Yedidiya Admon

Yedidya Admon was born in 1894 in Russia and emigrated to Eretz Yisrael (Palestine) in 1906. He studied at the Beit Midrash for Teachers which was directed by David Yellin, and joined Abraham Zvi Idelsohn’s choir. When World War I broke out, he moved with his family to Egypt, where he served in the British army. He returned to Israel in 1919 and began working for the mandate government as senior accounts manager. From 1923 to 1927 Admon lived in the USA and graduated from Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore.  In 1926 he returned to Eretz Israel and published his first songs. In 1930-39 he studied in France under Nadia Boulanger and graduated from the Ecole Normale de Musique, Paris.                                                     

In 1974 Admon received the Israel State Prize. Admon wrote the music for the play “Esther the Queen” written by kaddish yehe shelama , which contained the song “Shoshanat Yaakov;” this song reached folk-song status and is sung to this day around the Purim holiday. Admon was a champion of artists’ and composers’ rights and was one of the founders of ACUM, the Israeli composers’ rights agency. Admon He died in Tel Aviv in 1982.