Former Prime Minister Ehud Barak has donated a brand-new piano to a promising young talent whose family could not afford an instrument for him to play, Hadashot News reported Sunday.
A week earlier, Hadashot ran an item about Oshri Bitao, 10, of Nazareth Illit, a student at the city's Golan elementary school, who was playing Beethoven four months after he first touched a piano.
The Hadashot item included footage of him playing at an event at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque. The report that the boy's family, immigrants from Ethiopia, did not own a piano, prompted a number of viewers to contact the station about donating one.
But it turned out that Barak, an amateur pianist, had already decided to buy Bitao a new Yamaha piano.
Before Barak stepped in, Bitao would spend hours practicing on an old piano at his school once lessons were over for the day.
"I wanted a piano like this one – better than the one at school," Bitao said.
"I never want to stop [playing]. One dream has come true, now I'm going on," he said.
Bitao's mother, Alam, told Hadashot News that Barak had reached out to the family and informed them that the piano would arrive on Sunday.
"Good luck, and stay strong," Barak told her.
"It's a feeling I never experienced – a former prime minister gives you a piano," Bitao said.
