For years, Ziv Elul was known primarily as an Israeli tech entrepreneur, executive and investor, a career built around companies, management, decisions and the relentless pace of the business world. But behind that public identity was another part of his life that never entirely disappeared: music.
Now, nearly four decades after appearing in Israel’s Festigal as a teenager, Elul is returning to it with “Hallelu,” a song he wrote inspired by King David and the final chapter of the Book of Psalms. The single, composed by Maor Shoshan, was released in September.
For Elul, however, the return to music is not a departure from the life he has built. He sees it as an extension of a personal journey that has increasingly brought together entrepreneurship, leadership, Jewish learning and creativity.
“‘Hallelu’ was born out of a connection that has been deepening for me in recent years with the figure of King David and the Book of Psalms,” Elul says. “What fascinates me about David is his complexity: a king and a leader, a warrior and a man of action, and at the same time a poet and a person who was not afraid to put fear, pain, hope, faith and gratitude into words.”
That combination has become particularly meaningful to Elul after years spent in entrepreneurship and management. He says that with time, his focus has shifted from simply accumulating experiences to understanding what can be learned from them.
“As the years go by, I find that I don’t only want to go through experiences and gain experience,” he says. “I want to stop, learn from them and try to understand what we can take from them into our lives.”
Ancient texts, modern questions
Elul’s growing engagement with Jewish texts has increasingly intersected with his professional life. He has previously explored the relationship between Jewish sources and modern leadership in his writing, including his book on management and Pirkei Avot.
He says the same idea lies behind his study of the weekly Torah portion and a second book now in the works with Yedioth Ahronoth. “In my studies, I repeatedly find surprising connections between the questions that occupy us today as managers, parents and human beings, and ideas that were written hundreds and thousands of years ago,” he says.
For Elul, books, study and music are therefore not separate projects. “They are different ways of trying to take something I have learned along the way, connect it to the sources and translate it into a language we can live with today.”
“Hallelu” draws its inspiration in particular from Psalm 150, the final chapter of Psalms. After a biblical collection filled with anguish, danger, longing, faith and celebration, its final words are an unambiguous call to praise: “Let every soul praise the Lord. Hallelujah.”
“There is something powerful about the fact that after 150 chapters that pass through almost every state the human soul knows, the ending is specifically praise and song,” Elul says.