Singer and Creator Nimrod Lev: "At Thirty, I Made Kiddush for the First Time; At Fifty, a Bar Mitzvah"

When I call him, Nimrod Lev is deeply immersed in studying the laws of a new fruit and the blessing of Shehecheyanu. He shares with me, reading and explaining the laws with extraordinary scholarship, and discusses various questions with me. His answers, which reveal considerable Torah knowledge, catch me off guard and leave me in complete shock. But perhaps what's most astonishing, even more than the knowledge, is his tone, which is impossible to miss: when Nimrod Lev talks about Torah, you can hear a happy person, if not in love. He is very complete and calm in his place after many years of searching.

For a moment, I try to recall Nimrod Lev, the public persona, the singer we all knew: a young, mysterious, and melancholic rocker, who managed to burn noteworthy stages, lead the Galgalatz playlist, and win prestigious awards like "Song of the Year," "Discovery of the Year," and "Album of the Year." Not long ago, small whispers suggested he began returning to religious practice, but somehow that story didn't quite connect with his image for me.

"I Wandered for Years, Disconnected, Broken"

"I grew up in Jerusalem, right in the last house in Beit HaKerem, almost at the spring in the forest, it was like the Garden of Eden," he describes. "Today I know how much the 'air of the Land of Israel makes wise'; you live and breathe this holiness, unaware of how much it influences you. I grew up in a completely secular home, in the Jerusalem of the '70s. My parents lived at the heart of the bohemia, professors from all over the world visited our living room, Amos Chacham, of blessed memory, who was then the Bible quiz world champion, lived above us. These were the celebrities then, full of content.

"As a child, I wandered among very intellectual settings, growing up at the Jerusalem Theatre, and not just there. My mother played in the orchestra, and I knew all the conductors and musicians. I have a childhood photo from there 'with foresight', with my brother Tomer (today an international pianist, Prof. Tomer Lev – A.T.K), where I'm playing drums on the big drums, and he's on the violin. Later, I was also a member of the symphony orchestra's board for the last ten years.

"Over the years, I had no friends connected to Judaism, no Kiddush, no Shabbat. Nothing. I thought religious people lived automatically, in an old, ancient world, and we were the progressive ones. I was leftist, textbook style, as they taught me, and religion seemed strange. I only knew liberal religious people, didn't understand anything, and wasn't interested, so I didn't engage with it.

"Then I went to learn the world's philosophies. I knew everything about everything—except Judaism. Today, thank God, I have a crazy library at home, and I can't stop reading and learning. Just today, for example, more books arrived from Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu, of blessed memory, whose halachic rulings I follow, who was all love of Israel. One cannot understand his greatness."

At age 11, Lev underwent a formative experience that changed his life forever after his eldest brother, Eddie, a fighter pilot, died in a plane crash. "My brother was a very significant figure in my life, he taught me music, and I was really attached to him. It was a very big break, which broke something within me that couldn't be reloaded. My mental structure disintegrated there. Ever since, I've wandered all those years, disconnected. Present and absent, but determined to make music and succeed with it, and through it to commemorate my brother's name and his love for Jerusalem. From this place, I wrote the song 'My Older Brother.' I moved through space with determination, doing, and insisting. It took me many years to achieve musical success."

In 1998, at the age of 28, his first album was released, achieving great success. The single "That's All the Magic" became a hit, winning 'Song of the Year' on Galei Tzahal and Reshet Gimel and earning him the title 'Discovery of the Year.' The following year, he won Song of the Year and the ACUM Gold Feather again, and in 2000 he received platinum certification for his album sales. To this day, "That's All the Magic" is the third most played song of the first decade of the millennium. He later released his second album, from which the song "Good Days" also achieved great success.

But surprisingly, this success did not make Nimrod a happier person, and perhaps even the opposite. "By nature, I'm a very shy person and had stage fright, finding myself suddenly on big stages, as the poster of that beautiful guy. When the success started, I lived above Cinema Tel Aviv, went downstairs, and couldn't walk down the street, fans jumped on me. It was dreadful. I didn't understand why I was in that place, I felt fake and deceitful, and I didn't really have anything to say. The words in the song 'They're looking at me all the time, what do they want? Why do I care?' were like a premonition of that place.

"I had to fill myself with content to have a purpose and reason for people wanting to listen to what I had to offer them. I moved to the north, to Kfar Vradim, and there I connected with special people, built my ensemble there with Yaniv and Irit, with whom I founded a pioneering production company for independent artists. At the same time, she ran a school that taught spirituality and love of Israel. Not from a Torah place, but 'besides' Judaism kind of, and it clicked perfectly with me. I learned everything from her without being her student. She was also one of the pioneers of alternative medicine in the country, and she planted the seeds of my internal change in me, thanks to which I also turned from left to right.

