In the shadow of displacement and under the weight of uncertainty, Keshet Eilon’s response is neither retreat nor silence, but music. Now marking its 35th year, the celebrated string music center, nestled on Israel’s northern border, opens its doors once again, this time thousands of kilometers away, in Altea, Spain.
For the second consecutive summer, due to the ongoing security crisis in Israel’s North, Keshet Eilon’s renowned international course for young string players is being held abroad. From July 20 to August 7, 56 carefully selected students from across the globe will immerse themselves in three weeks of intensive study, master classes, and performances, guided by some of the world’s most esteemed pedagogues.
The program for this summer
This year’s program pays tribute to two towering figures in Western music: violinist-composer Fritz Kreisler, on the 150th anniversary of his birth, and Johann Sebastian Bach, whose immortal Chaconne will be explored in a lecture by Juilliard’s venerable Professor Lewis Kaplan, guest of honor at the course.
The course is hosted at the school of pianist and conductor Yaron Traub, son of the late Israeli violinist Haim Taub, to whom a special concert will be dedicated on August 1. “The music must not stop,” says Nitza Avidan, Keshet Eilon’s CEO. “When war forced us to leave, we knew immediately that our work must continue, all of it. And we’ve stood by that commitment.”
Despite the trauma of evacuation and the transformation of Keshet Eilon’s campus into a temporary base for thousands of soldiers, the organization has never paused its cultural mission. Alongside the course in Spain, it held seminars for Israeli students in Ra’anana and performed concerts for evacuees and wounded civilians in Herzliya and beyond.
Restoring the Galilee
At the same time, restoration is underway in the Galilee. Bar-Orion Hall, damaged in a drone strike, is being rebuilt, and the center’s dormitories, recently repurposed as military housing, are being prepared to welcome students once more.
For Avidan, who left behind a Tel Aviv life and a leadership role at “Al-Sam” to live and work in Kibbutz Eilon, the mission is personal and profound.
“I was searching for stillness, a place where music isn’t just a profession but the very air one breathes. I found that here. And with it came a responsibility: to preserve, to grow, and to dream forward.”
One such dream is already taking shape: the founding of a year-round international school for young string players on the kibbutz. The vision is both ambitious and rooted: student housing, a state-of-the-art concert hall, a music library, an atelier for instrument-making, and a campus that champions excellence regardless of financial means – all of this just two kilometers from the Lebanese border.
“These are challenging times,” Avidan acknowledges. “But they’ve only deepened our understanding of how essential culture is in moments of crisis. Music has the power to soothe the nervous system, to restore balance, to heal. That’s not just poetic language; it’s neuroscience. And it’s our reality.”
The summer course, under the artistic direction of violinist and educator Prof. Itzhak Rashkovsky, stands as testament to that conviction. A Fellow of the Royal College of Music in London and one of Keshet Eilon’s founders, Rashkovsky leads the program with unwavering dedication.
“Despite everything,” he says, “we have never ceased, nor must we ever cease. Keshet Eilon remains a beacon for talent from across the world and a cultural envoy for Israel.”
This summer’s program includes concerts and master classes led by internationally acclaimed faculty, many of them alumni of the course, as well as tributes to Kreisler and Taub and collaborative chamber performances that embody the intergenerational dialogue at the heart of Keshet Eilon’s philosophy.
As the center looks ahead to its return home, its work resonates more deeply than ever.
In a region still reeling, Keshet Eilon offers something remarkably steady: the insistence that even on the edge of conflict, music can create a center of gravity – a place where the future is still being composed.