The year was 1978, and Yehonatan Geffen, the nephew of former Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, was already one of Israel’s most celebrated writers and poets. He released a children’s book titled The Sixteenth Sheep הכבש השישה עשר, (hah-keh-vehs hah-shee-shah ah-sahr). The book’s title refers to a story Geffen tells about counting sheep to fall asleep: “הכבש השישה עשר הוא בדרך כלל הכבש שאיתו אני נרדם” – “The sixteenth sheep is usually the one I fall asleep with.”
The book was not a success, to say the least. Although it received positive reviews, it was a commercial failure, leaving Geffen’s publisher with a warehouse full of unsold copies. It seemed destined to disappear into obscurity. That was until Dudu Elharar, who had worked with Geffen before, pitched the idea of adapting the book into a studio album. Geffen was initially hesitant, but eventually agreed, and together they assembled what was essentially an all-star team of Israeli music.
The record features some of the greatest artists of the time, musicians who remain among the giants of Israeli music today. Elharar and Geffen recruited Yoni Rechter, Gidi Gov, David Broza, and Yehudit Ravitz to perform on the album, with Rechter also serving as its principal composer. Rehearsals lasted for around a month before recording began. For the recording sessions, Elharar also brought in Yitzhak Klepter and Shem Tov Levi to contribute to the instrumentation.
Just reading those names today is enough to understand how absurdly stacked this project was. It would be the equivalent of gathering the biggest singers and session musicians in the USA and asking them to make a children’s record. The recording of the album itself took only 81 hours.
Despite the stacked lineup and positive reviews, album sales were slow. It was not until a strike in the Israeli education system that the song Closed Kindergarten received consistent airplay on radio stations, helping propel the album’s commercial performance. This led to a successful tour of the album in 1979. And the success of the album brought Yehonatan Geffen’s book back to bookstores and contributed significantly to its sales over the years. You can listen to this song below:
There are a total of sixteen songs on The Sixteenth Sheep, all of which are taken directly from the original book. A few tracks serve as spoken-word transitions narrated by Geffen, connecting the songs and giving the album the feeling of a complete journey rather than a collection of individual tracks. It was my first introduction to a “concept album” and music in general.
Songs like Thunder and Lightning רעמים וברקים (reh-ah-meem oo-vrah-keem) have become so ingrained in Israeli culture that it is difficult to think of a time when they didn’t exist in our collective memory. Others, like A Closed Kindergarten גן סגור (gahn sah-goor), carry a strange sense of joy mixed with the uncanny feeling you get as a child when you pass by a school or kindergarten after hours. The album constantly moves between the whimsical and the melancholic, often within the span of a single song.
And that’s one of the things that still makes the record so enjoyable for me. and is something that defines the very best Israeli children’s art: it works just as well for adults. The writing is intelligent. It never talks down to children, and many of the lines contain meanings that only become clear as you grow older. As a child, you hear funny stories and imaginative tales. As an adult, you hear reflections on growing up and the passage of time. That duality is part of what makes the album so special. In fact, when it was first released, there was confusion over whether it was meant for children or for adults.
Looking back, you can see the album’s influence on later generations of Israeli children’s music; many songs are written in minor keys, with melodies that often feel closer to an aching Johnny Cash ballad or a Lou Reed song than what most people outside Israel would imagine children’s music sounds like. There is a quiet sadness underneath many of these songs, yet it’s mixed with familiar warmth, something that to me feels and sounds uniquely Israeli.
Having grown up in the 1990s, the first time I listened to The Sixteenth Sheep was on my CD Walkman. There is a line in one of the songs that says, “Take the record and flip it to the other side”:
I had absolutely no idea what that meant. Even after listening to the CD dozens of times, I still couldn’t figure it out. I remember sitting in the back seat of my mother’s car with my Walkman in my lap and asking her what the lyric meant. She explained what records were and what a turntable did – and that this line in this particular song was meant to tell children to flip the record. At five or six years old, I had never seen a turntable before, and I became completely fascinated by the idea.
Years later, when I received my first real paycheck at around twenty years old, I saved up and bought myself a turntable. The first record I ever purchased was The Sixteenth Sheep. And when the line came about flipping the record to the other side, I finally got to do it, and so I started my twenties with a tribute to the child I was.
Even years later, after spending three months in Liverpool following in the footsteps of the Beatles, after going to Bon Jovi concerts, after becoming obsessed with Fleetwood Mac arrangements, that album remains the defining moment in my love and appreciation of music. To me, it stands right alongside Abbey Road, Rumours, and every other universally recognized album. Every song belongs exactly where it is. Every lyric feels honest. Every track is unskippable.
Nearly fifty years after its release, The Sixteenth Sheep is still passed from one generation to the next. Parents who grew up listening to it introduce it to their children, who will likely one day introduce it to theirs. It is frequently ranked as one of the greatest albums in the history of Israeli music. Personally, I think that undersells it. For me, it is simply the most perfect album ever created.
