of people that you don't know. But at some point, because you helped each other to get to the point that everyone wants to get into, you feel like you are connected.

And when we take this music, which has the power, the active power to practice this listening, this attention to each other, this is about us connecting and creating something bigger than us. And the power when we are connected is just crazy. Yafet experienced the power of collective effervescence at the very first event. When he saw what was happening among the participants,

Maybe that's how Kululam's motto, "Singing is Believing," came to life. There is some very, very big power of music to connect people together. So, at some point, when I looked to the right, I saw three women. One was with a cover on her head, the other one had a hijab, and the other one was so secular from Tel Aviv, having a good time.

And they all sang together: "One day this will change, treat people the same, stop with the violence, down with the hate, stop!" And when I look at them when we did these rehearsals, I was like: "Oh my God, what is happening right now?" And listen, I'm not a politician, but I think that the big changes always come from the people, from the ground.

from people that sincerely really want a significant change. And when I saw this event, I said, I think like we have hope and we have to generate this to every place that we can get into. At the end, everybody wants the same, wants to feel loved, wants to feel accepted, wants to feel that they have the place for them to be. What? Like this is

Let's get loud. We have to be enough brave to be vulnerable and honest. I don't know how to say that. It's like a trip in yourself about screaming yourself out. Not really screaming, just the message gets so loud. And it was a magical event.

Kululam launched with the one-day video getting 7 million views. And it was just what Shachaf and her co-founders had hoped for. We want to inspire also people around the world that will be able to see this kind of thing, that will see 3,000 Muslim Jews and Christians singing together. And we know it will inspire them.

Because of the effect that it did around the world, it got into World Radio Day and played in 2,000 radio stations around the world. This was the first event that also opened the gates of Kululam to the rest of the world. Kululam grew from there. We started from 550 participants and then got bigger and bigger and bigger. Our biggest event were 18,000 participants.

We grew up like this because most of the people was looking to do something that is different, that is meaningful, that is inspiring to connect with other people. Dr. Shira Gabriel, professor of psychology at the State University of New York at Buffalo, researches the human need for social connection.

She's interested in why it's so important for people to feel a sense of connection in the world, and also the different ways that people can fill their need to belong. So she's studying the science behind Kululam, because she wants to understand the transformative potential of mass singing

and the way it inspires connection. We're looking at Kululam, which is this amazing organization that runs these mass singing events where people join together in three-part harmonies and sing amazing songs.

get this sense of connection and this sense of things being sacred, of life for that hour when they're creating this music, life becoming something beyond just the day-to-day and becoming something sacred. In this increasingly secular world where fewer and fewer people are spending a lot of time in religious communities and engaged in religious

rituals that the need for this sensation of sacredness, for this feeling of spirituality and connection has not gone away. If anything, it's stronger now, but people aren't feeling it in these traditional ways. They're finding this sense of spirituality and sacredness and connection, and they're finding a sense of connection to other people in these non-religious places.

From the start, Khululam's events were designed down to a science. So these kinds of events that they are putting together are exactly

If we made a list of the things that we suspect lead to collective effervescence, they would be all the kinds of things that they're bringing together. And they involve music. And our research suggests that music plays a really integral role in collective effervescence, in fostering that sense. Events that tend to lead people to feel collective effervescence

tend to have music in them. And the more music you introduce into an event, the more likely people are to feel this. Music gives everyone a

central focus. Music introduces an element of ritual and so when we sing together, when we listen to songs together, there are collective elements, things that we're doing together. And any time that we are with other people and we're engaged in some kind of ritual wherein we are all doing the same thing together, that's going to increase the likelihood of this collective effervescence.

There's a reason why religious organizations throughout history have had people sing together because there's something about

creating something at the exact same moment as others that links us to them cognitively, that creates this sort of connection and this feeling of focus. And so music by its nature has within it all of the elements that are necessary to bring people together and to make things seem sacred.

Sharaf and Teicher agree. Music is of everyone and of no one. No one owns it. It doesn't matter who you are, what you do, where you learned or who is your mother, it doesn't matter. All that matters is that you came to be part of this mission and part of this group. And music as an international language has the ability to bridge. At the same time, at the same place, this is where the magic happens.

This is where the walls are down, the human connection is being made. Music as an international language has the ability to connect between people. Part of what we're doing in Kul Ulam is that the participants are coming as individuals and stepping out as a group with a new co-creation. Music is a language that

your heart speaking first before your mouth or your brain. Music surrounds us all the time. Prayer has music. We pray in harmony with music. I try to open your heart just because I want you to listen first to yourself and then to the people around you.

Dr. Gabriel points to the other elements of Kululam's magical elixir that quickly inspire connection between strangers. They're bringing people together who don't necessarily know one another, but are joined together in a common activity, and that's a really important part of collective effervescence. In addition, they're giving them a focus, so everyone is creating this song together.

