Yitzhak Isaac Levy

Yitzhak Isaac Levy — Biography

Yitzhak Isaac Levy was an Israeli baritone, composer and musicologist who both performed and documented the Ladino (Judaeo-Spanish) song heritage. Born in Manisa and taken to Palestine as a small child, he is known for collecting and publishing the songs and liturgical tradition of the Sephardic Jews; his daughter Yasmin Levy carries the musical tradition on today.

His family took him from Manisa to Palestine in 1922, when he was three. He studied at the Jerusalem music conservatory and developed his baritone voice at the Samuel Rubin Israel Academy of Music in Tel Aviv. As a composer he set to music Biblical verses and piyyutim by poets of the golden age of Jewish culture in Spain, among them Judah Halevi, Solomon ibn Gabirol and Abraham ibn Ezra. In 1954 he founded a series of Judaeo-Spanish broadcasts on the Israeli public radio Kol Yisrael, and in 1963 he was named director of that station's ethnic music section.

His collecting also went into print: the four volumes of Chants judéo-espagnols (1959-1973) and the multi-volume Antología de Liturgia Judeo-Española, a collection of Judaeo-Spanish liturgy, are the most prominent, while Cante Judeo-Español appeared in Paris in 1980, after his death. His wife Kohava Levy is also an interpreter of Sephardic songs; Yasmin is one of the couple's four children. Levy died in Jerusalem on 21 July 1977.