"There I began to connect to Judaism, from a very intellectual place: I started learning and reading online, opening old books in Google Books. At some point, I taught myself Rash"i script, wanting to understand it thoroughly. I delved into Jewish books and started discovering a whole world, right under my nose. I found everything there. I studied Gemara, Mishna, and Zohar. I discovered Rambam and mysticism, and then I read Rabbi Yosef Gikatilla, who teaches the exact divine arithmetic in Hashem's names, and I realized I couldn't just keep learning without practicing. That I must honor while I learn.

"I called the Chabad emissary in the village, Rabbi Amichai, and asked him: what does it take to be a true Jew? He gave me a prayer book, tallit, and Sephardic tefillin. I started putting on tefillin and slightly seeing the light in it.

"I started trying to keep Shabbat and was afraid even to open a window," he laughs, "because I feared it was a desecration of Shabbat, maybe a construction labor, I didn't know what was allowed or forbidden, I learned things from a disconnected and intellectual place. Initially, I learned everything alone. I heard Kiddush for the first time only at age 30... Today I am already connected to a synagogue's community, with religious friends, and of course the secular friends have remained."

Alongside strengthening his faith, Nimrod continued to devote himself to music, then met his future wife, Noa Benush, and returned to live with her in Tel Aviv. "Today, even though she's not religious, she accommodates me, and we live together; she observes what's necessary for us and even joyfully joins in art.

"I never had a Bar Mitzvah because it occurred after my brother died... I also didn't know what it was, and so it happened that the first time I went up to read the Torah myself and also celebrated a Bar Mitzvah, was only at age 50 (!).

"I understood that our role is to bring goodness to the world. It's not related to anyone individually, but we are all part of a harmonious whole. Everyone needs to 'return to repentance,' religious, secular, which means 'love your neighbor,' proper behavior, stop looking for each other, and stop the baseless hatred around, which makes you hate and not even know why and whom. I feel that correcting character traits brings peace of mind. For me, I don't come to people asking them to do anything, rather I correct myself and everything already mends from that. It's a shared responsibility, everyone should correct themselves, and the world will be corrected."

And symbolically, along with the substantial change he underwent, his first name also changed, adding Abraham to his name on the advice of rabbis, and since then he insists on being called 'Nimrod Abraham.' "The rabbis I consulted with forbade me to change the name completely," he explains, "and told me to just add to this name because otherwise, it would change the essence of the correction that needs to be done, and so it happened."

Later, he also discovered that he is related to the Maharal of Prague. "We kind of knew about it, but we didn't know what it meant, it didn't mean anything to us," he admits. "In recent years, my brother traveled and delved into it, and what's interesting is that the Maharal is my 'favorite'; I loved learning him from the start, from when I came to my senses."

"If Someone Stings Me— I Show Them Love"

In 2020, Lev released a new melody for the Psalm "Yoducha Amim," which he recorded at home during the COVID-19 lockdown and received success and many plays. Since then, he continues to create primarily faith-based material.

Where do you find the courage to make such a significant change?

"Every time I jump into the water, it's clear that I'm apprehensive, but I know these are just 'computer screens' Hashem puts before me. The apprehension is a fiction, and after rising above the trial, He opens a screen for me, another world opens, and from there my further work is derived. I also believe that Hashem rewards those who have complete faith in Him – the attribute of trust is something we all need to hold on to, especially now. That is the essence of a Jew. Look where we live, Iran, Lebanon, something terribly frightening, and there's no one here without the attribute of trust, even the secular. Otherwise, how can we... These are not normal times."

Final question: You've made many brave changes, yet you continue to live in the heart of Tel Aviv, even though you're really connected to Jerusalem. Isn't it hard for you, especially in this tense period

"True, I still live in Tel Aviv, in the heart of Tel Aviv, my whole environment is secular, with my wife who comes from a very distant place from Judaism. I agree that there's complexity in the duality of the secular with the sacred, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, my work environment, and the Torah. But I've learned to live in it in peace for years, to see it as a mission.

"I feel I need to move from my personal correction, from the place that felt empty and is filled with activism, spirituality, and Judaism, and to achieve Tikkun Olam, I need to benefit others and the whole, to influence and not just keep for myself what I've come to realize on this journey over time. I feel committed to social correction and act solely from the place of the overall correction.

"Besides, I have a blessing from Hashem that I'm charming," he laughs. "I was a cute child and remained a charming man, a good man. And if someone on social media, for example, approaches me with a sting or makes a sarcastic comment—I simply tell them I love them, sometimes play them something beautiful, not trying to spar. I understand they're having a hard time. Regarding myself, I realize that truth is only given through persistence, stubbornness like a rock; for me, there's only one thing. That's how it works. I strive to be a rock in faith. But with others? Be soft. Only with love, not coercion, gently."

Nimrod Abraham Lev appeared with Oded Harush on the "Oded On the Road" show, to watch click here