Illy Gorlizki (Ilie Gorlitzki)

Illy Gorlizki died on the morning of Monday 5 October 2026, at the age of 91. His partner Anat Globus announced the news, telling Walla that her Illy had gone on his way that morning and that the house was empty. The cause of death has not been made public.

President Isaac Herzog called him one of the most prominent figures in Israeli culture, who left a profound mark on the stage, cinema and Hebrew song. The Cameri Theatre, Eshkolot, the musicians' royalties body ILAM and colleagues including Hanan Yovel, Tuvia Tzafir and Dalia Gutman paid tribute. His coffin was to lie in state at the Cameri Theatre in Tel Aviv from noon on Tuesday 6 October, followed by a funeral at 2.30pm at Menucha Nechona cemetery in Kfar Saba. At his request, no shiva was to be held.

Illy Gorlizki was born in Tel Aviv on 14 July 1935, during the British Mandate. His parents were devoted communists and gave him the name Illy in honour of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, the first leader of the Soviet Union. He attended Ironi Alef high school in Tel Aviv.

He was drawn to the stage early. At 17 he was accepted to a theatre drama school and began appearing in small roles, and he was soon on stage at the Cameri Theatre in productions such as The Good Person of Szechwan (1955) and He Walked Through the Fields (1956). He was born with situs inversus, a rare condition in which the heart lies on the right side of the body, a fact friends later recalled with affection.

In 1956 Gorlizki joined the Central Command entertainment troupe of the Israel Defense Forces, where he was the soloist on Naomi Shemer's Hamsinim Bamishlat. After his service he returned to the Cameri Theatre, which says he joined its ensemble that year, and he became one of its leading young actors, with roles in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night and Nathan Alterman's Kinneret Kinneret.

His defining part came in 1964, when the Cameri staged King Solomon and Shalmai the Shoemaker, Alterman's musical adaptation of Sami Gronemann's comedy with music by Sasha Argov. Gorlizki played both the king and the cobbler, two men identical in appearance and opposite in character, opposite Yona Atari and Rachel Attas. The production was a huge success and was performed about 1,000 times. He and Atari went on to create Shuk Hametziot in 1965, built on Alterman songs set by Sasha Argov, Moshe Wilensky and Dubi Seltzer, which gave Israeli audiences well loved recordings including Concertina and Guitar, Limon Vetzalakhat and Bekhol Zot Yesh Ba Mashehu. In 1968 he presented the entertainment show Hachamim Balaila with Yossi Banai, and in 1981 he appeared in a Hebrew Guys and Dolls alongside Yardena Arazi, Sassi Keshet and Shula Chen.

On screen he appeared in Israeli films including Havura Shekazot (1962), Three Days and a Child (1967), Scouts (1967) and Tevye and His Seven Daughters (1968). In the 1980s he presented a popular science series on Israeli television, and he voiced Kaa the snake in the Hebrew dub of The Jungle Book and its sequel. He won three Kinor David awards. He returned to King Solomon and Shalmai the Shoemaker with Atari in concert revivals in 2009, and he took part in the Cameri's 70th and 80th anniversary shows in 2014 and 2024.

Gorlizki spent much of his life working for performers' rights. When the Israel Artists Association, EMI, was founded in the early 1980s he became its first director, and in 1983 he established Eshkolot, the company for performers' rights of Israeli artists, which collects and distributes royalties to performing artists. He ran it for 37 years and remained its honorary president. He also wrote two books on philosophy published by Yedioth Ahronoth: The Hidden Secret (2002), in which Maimonides and Averroes debate God, society, Judaism and Islam, and Tahiro (2006), about Sabbatai Zevi and his messianic movement.

From 1958 to 1962 Gorlizki was married to the actress Gila Almagor, whom he met at the Cameri Theatre. He later married the painter Doris Rau, with whom he had two sons, and then the dancer Ruti Lerman, with whom he had a son, the musician Adam Gorlizki, and a daughter. For about the last three decades of his life his partner was Anat Globus, a deputy editor of Channel 12 News's Ulpan Shishi, and the couple lived in Tel Aviv.

He was a keen student of philosophy, especially Spinoza, and wrote about Kabbalah while stressing that his interest was academic. In his youth he traded on the stock market and surfed as a hobby. Asked at 80 what he had learned, he answered: I miss tomorrow.

Gorlizki belonged to the generation that shaped the language of the Israeli stage, joining theatre, cabaret and Hebrew song. His performances with Yona Atari of Alterman songs remain part of the Israeli songbook, and King Solomon and Shalmai the Shoemaker is still remembered as one of the most successful musicals in the country's history. Through EMI and Eshkolot he helped build the system that pays Israeli performers for the use of their work, which colleagues described as his second life's work. Tuvia Tzafir called him the Herzl and Ben-Gurion of Israeli artists.