Dr. Israel Adler
guest speaker at Hoshanna!

Israel Adler was born in 1925 in Berlin and emigrated at the age of eleven to Palestine. He pursued talmudic studies in yeshivot in Jerusalem and Petah Tikvah, later acquiring his musical education in Paris, at the Conservatoire National de musique, at the École Practique des Hautes Études and at the Institut de Musicologie at the Sorbonne (Doctorate in 1963). From 1950-1963, he was in charge of the Hebraica/Judaica section of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris.

In 1963, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem appointed him director of the Music Department of the Jewish National and University Library. There he founded in 1964 the Israeli National Sound Archives and the Jewish Music Research Centre, which he directed from 1964 to 1969, and again from 1971 onwards. In 1969-1971, he served as Director of the Jewish National and University Library. In 1971, he was appointed Associate Professor of musicology at Tel Aviv University, and in 1973 he joined the Department of Musicology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Professor 1975, Chairman 1974-1977 and 1987-1989, Emeritus since 1994).

Israel Adler initiated in 1967 the foundation of the Israel Musicological Society which he chaired several times. He was founder and co-director of YUVAL-France (Center for the preservation of the musical traditions of the Jews), founder and president of the Provisional Council of the International Association of Sound Archives, Vice-president of the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centers and member of the Commission Internationale Mixte of RISM and RILM. From 1991 until 1997 he was member of the Executive Committee of the International Music Council of UNESCO, and in 1997 he was elected member of the Board of Directors of the International Musicological Society He was guest lecturer at numerous European, North and South American Universities, and Chercheur Associé at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris. In 1984 he obtained the “Kavod” Award of the Cantors Assembly (U.S.A) and in 1994 he was awarded an honorary doctorate of the Hebrew Union College (New York, Cincinnati, Jerusalem).

Most of Israel Adler’s publications are concerned with Jewish music from medieval times to the Emancipation of the Jews in Europe. Among his main fields of interest are the comprehension and disclosure of Hebrew writings concerning music, the rabbinical attitude towards music, the dialectic between oral transmission and written sources of sacred Jewish music, and the practice of Art music in and around the European synagogues in the 17th and 18th centuries.

For more information about Hoshanna!, Dr. Adler or Tempesta di Mare, you can reach us at 215-755-8776 or info@tempestadimare.org.