Edith Gerson-Kiwi and the Making of a Sound Archive in Israel

Authors

Keywords:

Edith Gerson-Kiwi, Israeli National Sound Archive, ethnomusicology, Oriental music, Jewish music, sound preservation, recording technology, recording formats, gender and musicology

Abstract

This article reconsiders the foundational role of Edith Gerson-Kiwi (1908–92) in the emergence of Israeli musicology, ethnomusicology, and sound archiving. Trained in German historical musicology, music librarianship, and Renaissance source criticism, Gerson-Kiwi redirected her scholarly practice after immigrating to Mandatory Palestine in 1935, where she encountered Jewish Oriental musical traditions shaped by oral transmission, maqām, improvisation, and ritual performance. Drawing on archival sources, correspondence, institutional reports, recordings, inventories, published writings, and interviews, the article examines her work as a field worker, theorist, collector, teacher, and architect of Israel’s ethnographic sound archive. It argues that her recordings, cataloging systems, preservation practices, and institutional initiatives laid essential foundations for the National Sound Archive and for the study of Oriental Jewish music in Israel. At the same time, the article situates her scholarship within the tensions of Zionist Orientalism, national cultural formation, and gendered structures of academic recognition. By reading Gerson-Kiwi’s career through the politics of archival production and the “Matilda Effect,” the article shows how her intellectual and infrastructural labor was later marginalized within the historiography of Israeli musicology. Recovering her role therefore requires not only biographical correction, but also a broader reassessment of how musical knowledge, archives, and disciplinary authority are constructed.

Author Biography

  • Gila Flam, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

    Dr. Gila Flam is an ethnomusicologist, music archivist, researcher, and curator specializing in Jewish and Israeli music, Holocaust music, and sound archives. She received her B.A. and M.A. in musicology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and later earned her Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from UCLA. Her doctoral research on the songs of the Lodz Ghetto was published as Singing for Survival: Songs of the Lodz Ghetto, 1940–1945 by the University of Illinois Press in 1992.

    From 1989 to 1992, Dr. Flam worked at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., where she established the ethnomusicology Archives and incorporated music into exhibitions and educational programs. She also produced Remember the Children, a recording of children’s songs from the Holocaust.

    In 1994, Dr. Flam became Director of the Music Department and National Sound Archives at the National Library of Israel, a position she held until 2024. During her tenure, she significantly expanded the library’s collections of Jewish and Israeli music and led major preservation and digitization projects.

    Dr. Flam has taught at universities and colleges in Israel, published numerous scholarly articles, edited several books, and presented her research internationally. Her current work focuses on the history of Israel’s National Sound Archive, continuing research begun at the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and the Jewish Music Research Centre at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

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Published

2026-11-14

Issue

Vol. 23 (2026)

Section

Articles