Yitzhak Isaac Levy

Yitzhak Isaac Levy — Biography

Yitzhak (Isaac) Levy (Hebrew: יצחק לוי) was born on 15 May 1919 into a Sephardic Jewish family in Manisa, then part of the Ottoman Empire, and died in Jerusalem on 21 July 1977. An Israeli singer, lyricist, composer and musicologist of Turkish-Jewish origin, he became one of the leading figures in the study and performance of Sephardic music.

Levy was three years old when his family emigrated to Palestine in 1922. He trained at the Jerusalem Music Conservatory and the Samuel Rubin Israel Academy of Music in Tel Aviv. In 1954 he launched a series of Judaeo-Spanish (Ladino) broadcasts, the language spoken by Turkey's Jewish community, for the Israeli public broadcaster Kol Yisrael, and wrote and composed his own works in that language. He is particularly remembered for his musicological research and publications on Sephardic music.

He was married to Kohava Levy, and their daughter, Yasmin Levy, went on to become a well-known interpreter of Sephardic music in her own right.