Nechama Lifshitz
Nechama Lifshitz (1927–2017) was a soprano who sang in Yiddish and later Hebrew. She became a major figure in Soviet Jewish culture during the 1950s and 1960s, helping keep Jewish identity alive in the Soviet Union through her concerts.
She was born in Kaunas, Lithuania. Her father, Yehuda Lifshitz, was a doctor, violinist, and Zionist, and his musical talent, along with her mother Batya’s singing, shaped her early life. She attended the Kaunas Real Hebrew Gymnasium. During World War II, she and her family fled east to Uzbekistan to escape the German army. They returned to Kaunas in 1946. Lifshitz studied at the Lithuanian Music Academy, learning to sing in multiple languages, and she trained to sing in Yiddish at the Moscow Yiddish State Theater.
Lifshitz graduated in 1951 and began singing with the Kaunas Opera, performing works such as The Barber of Seville and Rigoletto. Her first Yiddish concert followed in 1951. In the mid-1950s, she helped form a Yiddish singing troupe with Mark Braudo under the Lithuanian SSR Philharmonic. To broaden her repertoire, she went to Moscow to work with composers Shaul Senderei and Lev Pulver. Pulver helped arrange material by classic Jewish writers, and Senderei created new settings for many songs. Lifshitz’s early concerts featured this mix of Polish, Lithuanian, and Jewish music, with texts by Shmuel Halkin, Yosef Kotlyar, Zalman Shneur, and Sh. Ansky, along with folk songs and works by Mordechai Gebirtig. Her first Yiddish concert in Vilnius was in 1956, followed by tours in Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, and Central Asia. In 1957 she made her first 78 rpm recording, and in 1958 she won a major all-Soviet competition for variety artists, which helped bring her to Moscow audiences.
In 1959 Lifshitz performed across the Soviet Union for Sholem Aleichem’s centennial, sometimes facing official pushback. In Kyiv she sang the heart-wrenching lullaby “Babi-Yar,” which led to some venues restricting her. Officials also pressed her to sing more in Russian. That year she also began singing in Hebrew, a rare achievement on Soviet stages, and she started touring abroad in 1959 and 1960, visiting Paris, Vienna, Brussels, and Antwerp. Two Melodiya LPs appeared in 1960–1961.
As her career grew, Lifshitz added more Hebrew material to her concerts. She formed a closer connection with the Israeli embassy in Moscow, which provided records and scores but also drew KGB scrutiny. In 1966 she applied to emigrate to Israel, and performances were temporarily canceled. She resumed touring in 1967 and finally received an exit visa in 1969. A sold-out Tel Aviv concert in April 1969, attended by Golda Meir, marked a turning point; after moving to Israel, Lifshitz reduced her public performing.
In Israel she studied at Bar-Ilan University and later became a librarian and then the director of Tel Aviv’s municipal music library. She continued to record and appear on television. Lifshitz received several honors, including the Manger Prize in 1978 and the title of Honorable Citizen of Tel Aviv-Yafo in 2004. In 2006 she was elected chairman of the World Council for Yiddish Language and Jewish Culture. In 1997 she taught in St. Petersburg and started a Yiddish vocal workshop in Israel that bears her name.
Nechama Lifshitz died in Tel Aviv on 21 April 2017. Her personal archive of music and correspondence was donated to the National Library of Israel.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 10:48 (CET).