Prof. Marina Ritzarev is a scholar of Russian background (PhD 1973, Doctorate d’État 1989) and Professor of music at Bar-Ilan University. Her interdisciplinary approach to vernacular cultures and national identities combines music and social anthropology, and includes eighteenth-century Russian music and twentieth-century Russian, Jewish, and Israeli music. She is the author o Eighteenth-Century Russian Music (Ashgate, 2006) and several books in Russian (on Dmitry Bortniansky, Maxim Berezovsky, Sergei Slonimsky, Music Encyclopedia for youth , Russian spiritual concerto, and others).