Israeli star Ishay Ribo to perform in Madison Square Garden in nearly-sold-out show

Ishay Ribo, one of Israel’s most beloved singer-songwriters, returns to New York City’s Madison Square Garden on Sunday, September 15, at 8 p.m., for an already all but sold out performance before an audience ranging from atheists to devout haredim and everyone in between. At press time, a few tickets were still available for under $200, and front row seats were commanding a Taylor Swift-like $2,200 on Ticketmaster.

Ribo appeals to Jews across the religious and socioeconomic spectrum in Israel and around the world, an extraordinarily rare feat in our extraordinarily divided times.

There’s something almost miraculous about an individual who appeals to huge Jewish and non-Jewish audiences while drawing musical inspiration from traditional Jewish sources. Ribo finds material for his songs from Torah scholars such as Rashi, the preeminent 11th-century French Talmud commentator; and Rabbi Eliyahu Dessler, the mid-20th-century rosh yeshiva [head] of Gateshead, in the United Kingdom, who popularized the mussar, or character development movement.

The career and appeal of Ishay Ribo

Ribo, who served two years in the IDF, spent the weeks and months after Oct. 7 traversing the State of Israel, attending as many as five funerals or shiva [mourning] homes a day, and volunteering his services for individuals and units within the IDF. He says that his activities on behalf of families and communities affected by the Hamas invasion took priority over composing, but he has since returned to the studio to create new songs.

The 35-year-old performer, a Sephardi Jew, married with five children and living in Jerusalem’s Kiryat Moshe neighborhood, was born in Marseilles to parents from Morocco and Algeria. The family immigrated to Israel before Ribo’s ninth birthday and gradually adopted Orthodoxy.

Ribo began to compose songs at age 14, having written more than 100 songs before emerging from his teens. His family lacked the funds to provide him with musical training, which Ribo now sees as an advantage, since it meant that he wasn’t competing with other talented children or influenced by other voices.

He made his studio debut shortly before enlisting in the IDF, where he served in the Technology and Maintenance Corps and also sang with the IDF’s Rabbinical Choir.

After leaving military service, his career took off, performing for increasingly large audiences, sometimes divided by gender, sometimes not. He is known for his interpretations of the works of such singer-songwriters as Idan Raichel, Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh, and Akiva Turgeman.

Ribo’s songs, such as “Seder Ha’avodah,” “Return Home,” and “We Will Wait For You,” have been played on YouTube and Spotify tens of millions of times, and his performances across Israel are typically instant sellouts.

Of his four albums, two are certified gold and one certified platinum. He also performed before an audience of almost 300,000 at last November’s Washington, DC, March for Israel rally. Not bad for a performer who spends much of his non-performance time learning in a Jerusalem kollel, or seminary for married men.

What makes Ribo such a cultural phenomenon is that his music reaches audiences across the entire religious spectrum. At a time when most Israelis and Diaspora Jews can agree on practically nothing, from judicial reform to the prosecution of the Gaza war, Ribo may well be the single most unifying individual in the Jewish world today.

Jews of all types respond to “Seder Ha’avodah,” whose lyrics are taken from the order of the high priest’s service on Yom Kippur, describing his music as touching their souls – a comment repeatedly found on Ribo’s social media.

Ribo’s American reception hasn’t always been gracious. In February, Harvard Chabad arranged for Ribo to perform at a Cambridge, Massachusetts, music club, only to discover that more than 30 of the venue’s staff, including box office and security workers, had refused to work the night of Ribo’s shows. They claimed that they would not be safe, due to Israel’s “genocidal” actions in Rafah, the Harvard Crimson reported. One of the groups protesting the concerts for over five hours outside the venue called itself Queers for a Free Palestine (how they would fare under Hamas control is a matter best left unimagined).

Ribo has the mass international following that performers dream of, but he doesn’t lead a rock star lifestyle.

After concerts, he says, he goes home, changes his children’s diapers, and takes out the trash. He seldom posts on social media and tries to separate his performance side from the day-to-day life with his family. He credits his wife for keeping him grounded, which sounds clichéd until you discover that he has no pretensions and lives the values he sings about.

The Madison Square Garden audience will find respite from the relentless drum roll of bad news from Gaza, from the United States presidential campaign, and from the many seemingly intractable divisions that fracture the Jewish world.

For one night, religious and secular, conservative and liberal Jews will commune together as they listen to lyrics from their common heritage that in some cases date back thousands of years. 