Podcast: Yossi Klein Halevi on the Transformation of Israeli Music

This Week’s Guest: Yossi Klein Halevi

Properly understanding the soul of a nation requires understanding more than the way it orders its laws and governing institutions—it requires a look at the nation’s culture, at its art, at its theater, and, perhaps above all, at its music.

In this podcast, we are joined by the author and intellectual Yossi Klein Halevi to explore the transformation of Israeli music across the seven decades of the Jewish state. We start with Israel’s early years and the music that emerged out of the Ashkenazi, socialist, and kibbutz-oriented culture of the Labor Zionist elite, which then dominated the country’s culture. And then, in a shift that mirrors and illuminates broader changes in Israeli society, we see how, over time, Israeli music has come to draw more heavily on the culture of the Mizraḥim, the Jews of North Africa and the Middle East.