A stone’s throw from Har Habayis, Itai Levy is recreating the musical instruments that set the background melody of the Beis Hamikdash and replicating the eight-stringed harp played by his own ancestors
(Photos: Shlomo Trichter)
On your next trip to Jerusalem, if you are brave enough to take one of the walking tours through the Old City’s Muslim Quarter, a tantalizing sound may catch your ear as you stroll by an open window in Beit Chevron. The peals of a stringed musical instrument — not quite a guitar, not quite a harp — float on the air and draw you in.
Maybe, just maybe, you are hearing tones that echo across the millennia from the time of the Beis Hamikdash. You have come upon the residence and workshop of Itai Levy, a student of Torah and music in Jerusalem’s Old City who has invested countless hours of research and effort in replicating the sheminis, one of the instruments played by his Levite ancestors on the holy site only a stone’s throw away.
“Technically, we don’t know a lot about the song of the Leviim in the Beis Hamikdash,” says Itai Levy, 45. “Of course, we all know that it was a very lofty, spiritual song that implanted thoughts of teshuvah and a longing to be closer to Hashem in those bringing korbanos to the Beis Hamikdash. The song brought tremendous joy on the Shalosh Regalim, which led to ruach hakodesh.”
That song has called Levy to make it his life’s work. The product of a traditional Israeli home — he went to shul with his father on Yamim Tovim, but his family wasn’t quite Shabbos observant — Itai embarked on a spiritual quest that, after army service, led to stints in several yeshivos: Machon Meir, Har Hamor, Ateret Kohanim, and Porat Yosef.
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