Nurit Hirsh

Nurit Hirsh was born in Tel Aviv on August 13, 1942, into a home saturated with music.[1] Her father was a violinist and opera singer, and from an early age she practiced piano for many hours a day.[2] She also accompanied her grandfather to synagogue, where she absorbed cantorial singing and ornamentation; she later recalled that some of those sounds entered her melodies as "hidden ornamentations" without her fully realizing it.[2]

From a young age Hirsh began earning money through music, accompanying Israeli opera singers, playing piano in a ballet studio, and serving as accompanist at a theater and a quartet club.[1][2] She also worked as house pianist at the Hamam theater in Jaffa for approximately seven years during the 1960s, when Dan Ben-Amotz and Uri Zohar managed it, and later served as house pianist at Habima.[2][3]

After completing her studies at Municipal High School A in Tel Aviv in 1959, Hirsh entered the Israel Defense Forces and served in the Armored Corps entertainment troupe, commanded by Gabi Berlin, completing her service in 1962.[2][4] It was during this period that she began composing songs.[1] Her first melody for what became "Perach ha-Lilach" ("Lilac Flower") preceded its lyrics; she recalled devising the tune before Uri Asaf later fitted words to it during her army-band years.[5][6]

Following her military service, Hirsh pursued formal composition training at the Rubin Academy of Music in Tel Aviv from 1964 to 1966.[2] Her teachers there included Mordechai Seter, Yehezkel Braun, Yitzhak Sadai, Laszlo Roth, Noam Sheriff, and Zvi Keren; she studied chamber music with Eden Partosh and clarinet with Israeli Philharmonic musician Yaakov Barnea.[2] She subsequently extended her studies to New York University from 1974 to 1984, and also pursued studies in film composition, contemporary music, and electronic music at UCLA.[2][3]

Hirsh's professional career as a composer began in 1965 with the publication of her first two songs, both set to lyrics by Uri Asaf: "Perach ha-Lilach" ("The Lilac Flower"), first performed by the Sarid Trio, and "Kechulah ka-Halom" ("Blue as a Dream"), performed by the Gesher ha-Yarkon Trio.[1][4] Later performers of "Perach ha-Lilach" included Arik Einstein and Hava Alberstein, and the Israel Prize citation treats 1965 as the beginning of her sustained creative career.[2]

Over the following decades Hirsh composed prolifically across virtually every genre of Israeli popular music. Estimates of her output range from approximately 1,500 to more than 1,600 songs, including several hundred children's songs.[4][3] She also wrote scores for 14 feature films, music for numerous television series, and compositions for stage musicals.[7][4] She worked both by setting others' lyrics to music and by composing melodies that lyricists later supplied with words, and her songs have been translated into English, Spanish, Japanese, Greek, Turkish, Korean, and Arabic.[2]

Her principal creative partner was lyricist Ehud Manor, with whom she described a "really symbiotic" relationship: sometimes he gave her lyrics to set, and sometimes she sang a melody to him over the phone and he wrote lyrics for it.[5] Their collaboration produced dozens of songs, including "Rak BeYisrael," "BaShanah HaBa'ah," "A-Ba-Ni-Bi," and many others.[8] She also composed extensively with lyricist Yoram Taharlev, producing "Atah Li Eretz" and "BaPardes Leyad HaShoket," among other songs.[8] Her broader repertoire includes settings of poems by Haim Nahman Bialik, Nathan Alterman, Leah Goldberg, Rachel, Zelda, Daliah Ravikovitch, and Haim Hefer.[2]

Hirsh represented Israel at festivals abroad as a composer, orchestrator, and conductor, winning first prizes at festivals in Greece (1971), Malta (1972), Japan (1974), Chile (1975), Portugal (1978), Ireland (1979), and Yugoslavia (1979), as well as repeated wins in the annual Israel Radio song competition.[7][1] The Jerusalem Post reported that she was known to write as many as 35 songs in a month and sometimes four in a day, and could write a fully orchestrated arrangement in half an hour.[9]

In 1969, Hirsh composed "Oseh Shalom Bimromav" for the inaugural Hasidic Song Festival in Jerusalem, a contest for new Jewish music based on liturgical texts.[10] The song drew on words from the Kaddish prayer — she recalled asking Ehud Manor for a lyric idea, and he chose that text.[6] Hirsh described the composition as deeply personal, saying it connected her to Jewish peoplehood, tradition, and her grandparents' home.[6]

Sources differ on the song's exact placement: ynet reports that it finished second,[6] while the Center for Israel Education and Jewish Virtual Library report third place.[1][7] It went on to become an international hit adopted for prayer by Jewish communities in Israel and around the world.[7][4] It became, by Hirsh's own account, her most-performed song, with performances she estimated in the hundreds, and annual recordings and performances by the festival troupe in the United States helped carry it to American Jewish congregations.[5][10]

