Isaac Levy

Isaac Levy was born in Manisa near Izmir to a Sephardic Jewish family. At the age of three, he moved with his family to then Mandatory Palestine. Levy studied at the Conservatory of Music in Jerusalem (now the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance) and in Tel Aviv at the Samuel Rubin Israel Academy of Music (now the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music), where he developed his baritone. He worked as a composer and as a cantor. He composed music for Biblical verses and piyyutim written by poets of the golden age of Jewish culture in Spain, such as Rabbi Yehudah Halevi, Rabbi Solomon ibn Gevirol, Rav Abraham ibn Ezra, and others.
After the establishment of the state, he was appointed head of the Ladino department at the Israeli public radio, Kol Yisrael ("Voice of Israel"). In 1954, Levy founded a series of broadcasts in Ladino Judaeo-Spanish. In 1963, he was nominating as director of the section of ethnic music of Kol Yisrael.
His life's work was devoted to collect and to preserve the songs of Sephardic Jews; these songs had been passed down orally from generation to generation for more than 500 years. During his life he published four books containing Sephardic romances and another ten volumes of liturgical songs. He also recorded many of these songs for the national radio.
His wife, Kohava Levy (born in 1946), is a singer of Sephardic songs and is a skilled interpreter of Sephardic music. Their daughter is Yasmin Levy, an Israeli singer-songwriter of Judaeo-Spanish music who continues this musical tradition.
He died in Jerusalem in 1977.