Nostalgia Sunday – Happy Birthday Arik Einstein!

January 4, 2009 - 11:59 PM by Rachel Neiman · 4 Comments
Filed under: Art, Israeliness, Life, Music, Nostalgia Sunday, Pop Culture 

Arik Einstein turned 70 this week. Were it not for the war, this would have been front page news. Not only because it is an occasion for celebration but because in this land of the perpetual diminutive, where everyone goes by their childhood nickname, people find it hard to believe that Arik – singer of songs, cultural icon, survivor of the Sixties and the Tel Aviv bohemia – is entering his seventh decade. If that is so, and Arik is getting old, what does that mean the rest of us?

The English-language Wikipedia entry for Arik Enstein is a rather poor version of the far more comprehensive Hebrew one, but still manages to give the reader a sense of the breadth of his career. The son of an actor, he got his start in the Nahal Brigade entertainment corps, after being demobilized he joined the legendary Batzal Yarok entertainment troupe (together with Chaim Topol, Gila Almagor and others), then the Yarkon Bridge Trio (with Yehoram Gaon and Benny Amdursky), who were so hip, they covered a Beatles song! But if you really want to know what their music sounded like and how Israel looked like at the time, this clip is best:

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