The song's reach created complications around attribution. Hirsh told the National Library of Israel that "Oseh Shalom Bimromav" was used in the United States as if it were a traditional folk song — including in a film about the Entebbe rescue — and she was required to pursue payment and correct attribution so that her music credit would be recognized.[5] The Jerusalem Post distinguished the ancient liturgical text from Hirsh's modern setting, noting that the music has only existed since 1969.[9] Her children's song "BarbaBa" experienced an analogous appropriation in a different direction: she was surprised to discover Chabad Hasidim singing it with words praising the Rebbe.[11]

Hirsh composed music for Israel's first entry in the Eurovision Song Contest, "Ey Sham" ("Somewhere"), with lyrics by Ehud Manor and performed by Ilanit.[7] The song placed fourth.[7] Hirsh also conducted the orchestra for that performance, making her a pioneer among female conductors at the contest.[4]

Five years later came the collaboration that would define her international reputation. "A-Ba-Ni-Bi," again with Manor's lyrics and performed by Izhar Cohen and the Alphabeta, won the 1978 Eurovision Song Contest in Paris — Israel's first Eurovision victory.[1][12] The song used the Hebrew children's Bet language to encode the phrase "I love you."[6] Its title renders "ani" ("I") through that word game and is described in a Hebrew Union College thesis as functioning as "me" or "I."[12]

The song's creation was memorably swift. Hirsh recalled that the idea for "A-Ba-Ni-Bi" initially emerged when Ehud Manor suggested a song in "the language of the home."[5] In a separate account, she described the song as originally intended for Avshalom Rubin's children's song festival, with Manor's wife, Ofra, suggesting it be submitted to the Eurovision selection instead.[6] Manor came up with the idea of writing in the Bet language, and the pair assembled the song "patch by patch" during a telephone conversation lasting several hours — within roughly the first 15 minutes they had about half the song, including the chorus.[5][6]

Hirsh conducted the orchestra at the 1978 Eurovision in Paris, an experience she described as profoundly emotional. The National Library of Israel recounts that she was so moved by the occasion that singer Ilanit helped her fasten the buttons on her blouse.[5] Before traveling to Paris, Hirsh had urged Manor to attend so he could see Izhar Cohen perform, though neither of them expected to win.[9]

The Jewish Women's Archive identifies Hirsh as the first woman to conduct the Eurovision orchestra.[4] A separate Maariv profile adds a conflicting account: Hirsh said she had long believed she held that distinction until a Danish Eurovision enthusiast informed her that another woman had conducted at the contest before her.[8]

One of the most beloved songs in the Hebrew repertoire, "BaShanah HaBa'ah" ("Next Year"), exemplifies the depth of the Hirsh-Manor creative partnership and carries a poignant backstory that Hirsh did not know when she composed it. Manor wrote the lyrics in memory of his younger brother, Yehuda Viner, who was killed in battle in 1968 — but when he brought the song to Hirsh, he did not share that context.[13][9] Uninformed of the song's memorial origins, Hirsh composed a melody that, at least in its final form, strikes an upbeat, hopeful tone.[13]

The song's emotional register was not fixed from the start. Hirsh recounted that her original setting was slower and sadder; singer Shlomo Tzach asked her to play it faster, saying the initial version felt sad and boring to him, so she accelerated the tempo until he was satisfied.[14] In response to the song's more hopeful direction, Manor adjusted a lyric, changing the image of the sun setting in the heron's wings to the sun rising there.[14] The song was released in 1970, performed by Ilan and Ilanit.[14] The result has been described as simultaneously a Rosh Hashanah song and a memorial song, holding sadness and hope in the same melody.[13]

The first song Hirsh composed with Manor, "The Houses That Ended by the Sea," also became a touchstone in her recollections of how their partnership worked. She recalled that Manor gave her the lyrics in writing, she set the note aside, and the next day she opened it, went to the piano, and composed the melody in one uninterrupted flow — marking the beginning of what would become one of Israeli music's most productive creative relationships.[11]

Beyond her work in popular song, Hirsh built a substantial body of work for the screen and stage. She composed scores for 14 feature films, among them "Ha-Shoter Azulai" ("The Policeman Azulai"), "Immi ha-Generalit" ("My Mother the General"), "Behind Bars," "Lupo, King of the Road," and "Katz and Karasso."[7][2] Her score for "Ha-Shoter Azulai" included the melody that became "Balada LaShoter"; she described writing the tune with the character played by actor Shaike Ophir in mind, before Ehud Manor supplied lyrics, and the song became a hit through the combined effect of the melody, the lyrics, the performance, and Ophir's emotional screen presence.[14]

In the theater, her most prominent work was the musical adaptation of Ephraim Kishon's stage play "Salah Shabati" at Habima in 1988.[2] The show ran for three consecutive seasons, and the song "Ach Ya Rab," performed by Ze'ev Revach in the title role, became a hit.[2][8] Her musical influences in composing for these varied contexts were wide-ranging: the Jerusalem Post described them as including Hasidic music, African American music, rock, the Bee Gees, Umm Kulthum, Arabic rhythms, and Yemenite dance rhythms.[9]

