Zehava Ben

Ben was born in 1968 and grew up in Beersheba. Born Zehava Benishti, she was one of 10 children of parents who immigrated from Morocco and was born five minutes after her twin sister, Eti Levy.[1][3] Ben recalled growing up in a transit camp and described the warmth of her family despite material hardship.[3]

Her father sang, taught music, and played the oud, violin, cymbals, and darbuka; Ben said her love of music came from him.[3] He had also played oud in Morocco, and Ben’s early musical influences included the Yemenite singer Zohar Argov. As a teenager, she studied Argov’s songs and was inspired by his Middle Eastern vocal style. After Argov died in 1987, she performed one of his songs in his memory at an anti-drug concert.[2]

Ben began performing at 18 and a half. A singer brought her to a small pub in Sderot, where she sang Umm Kulthum’s “Enta Omri.” Music promoter Eli Benai was in the audience, gave her his card, and became her first manager.[3]

Ben’s debut album, “Tipat Mazal,” was released in 1989 and produced by Eli Benai.[1] Its repertoire drew mainly on Turkish melodies and Moroccan party-song traditions, while the title song—derived from a Turkish folk tune—became a hit across Israel.[1][2] The album quickly made her a star, and later profiles described the title song as closely identified with her.[1][7]

Her first major success came in 1990, when she appeared in the film “Tippat Mazzal” (“A Drop of Luck”) and performed a song based on a Turkish folk tune. That year she also made a commercial cassette debut reported to have sold 80,000 copies.[2] Other accounts describe “Tipat Mazal” as selling tens of thousands of copies or estimate sales in the hundreds of thousands, so the figures should not be treated as a single settled total.[1][7]

A prominent breakthrough followed with Ethnix’s “Katurna Masala,” an east-west duet that reached first place in the 1992 Israeli hit parade.[2] Ethnix members first heard Ben on a recording played by an Eilat restaurant owner, located her the next day, and recorded the song with her in a session that band member Ze’ev Nechama recalled as lasting about 20 minutes and requiring one take.[7]

The song appeared on Ethnix’s 1991 album “Masala,” which combined electronic music and Mediterranean pop. The album sold about 80,000 copies and received double-platinum status, while “Katurna Masala” was among four singles from it that became major hits.[8] The collaboration brought a Mizrahi singer and club music into the Israeli mainstream, as described in a later profile.[7]

Ben’s repertoire developed across styles. In 1994, she turned to songs by Umm Kulthum, the major singer of the twentieth-century Arab world.[2] She performed Umm Kulthum’s “al-Atlal” and “Inta ‘umri” with the Haifa Arab Music Orchestra, conducted by Suheil Radwan, and released a CD of Umm Kulthum songs in 1995.[2] A National Library catalogue record also identifies her as the performer on a recording of “Inta Omri,” dated circa 1995, with Radwan and the orchestra.[9]

Ben and the orchestra performed at public concerts in Israel, at a Palestinian gathering in Nablus, in Jericho during Ramadan, and at memorial ceremonies for Yitzhak Rabin. They were also invited to festivals in Stockholm, Montpellier, and Paris, including the Théâtre de la Ville.[2] Her recordings and performances included Arabic songs associated with Umm Kulthum, Fairuz, and Warda, alongside Hebrew classics.[1]

Her Hebrew-language projects included “Zemer Shlosh Hateshuvot,” largely a collection of covers of songs by Rivka Zohar, and later albums of Hebrew songs in orchestral and electronic arrangements.[1] A 1998 National Library catalogue record lists her collection “The Flower in My Garden,” also identified as “Zehava Ben sings Zohar Argov,” with tracks including “Nakhon Lehayom,” “Elinor,” “At Li Laila,” and “Tzel Etz Tamar.”[10]

In 1997, Ben was named “Woman of the Year” by French television network TF1 for activities promoting peace. Her activities included traveling to Egypt to work on an album with Egyptian composers and performing in Jericho, Bethlehem, and elsewhere.[1] In a 2001 phone interview, Ben said she would continue singing in Arabic and hoped her music could help bring peace and create a connection.[4]

Ben’s later career included periods of financial difficulty after releases did not match her earlier success. A charity concert was organized to help her, although most of its cash proceeds—20,000 of 29,000 shekels—were reported stolen from a car.[7] She later returned to radio playlists with “Yesh Mi She’ohev Oti,” following about a decade away, and had success with “Ahava Kazo,” a duet with Idan Raichel.[7]

In 2021, Ben won the reality show “Big Brother,” defeating five other finalists and receiving a reported prize of one million shekels.[5] That year she performed at Caesarea Amphitheatre for the first time, in a concert that filled the venue and included songs from across her career, among them “Katurna Masala” and “Tipat Mazal.”[11]

Ben has also appeared in programs bringing together musical traditions. She was listed among performers of film music with the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra at the 2008 Israel Festival, and later prepared for a concert series with the Israeli Andalusian Orchestra.[12][3] In June 2024, she performed “A Mother’s Love” with bereaved mothers at a Nova community tribute concert at Yarkon Park.[13] In 2025, she was selected to light a torch at the Independence Day ceremony on Mount Herzl, alongside musician Micha Shitrit. The selection description recognized her role in bringing the liturgical poetry, pain, and love of Mizrahi culture to the center of Israeli music.[6]

Ben’s career has been associated with the emergence of Mediterranean Israeli music and the wider development of Mizrahi musical expression. Amy Horowitz describes her as a Moroccan Israeli performer from a poor Beersheba neighborhood and places this music in the context of Jews from Islamic lands encountering a European-dominated Israeli music industry that regarded their traditions as too Arabic. In Horowitz’s account, musicians responded by developing their own music and grassroots networks.[4]

Horowitz interprets Ben’s performances of Umm Kulthum as a claim to a musical inheritance that crosses national and political boundaries. Ben’s Israeli Jewish identity and her performance of the repertoire of an Egyptian Muslim singer bring together identities that may be in tension, including Jewish and Muslim, Israeli and Egyptian, and mainstream and disenfranchised.[4] Ben’s music has also been described in terms of Arab, Turkish, and Western rock influences alongside her Israeli identity.[4]

A 2016 profile described Ben preparing for the Israeli Andalusian Orchestra’s “Golden Voice” concerts, conducted by Michael Wolpe and pairing her with Sephardi liturgical singer Emil Zrihan.[3] Her selection to light a torch in 2025 marked public recognition of her contribution to Mizrahi culture and Israeli music.[6]

Ben’s public career has occasionally intersected with party politics. In 1996, she performed a Meretz election song with Dana Berger. In a 2020 interview, Ben said that she regretted the performance, had not felt comfortable being associated with politics, and had agreed to it because her manager wanted her to participate.[7] The episode remained a limited part of her public career rather than a defining feature of her musical work.

Horowitz’s discussion treats the relationship between Ben’s Israeli Jewish identity and the Egyptian Muslim musical heritage of Umm Kulthum as a complex cultural and political crossing. This is the scholar’s interpretation of Ben’s repertoire and performances, rather than a simple biographical description.[4]

A 2023 Jerusalem Post opinion article places Ben among Sephardi and Mizrahi singers whose music began receiving more radio exposure in the 1990s, contrasting an earlier cassette market near Tel Aviv’s central bus station with her later appearance at a Tower of David event. The author presents this as part of a broader social change in Israeli music; the article also describes the event amid judicial reform protests and supporters.[14]