In addition, they're also doing this in a way that has meaning for people. So they're introducing a song that has some layer of meaning and that people can focus in on together. So I think they have created this really special event where they are able to bring something sacred into a secular context.

circumstance. There's something really special about bringing together people who traditionally might not be linked to one another and providing them this opportunity to link and doing it in all of their languages. And that bringing together of people, it gives more meaning to the event. It in and of itself is sacred to bring people together like that who traditionally are not together

has the element of sacredness right in it.

Speaking one another's language is giving you a connection to a larger collective that you normally would not be a part of. And that is something that we crave as humans. That's something that we want so badly, is to feel this general sense that we are a part of something bigger than ourselves, that we have transcended and we have connected to others in meaningful ways. It's at the core

of what it means to be a human being. So you've taken the two things that mean the most to us in life, this desire for life to be meaningful and special and this desire to connect to others and to feel like you're a part of the world. And they, in that event, were able to tap into both of them in just an amazing way. I mean,

The event itself was amazing, but the millions and millions of people who've watched it and felt moved by it, that's something too. It was so powerful that you don't even have to be there to be moved by it. You don't even have to be there to feel like you're a part of it. Just watching it, you know, gives you chills and makes you feel something. Kululam's founders designed the events to be transcendent, and the founders know that they do have long-term impact.

It's not just the music of Kululam that creates the feeling of the sacred, but the diversity of language and peoples included. It lasts. The joy and the happiness that people feel after Kululam event stay with them. This song is going into your bones and it stays with you for a long time. It affects you.

makes you more calm, makes you more happy. Every Kul Ulam event makes me, when I see this harmony, when I really feel this harmony in my body, I know it sounds a bit weird, but I really feel it. I really feel this harmony in my body every time and think how many Kul Ulam events have I been in the past six years. And every time I feel it again and again and again.

And I believe that everyone feels the same. And this feeling, you know, it affects everyone's lives afterwards. Do Dr. Gabriel or the founders think of Kululam as a religious experience? It's very similar to religious activity, but it's not proper religious, you know. But it is as a relation. I think it's when people come to a Kululam event, the participants believe in that.

They believe in this kind of activity. They believe in this kind of connection. They're going into this and they're going into this social prayer. Actually, it's a social prayer. And this social prayer eventually brings the magic with it. I think like music have the power that frequency in music, the vibrate that always start from our heart but always vibrate in our body that every place has its own people

own vibes, own frequencies, own tempo. Every community, it doesn't matter if it's in Asia, if it's in Africa, if it's in the Middle East, they have their own music, but they feel the connection to this rhythm that's happening in their body. It's between a prayer, that in prayers there is some songs that we came from,

but this is a secular one and we have the opportunity to create another song to connect to other frequencies with so many people and music can bring that. Teicher shares evidence for how transformative kululam can be. Kululam activity can change people's life and this is something that we actually meet day to day. For example,

In one day, in our event in Haifa, in Israel, five years ago, we met a mother and a nine-year-old kid. And this girl, she has a selective mute. She's not speaking with the world. She's speaking only with her parents. More than that, she never speaks even with her family, only with her parents.

And this mother, she took her brothers and her girl to a Kululam event. And she noticed in the middle of the event that her child started mumbling. So she took her to another event, and another event, and another event. And something amazing happened. The girl started to sing.

She didn't talk, but she started singing in their house. And I just want to tell you that before a year or two years ago, this girl stand in front of her class and she made a lecture about Kululam that changed her life. This is not a power of Kululam. This is the power of the people that surrounds this girl, that transformed from the participants that surround her

And, you know, this is what we are trying to do. In fact, Teicher believes that people should frequently surround themselves with the power of Kululam. I really believe that this is something that you need to do weekly, like you go to the gym. I really believe that this is a gym for our brain and heart. This is what we try to do in Kululam. We are trying to connect between your mind

to your heart. We are building all this event for one moment. A moment that you will stand with thousands of people and feel your heart beating together. Wow. People don't understand sometimes we forgot to feel our heart beating. You know, this is our beatbox. This is our mentor. Our natural mentor.

And I feel that when you are, feel your heart beating, it's a moment of to be, of present. We all share the same prayer. We want a better future to our children. I just want to inspire people to understand that this is the way to bring a better future to their children. Kululam give the opportunity to inspire the world that we can work together

The singing is only a tool. In Kululam what we are doing, we are practicing listening. We are practicing relying on other people that we don't know by the way and to give others to lean on us.

Experiences of collective effervescence offer sacred transcendence that's essential for humans to flourish, Dr. Gabriel says. Our basic needs and desires have not changed. People still need to feel as if life is special and sacred. People still need to feel connected to others. And

And so being able to get that feeling from attending a football game or from going to a concert or from singing along with other people means that those basic human needs are still able to be met in an increasingly secular world. People are able to find a way to feel loved.

those important connections and that important sacredness in non-religious contexts and without any mention of God or traditional religion itself. There's a reason that people

will joke that football is their religion or that they'll have feelings towards singers that they like that border on religious ecstasy. It's because they're getting out of those bonds the same sorts of things that people may have traditionally gotten out of religious organizations.

What really leads to a happy life, to a meaningful life, is the feeling that we are not alone and that we're connected to others and that as that connection grows, we can do more with our lives and we can create more and we can transcend what feels like something that isn't special and is just ordinary to being something that is sacred. We need other people for that.