Hirsh composed music for numerous television series as well, including "Krovim Krovim," "Parpar Nechmad," "HaBayit Shel Pistuk," "Delet HaKsamim," and "Barba-Abba."[4][8] Her children's work extended into video: in 1992 she and lyricist Michal Rosen produced a children's videocassette titled "Did Dig Doog," of which hundreds of thousands of copies were sold, and she followed it in 1999 with a cassette titled "Pim Pam Po."[7][2] Four published collections of her songs appeared in 1969, 1984, 1990, and 1996.[7]

In 2005, Hirsh published "Sharim Moreshet" ("Singing Heritage") in collaboration with the Ministry of Education, a collection designed to teach Israeli history through her songs.[4] The initiative grew into a sustained educational program: an Israel Prize profile reported that she performed it for more than 450 elementary schools and that it provided the basis for a curriculum taught in hundreds of schools across Israel.[2]

The program continued for years. In a later interview, Hirsh described "Shirim Morashet im Nurit Hirsh" as a school program in which she had performed for 17 years, with performances at 845 schools and an estimated audience of at least one million pupils.[15] The initiative reflected the degree to which her songs had become embedded in Israeli civic and educational life, functioning not only as popular entertainment but as a living archive of collective memory.

Hirsh's cumulative output represents one of the most extensive creative careers in Israeli music. Her songs — estimated at approximately 1,500 to more than 1,600, including several hundred children's songs — span folk melodies sung as dances in Israel and abroad, liturgical settings adopted into synagogue worship worldwide, Eurovision-winning pop, film scores, and works performed by many leading Israeli artists.[4][3] The Israel Prize committee described her settings as seeking to portray the words and images in lyrics, addressing varied audiences including children, young people, and adults, and combining musical influences from East and West, Hasidic and Mediterranean traditions, measured rhythm and rhythmic variety — with a characteristic simplicity that distinguishes her synthesis.[16]

The Israeli government's Israel Prize profile characterizes Hirsh as a prominent composer whose music brings together East and West, Hasidic and Mediterranean traditions, and musical simplicity with a wide range of influences, and says her melodies reflect respect for lyricists' words and love of the Hebrew language.[2] Her songs appear in thousands of songbooks and recordings and have been translated into several languages.[2] Among her most enduring contributions is "Oseh Shalom Bimromav," now among the melodies frequently sung in synagogues and Jewish communities in Israel and around the world, and one that she described as connecting her personally to Jewish tradition and peoplehood.[4][6]

In 2016, Hirsh received the Israel Prize in the field of Hebrew song — the country's highest civilian honor — with the committee recognizing the breadth of her songwriting, her contributions to film, theater, and television, and the way her songs had accompanied Israeli life for more than fifty years.[17][2] Additional honors include the Kinor David Prize, a lifetime achievement award from ACUM, and honorary citizenship from Tel Aviv.[4]

Hirsh also donated her musical archive to the National Library of Israel, ensuring the preservation of her extensive body of work for future generations.[5] At the time of a 2025 interview, she reported having at least 1,600 melodies and arrangements stored on small tapes that she was in the process of transferring to digital format.[15]

Hirsh's former husband was Yoram Rosenfeld, who died of cancer in his forties.[9][11] They had two children: Ruth, an actress and opera singer based in Berlin, and Dani, a Tel Aviv jazz musician and faculty member at JAMD (the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance).[9] At the time of a 2022 Jerusalem Post profile, her partner was Moishik Linden, who — according to the article — fell in love with her after reading a newspaper feature about her.[9] The Israeli government's Israel Prize profile confirms the names of her two children and notes that Hirsh lives in Tel Aviv with her partner, whose name it renders as Moshe Linden.[2]

Published estimates of Hirsh's catalog vary. The Jewish Virtual Library credits her with more than 1,000 songs,[7] the Center for Israel Education estimates approximately 1,200 during her most prolific 40-year period,[1] and the Jewish Women's Archive places her repertoire at around 1,600.[4] The sources use different periods and formulations, and no single precise total is established.

Sources also disagree about the placement of "Oseh Shalom Bimromav" at the 1969 Hasidic Song Festival. ynet reports that it placed second,[6] while the Center for Israel Education and Jewish Virtual Library report third.[1][7]

A 2025 Maariv article places Israel's first Eurovision participation and Hirsh's entry "Ey Sham" in 1974.[18] The Center for Israel Education and Jewish Virtual Library both identify 1973 as the year of the entry,[1][7] as do other accounts in the record. The weight of the verified evidence supports 1973.

The claim that Hirsh was the first woman to conduct at Eurovision is disputed. The Jewish Women's Archive and Jerusalem Post state that she was the first,[4][9] while a Maariv profile reports that Hirsh later learned another woman had preceded her.[8]