Avraham Aviv Alush (אברהם אביב אלוש) is an Israeli actor and musician of Moroccan-Israeli heritage, born in Be'er Sheva in 1982. He came to international attention for playing Yeshua (Jesus) in the long-running streaming drama The Chosen, the first Israeli actor cast in that role in a major American production. Alongside acting, he records and performs Mizrahi-inflected Hebrew music, often weaving liturgical and biblical texts into contemporary arrangements. His vocal style is warm, mid-range, with the Sephardi pronunciation that has become the standard in Israeli Hebrew.
Shabbat MiKol HaSibot (שבת מכל הסיבות, literally "Sabbath, from all reasons" / idiomatically "Sabbath for every reason in the world") is a collaborative Israeli music project that brings together multiple artists to record contemporary arrangements of Shabbat-themed Hebrew texts, psalms, zemirot, biblical poetry, and original compositions tied to the rhythm of the Jewish week. Aviv Alush's "Az Yashir" was released under this project, alongside friends and other Israeli musicians.
The project reflects a broader trend in contemporary Israeli music: the return of religious vocabulary to mainstream pop, by artists who would not previously have been classified as religious. Hebrew liturgy is being re-sung by secular and traditional Israelis alike, often in Mizrahi-fusion styles that mix Maghrebi, Yemenite, and Andalusian sensibilities with Western pop production.
Exodus 15:1-18 is the Song of the Sea, sung by Moses and the Israelites after crossing the Red Sea on dry ground. In the Torah scroll, Shirat HaYam is written in a unique brick-pattern layout (אריח על גבי אריח), the words arranged like a wall of bricks, evoking either the walls of water that stood up on either side, or the structured architecture of poetry itself.
The song is recited every morning in Jewish liturgy, in the Pesukei d'Zimra (verses of song) section of Shacharit. It is read aloud from the Torah on the seventh day of Pesach, the traditional anniversary of the splitting of the sea. Many congregations rise to their feet for this reading.
The song falls into three movements:
Exodus 15:11 is the theological climax of Shirat HaYam. The question form, "Mi chamocha?" ("Who is like You?"), is rhetorical: the expected answer is "no one". This verse becomes a permanent liturgical building block. In every morning service the cantor sings "Mi chamocha ba'eilim Adonai" just before the Amidah, and the congregation echoes it. The same line appears in the evening service. It is the most-recited biblical verse in Jewish daily prayer after Shema Yisrael.
Vocabulary worth committing to memory:
1. Start with V12 (Mi chamocha), it's the shortest, the most musically distinctive, and you will encounter it again every single morning of your life once you're davening.
2. V3 (ozzi v'zimrat Yah... Elohei avi va-aromemenhu) appears in many liturgical settings and bar/bat mitzvah ceremonies. Useful beyond this song.
3. V1 (the framing "Then Moses sang...") gives you the verb pattern of biblical Hebrew narration, particularly the imperfect-for-past quirk that is the rabbis' favorite Talmudic prooftext.
4. Listen to Aviv Alush's recording several times before trying to sing along, his Mizrahi melisma (the small vocal turns and ornaments) is the hardest part to imitate, much more than the words. Don't worry about getting it perfect.