There's a reason why many religions want people to pray in groups and live in collectives when they pray, because there is something very special that happens when people come together. It gets at the very heart of what it means to be human and to live a meaningful life.

So yeah, we are much more when we are together than when we are by ourselves. You know, we talk about dogs as being pack animals and needing others. They've got nothing on us. Nothing. There's no species that needs company, that needs to be with others more than human beings. It's essential for physical health. It's essential for mental health. It's essential for a life well lived.

There are myriad benefits to the experience of collective effervescence like Kululam. In a Kululam event, it doesn't matter which god you believe and it's very inclusive and very diverse.

and it's diverse in the ages. You can see kids and you can see old people and we see that the result of this kind of activity is that it inspires people. This is exactly what we're trying to do. We're trying to inspire people and this inspiration can manifest in a lot of different ways that eventually we believe that reduce stress

bridge gaps between people, make connections between people. People are looking for something, to be part of something that is bigger than themselves, to be part of a mission, of a group. And this is exactly what we're doing here.

Dr. Gabriel agrees. The more people experience collective effervescence, the lower their stress level is, the less likely they are to have general negative affectivity and to suffer from depression, the more likely they are to feel as if their life has meaning.

the more likely they are to feel as if there's a purpose in what they're doing and to feel positive and at peace with their lives and to feel a general sense of connection. When these events really draw people in, like a Kululam event can, we have every reason to believe that there might be long-lasting effects of these events.

that feeling this need to feel connected and to feel like life is sacred and special in such a strong and intense way can linger in someone's life. It can boost them. It can change the way that they see the world for long enough that the changes can be lasting, that the way that they behave and interact with others can become habit and can thus last very long down the road.

What's the future of Kululam? I want that the activity of mass singing will be something that people do like this. They feel something is not working well in their community, in their school, in their workplace, and they will feel, "Let's do Kululam. Let's do mass singing. Let's sing together." It reduces stress. It brings people together.

We just started to do it in schools. We did a program of getting 25 schools in eight days with the song "One Day." And I saw these little kids singing "One Day," and I started crying. Now I want to cry also now. I started crying because I thought,

This one day, and suddenly four years later, I see these kids, even religious kids, singing in English the song "One Day," saying, "We don't want to fight no more." So for me, it's everything. It's the reason why we do that. The founders want to scale the project so that people all over the globe can experience the lasting effects sparked by the deep connection of mass singing.

You know, I want to read you something. A message that we got to our social media. Hello, I wish you are having a good day. Sorry, I don't understand your language. I am an Arab Muslim guy from Sudan, Africa. All my life, I was born and just found every Arab hates Israel. So I was one of the followers of that.

But after seeing what you guys are doing, the stage, the vibes, the people, the power on the songs, I want to say that I'm really sorry for every bit of hate I had for you. And thank you. Thank you so much for opening my eyes. This actually changes me. This is just one message that when we got it, it got so deep into my heart and I keep it and I'm walking with it.

And every time it gets hard, I'm looking at this message because it proves me that it does something, that it inspires people. This affects a lot on yourself, on your people around you, and eventually it, I believe, brings harmony in humanity. It has the ability to change, to put the walls down, and to make this human connection. And I'm saying, this is it.

This is it. This is exactly what we were talking about. Think how, what it makes people around the world to think, "It's possible guys. It's possible. We can do it." And this inspiration of "We can do it." It affects people. It makes them more motivation to change, more courage to change, give them hope. You know, our first slogan in Kulam is "Singing is believing."

It's like, if you're taking part in this kind of activity, it means you believe that there is a chance for a change. The impact that I'm trying to work for is a global impact. I see Kul Ulam as a factory for society.

trying to build, to strengthen the society that we live in. I really believe that Kul Ulam is the answer. I don't mean that Kul Ulam is like, will fix the problem in the world.

I mean that Kululam is just one of agent trying to empower people. We only want to help people to remind their self. We just want to remind people that they have the strength and the power to change their reality if they just want to. I call it as a global agent for good.

Earlier in the episode, I said that Orr Teicher came up with the idea for Kululam, and I'm not sure that's quite the right way to put it. It seems to me that wildly creative and seemingly outrageous ideas, like mass singing events to spark peace and harmony, are gifts from the universe. If we are present and open enough to receive them, and then act upon them,

When God or spirit or Gaia, or whatever we might refer to as a higher consciousness, invites us to be a medium for such genius, it can take courage to answer the call, and tenacity, resilience, focus, to bring the idea to life. But the planet and human beings and all life on Earth need those ideas.

and the healing power and power of connection that they offer. Special thanks to Kooloo Lom for allowing us to use their beautiful music in today's episode. This has been the Stories of Impact podcast with Richard Sergei and Tavia Gilbert. Written and produced by TalkBox Productions and Tavia Gilbert with senior producer Katie Flood. Mix and master by Kayla Elrod. Executive producer Michelle Cobb.

The Stories of Impact podcast is generously supported by Templeton World Charity Foundation.