Matti Caspi, one of Israel’s greatest musicians, passed away early on Sunday morning. He was 76 years old.
Caspi announced in May 2025 that he was ill with cancer that had metastasized throughout his body.
Caspi’s passing will be mourned deeply by Israeli music lovers. His sound was distinctive and eclectic, and as a performer and composer, he created about one thousand songs.
They include some of the most beloved Israeli songs of all time, including “Brit Olam” (Covenant of Love), “Yamei Binyamina” (Binyamina Days), “Yelduti Hashniya” (My Second Childhood), “Nahlieli,” “We Didn’t Talk About Love,” and “Shir Am Naki” (A Clean Folk Song), which were among his many collaborations with legendary lyricist Ehud Manor, with whom he had a partnership that defined both of their careers.
He had important partnerships with many other artists, among them Sasha Argov, Shlomo Gronich, and Riki Gal.
Other songs that were big hits for Caspi include “Ode Tiree et Ha Derech” (You’ll See the Way), “Noah,” “Hinei, Hinei” (Here, Here), and “Lo Yadati Sheh Telchi Mimani” (I Didn’t Know You Would Leave Me).
His songs combined his crooning with a wealth of musical elements, sometimes playful, sometimes heartfelt, and always beautiful, filled with sensuality and emotion. Caspi fused styles from different cultures, mixing pop, rock, folk, Eastern European, Mizrahi, Balkan, jazz, and even Brazilian bossa nova music to create a sound that was all his own and which elevated Israeli music for the last half-century.
More than just about any other artist, his music was unmistakably his. When a Matti Caspi song comes on the radio, you instantly recognize his style.
An accomplished musician, he often played all the instruments on his songs, including guitar, bass, drums, piano, and harmonica.
Matti Caspi’s debut album made him a top Israeli performer
He had a career writing for others, but when his first eponymous solo album came out in 1974, it instantly made him into a top performer. His second album, also titled “Matti Caspi,” had an iconic cover by graphic artist David Tartakover, which simply showed a typical Israel doorbell with his name on it, and is considered one of the greatest Israeli album covers of all time.
The simple cover reflected his persona. Handsome in a way that typified the image of Israeli masculinity, he generally had a poker-face in public and didn’t court adulation the way many performers do. But his take-it-or-leave-it-attitude worked for him. He attracted a loyal following early on and never had to struggle to keep it.
Caspi was born to Romanian-immigrant parents in 1949 on Kibbutz Hanita in the Western Galilee. His father changed the family name, Argentero, to Caspi. After weathering a bout of polio as an infant that left him with a mild limp, Caspi began learning music as a young child, studying flute, mandolin, and piano and eventually studied at the conservatory in Nahariya.
The kibbutz even purchased a piano for him to practice on, which was an unusual expense at that time. While still a student at the conservatory, he began composing songs.
In 1968, he joined the Southern Command Band of the IDF and began composing for the troupe and performing. He sang a song he wrote, “Ani Met” (I’m Dying), a comic song, which he performed with Gadi Oron and Yaakov Noy, in fat suits. The trio continued to work together after they were discharged from the army, in a group called They Don’t Care and they released an album.
The group broke up, but Caspi kept composing and producing music for other artists, among them Chava Alberstein, before beginning his solo career. His early solo albums included classics that are still played frequently today. His songs showed a rich appreciation of Jewish musical traditions and sometimes celebrated Israeli and Jewish history and Bible stories, such as in the song, “Eliezer Ben Yehuda,” a tribute to the man who revived Hebrew as a spoken language.
Children love his songs as well as adults, and his many of his songs, such as “Nahlieli” and “Noah” are included on children’s albums.
He was married briefly in his 20s and divorced. In the mid-70s, he married Doreen Lubtezky and they had two children. When he wanted to end the marriage, the rabbinical authorities in Israel made it difficult, and he moved to California in the 1990s with Raquel Wenger, his girlfriend, whom he met when she was working for the Brazilian embassy in Tel Aviv.
For Caspi, it was love at first sight and he described in an interview that the first night he met her, he played the song “Yelduti Hashniya” (Second Childhood) for her.
When they were living in Los Angeles, he asked for and obtained a divorce from Lubetzky from a rabbinical court in Los Angeles, and married Wenger. But when he returned to Israel, he learned that the divorce he obtained in America was not considered valid and he was charged with bigamy.
He was convicted and given a six-month suspended sentence and a fine in the early 2000s. He and Wenger had two children and stayed together until his death.
In a 2015 documentary, Matti Caspi – Confession, he revealed his struggles with mental health issues and his diagnosis with an immune disorder that affected his vision and hearing.
In 2020, he announced he was leaving Israel and moving to Italy because of the coronavirus restrictions, and he refused to be vaccinated against the virus. He moved back to Israel in 2022.
In recent years, he released several songs, with lyrics by artists such as Shalom Hanoch, Danny Robas, and Yehonatan Geffen. In 2024, he performed with the Jerusalem Orchestra East West.
The unique body of work he leaves behind will continue to inspire and delight generations.