Musicיוסף יהודה מרטון

Joseph Yehuda Merton

Joseph Yehuda Merton was an Israeli musician, composer and educator who founded the Chabad choir Nichoach and wrote the niggun Ufaratzta.

1933 to 2013Founding the Nichoach choirThe niggun UfaratztaResearch of biblical cantillationProducing the International Bible Contest

Born: 14 June 1933, Sighișoara
Died: 2 December 2013
Occupation: musician, composer, choir director, head teacher
Education: Yeshivat Kfar Haroe, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology

Joseph Yehuda Merton was born in 1933 in Sighișoara

Merton was born in 1933 in Sighișoara, Romania, to Yaakov and Beila Malka, a religious and wealthy family. During World War II the family lost all its property. In 1945 he joined the Bnei Akiva youth movement.

In 1947 he sailed on the immigrant ship Pan York and was held by the British in Cyprus before reaching Israel. From 1948 he studied at the Kfar HaRoeh yeshiva and later finished high school. After his army service he studied architecture at the Technion and then at the Haifa conservatory.

In Haifa he taught music at the Hebrew Reali School and conducted choirs. In 1957 he grew close to Chabad, and he later ran the first school of the Ohalei Yosef Yitzchak network in Lod and a school in Jerusalem. He founded and conducted the Nichoach choir, the first choir to perform Chabad niggunim.

He researched the biblical cantillation marks and developed a method for reading scripture through them. He helped research Yiddish folk song and was among the founders and producers of the International Bible Contest for 38 years. He died in 2013.