The Missing Beat Generation: Coming of Age and Nostalgism in Arik Einstein’s Music

The singer-songwriter Arik Einstein (1939–2013) long ago secured his place in the Israeli cultural pantheon. Prolific and versatile, Einstein is often considered the singer who recorded the first Israeli rock album, importing sophisticated Anglo-American music to Israel. Soon thereafter, though, Einstein refashioned himself as a melancholic and nostalgic singer. Moving from musicology to cultural history, this article places Einstein’s musical career in a larger cultural and sociopolitical context. I read Einstein’s music against the backdrop of a failed attempt to construct Israeli youth culture during the late 1960s and highlight the affinity between this cultural project and the short-lived political attempt to forge a New Israeli Left. I then examine Einstein’s switch to nostalgia, which should be read as an ironic and reflective nostalgia that ultimately helped create a distinctively Israeli sense of home coupled with a critical and alienated sense of not being at home.