Pik-ing And Choosing – The Legacy of Zvika Pik

Friday August 19, 2022 – כ״ב אָב תשפ״ב

The late great Zvika Pik, of blessed memory, passed away on Sunday. In reflecting on his life, we are given key insights into an iconic Israeli popstar, but also something much more. Pik’s life-long contributions to the arts and culture have become standards on the list of the essential Israeli cultural canon but also feature prominently for world Jewry. His compositions and musical creations are emblematic of the magic of the cultural Zionist dream and are an essential part of Israel’s soundtrack and understanding of the story of Modern Israel.

Ahad Ha’am envisioned a Jewish society that would interweave our ancient wisdom and textual tradition into modern life, not necessarily as instruction manuals on how to live our lives, but as the societal foundation of what it meant to revive a language, live it, and breathe it. And Pik, along with other musicians of his generation like Shalom Hanoch, Chava Albershtein, and Shlomo Artzi, walked that fine line of identifying as secular, but composed music to words from the Siddur, the Tanakh, and more. This ironic phenomenon is often missed by non-Israelis and non-Hebrew speakers.

Pik came on the scene as an original versatile innovator. From the beginning, he dazzled the Who’s Who of the Israeli musical elite. Known as “the Maestro” in Israeli pop circles, he sang, composed, and wrote his own songs as well as dozens of #1 hits for others. Born in post-war Poland in 1949, Zvika (Henryk) immigrated to Israel in 1957 with his parents and continued his training as a classical pianist.

Going beyond the world of symphonies and classical arrangements, Pik starred in the Hebrew version of the cult-classic musical “Hair” – not known for its modesty – and immediately after, to the shock of the Yeshiva world, composed a winning melody to none other than Shema Yisrael.

His 1972 entry to the Chasidic Song Festival of “Shema Yisrael” – which won 3rd prize that year – was banned by the Yeshivot who shreid gevalt and complained that “because of him, they are saying the holy ‘Shema Yisrael’ in discotheques!” It was featured on his album of that year with a naked picture of him painted in metallic silver paint from the neck-down. After a few years, one could hear his melody being sung in some of the most stringent and shtark Haredi yeshivot, and of course in thousands of synagogues and summer camps around the world.

When one thinks of the Chassidic Song Festival, it is easy to imagine black-clad bearded Yidden sitting around trading “Yai bidie-bai” niggunim (or wordless melodies) with great spiritual fervor and exaltation. However, that is not the case. The Chassidic song festival is where so many great musicians and iconic melodies came to light. Some of the melodies that we might take for synagogue standards – like “Oseh Shalom,” “V’haer Eineinu,” “Al Shlosha D’varim”, “Od Yishama”, “Y’vareichacha,” and “Adon Olam,” were brought to life for the first time.

Yet, Pik brought his Shema Yisrael version in a pop-rock style (relative to 1972), which was also halakhically defiant. You see, Jewish law prohibits the repetition of the line “Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad” over and over (without a considerable break in-between), and as many of us will recognize, Pik composed his melody with repetition and refrain in direct defiance of the medieval mandate (whether he knew that or not we cannot be certain).

As a secular Jew and an Israeli, the watchword of our people had deep meaning and importance to him even if the laws around the practice of reciting it, or the thought of only uttering this biblical verse in the context of ritual prayer in a synagogue was unpalatable.

His setting for the “Shehecheyanu” blessing was in the Chassidic Song Festival of 1973 and has become so popular and regularly used that many might assume that it came down from Mt. Sinai with the Torah. Often people are shocked to discover that this melody – often sung while standing and swaying in a circle of arms locked over shoulders, and at many a life-cycle event – was composed by a secular Israeli pop star (and not

Debbie Friedman).

It is this connection and creative contribution that Ahad Ha’am (likely) dreamt about. It goes against the staunch anti-religious secularism of early Zionist writers such as Micha Yosef Berdichevsky and Yosef Haim Brenner and is so deeply interwoven into the fabric of Israel’s Jewish society that non-Israeli Jews often miss it.

Disregard halakha, fine. But hold on firmly and tightly, with an impervious grasp to our sacred canon, and breathe new life into it as New Jews creating a new society.

Zvika Pik has been compared to such musical icons as Elton John, ABBA, Neil Diamond, Barry Manilow, Lou Reed, Ian Gillan – most fittingly in my humble opinion Neil Diamond, but is most often referred to as the “Israeli David Bowie” due to his emphasis on glam, sexuality, publicity, and gossip.

As Haaretz’s Ben Shalev wrote:

“A long time before anyone in Israel knew what ’glam’ was, or took David Bowie seriously, Pik was enchanted by the idea that a pop artist was not obligated to reflect the reality in which he performed in a realistic and gray way – but the exact opposite: He could be freed from it, to soar above it.”

In 1973 and 1974, Pick made his first forays into the world of extroverted and unhinged pop, a style Israel wasn’t yet ready for. It could be seen in the album cover for “Pik,” which showed the singer with his upper body exposed, painted in metallic silver – and it could be heard in the sound, which had not yet shed its rock influences, but the direction was clear – toward the pleasure and liberation of the body on the dance floor.

As we are nearing the end of the Hebrew month Av and preparing to transition to Elul and then Tishrei, it is appropriate to mention his well-known hit נֶאֱסַף תִּשְׁרֵי (Neesaf Tishrei), in which Pik composed music to the words of the poet Natan Yonatan, who himself based it on an earlier poem by the Spanish Jewish poet and philosopher Shmuel HaNagid (993-1056).

It opens with the famous words:

“מֵת אָב וּמֵת אֵלוּל, וּמֵת חֻמָם, גַם נֶאֱסַף תִשְרֵי וּמֵת עִמָם”

“Av passed away and Elul passed away and their heat too
Tishrei has also been gathered to pass away with them…”

The song went from being about the sadness and futility of life to touching on life’s most painful experiences, namely the disruption of the natural order – when a child dies before its parents. Stocked with biblical references about King David and Yonatan, it is another reminder of the rich Jewish connection that comes with the Hebrew language, and from the layers of Jewish culture scaffolded from level to level, each one building on the depth and splendor of the one before.

When asked about the musical inspiration for some of his compositions, Pik recalled a childhood memory of walking past a church on his street in the Polish town of Wroclaw. He stopped in and saw the children in the choir dressed in white satin robes and heard the angelic sound of their hymns. “I have no doubt that listening to those hymns has influenced my musical outlook. The influence of those moments on me was sublime each and every time,” recalled Pik.

Pik’s numerous hits on the Israeli “pop” charts have become part of the soundtrack of Israel, and he has gained additional fame recently, becoming known as the father-in-law of filmmaker Quentin Tarantino who is married to his daughter Danielle[1].

“Zvika Pik renewed the Israeli cultural view and revolutionized it,” said Israel’s President Yitzhak Herzog. “His music made its way into everyone’s hearts as words in songs and became an inseparable part of the soundtrack of our lives. His outstanding talent as a creator bore Israel beautiful cultural fruit.

He is gone too soon. May his memory be a blessing.

Shabbat Shalom.

[1] It is noteworthy that the high-profile couple was married by an American Reform rabbi officiant.