Eden Ben Zaken: The Life Story Behind Israel's Rising Voice

Eden Ben Zaken has a voice that arrives before she does. You hear it from the radio in a taxi, from a shop doorway in Jerusalem, from a wedding hall late at night, and you know at once whose it is. It is big, rough-edged, and full of ache, the kind of voice that sounds as if it has lived through the song it is singing. She was still a teenager when Israel first heard it on television, and she has spent the years since turning that first hearing into a career: albums, packed halls, duets, a marriage, a family, and a nickname, the Queen of Roses, that stuck because the songs behind it were strong enough to carry it.

She was born in Jerusalem on 8 June 1994. Jerusalem is a city of stone and argument, of markets that smell of bread and spice, of old walls and new roads, and growing up there gives a person a certain toughness. Ben Zaken took that toughness with her. She sang as a girl, at home and at school, and the people around her noticed early that her voice was not a child’s voice. It had weight. It had a catch in it when she reached for a high note, and that catch made listeners lean in rather than turn away.

The television contest that made her known came in 2013, when she was nineteen. She sang on the first season of The X Factor Israel, reached the final, and finished second to Rose Fostanes, a singer much older and more experienced. Second place on a show like that can feel like a door closing. Ben Zaken treated it as a door opening. Within two years she had a debut album, a title song that gave her a crown, and an audience that was hers, not the show’s. This is how that happened, and what came after.

Stone Streets, Markets, and a Girl Learning to Sing

Jerusalem in the 1990s and 2000s was not a gentle place to grow up, and Ben Zaken has never pretended otherwise. The city is beautiful and difficult in the same breath: golden stone in the afternoon sun, crowded buses, soldiers, pilgrims, schoolchildren, and arguments in half a dozen languages. A child in that city learns early that the world is not simple, and that people can live very different lives on the same street. That lesson shows up in her singing. She does not sing as if love were simple. She sings as if she knows it is complicated, and as if that is the point.

Music was in the house. She sang along to the radio, she sang at family gatherings, and she sang at school, where teachers began to notice that the girl with the loud laugh also had a voice that could fill a hall. She was not a polished child singer, the kind who hits every note cleanly and leaves you cold. She was the opposite: a little rough, a little too much, and impossible to ignore. That roughness became her signature. When she sings a love song now, you can still hear the girl from Jerusalem in it, pushing at the edges of the melody.

Her family backed her. That matters more than it sounds. A girl who wants to sing needs someone to drive her to auditions, to wait outside rehearsal rooms, to tell her she is good enough when a judge says otherwise. Ben Zaken had that backing, and she has talked about it with real gratitude. She was not a child star pushed by ambitious parents. She was a teenager who wanted to sing, and whose family let her try.

She also listened. Jerusalem radio in those years played everything: Hebrew pop, Mizrahi songs with their Middle Eastern turns, Arabic melodies drifting from a neighbour’s window, and American hits. She took it all in without sorting it into boxes. That habit, of hearing many sounds and keeping them all, is what makes her records feel wide. She does not sing in one narrow style. She sings in the style of a city that holds many styles at once.

By eighteen she knew what she wanted. Not fame in the abstract, but a life of singing: records, stages, audiences who knew the words. She looked for a way in, and the way in turned out to be a television studio.

Nineteen Years Old on The X Factor

The X Factor Israel arrived in 2013, and Ben Zaken walked into its auditions at nineteen, one of the youngest singers in the room. She sang, the judges listened, and something shifted. Week after week she came back, choosing songs that let her voice do what it does best: climb, break a little, and land. The audience began to pick her out. She was not the most technically perfect singer on the show, and she knew it. She was the one who sounded as if she meant it, and in a contest full of polish, meaning stands out.

The format is brutal in a quiet way. You sing, you wait, you are judged in front of millions, and one bad evening can end months of work. Ben Zaken survived it by being steady. She did not pick fights, she did not cry for the cameras, and she did not try to reinvent herself every week. She sang, she went home, she prepared the next song. That steadiness is easy to miss on television, where drama gets the attention, but it is the quality that separates a contestant from a career.

In the final she faced Rose Fostanes, a Filipina-born singer with a huge voice and a life story that had moved the whole country. Fostanes won. Ben Zaken came second. She was nineteen, she had lost on live television, and the cameras were on her face as the result was read. She smiled, she hugged the winner, and she walked off the stage with her dignity intact. That moment, more than any performance, told people who she was.

What she did next told them even more. She did not disappear, as so many runners-up do. She did not wait for the show’s producers to call. She went into a studio, she recorded, and she began to build something that belonged to her. The show had given her a name. The work after the show would give her a career.

Malkat Hashoshanim and the Crown She Earned

Her first album came in 2015, and its title, “Malkat Hashoshanim”, means “Queen of Roses”. The title song was a declaration: a woman singing about love with her whole chest, about beauty that has thorns, about a heart that will not be tamed. Israeli radio took it up, wedding bands learned it, and listeners began to call her by the title. A nickname only works if the songs behind it are good enough, and these were. The album sold, the songs spread, and Ben Zaken stopped being “the girl from The X Factor” and became a singer in her own right.

The record’s sound was Mizrahi pop with a modern beat: drums that hit hard, melodies that turned the way Middle Eastern melodies turn, and a voice on top that never sounded small. She sang about love that lifts you and love that leaves you, about nights out and mornings after, about wanting someone and about walking away. The words were plain, the feelings were not, and that combination is why the songs worked in cars, in kitchens, and on dance floors at the same time.

She toured behind the album, and the rooms grew. A singer learns more from a live crowd in one night than from a month in a studio, and Ben Zaken was learning fast: how to pace a set, how to talk between songs without losing the room, how to sing the same chorus for the hundredth time as if it were the first. Audiences noticed. They came back, and they brought friends, and the halls got bigger.

She also learned to choose her team. A singer is only as good as the people around her: the producers who shape the sound, the musicians who play it, the managers who guard her time. She picked people who understood her voice and did not try to smooth away its rough edge. That edge is the whole point of her singing, and anyone who tried to polish it away would have ruined what made her special. Her team understood that, and the records show it.

By 2017 she was no longer a newcomer. She was a fixture of Israeli pop, a name on posters, a voice on the radio that listeners expected to hear. The crown had been earned, not given.

Duets, Weddings, and Songs That Belong to Everyone

A singer’s real test is not the first album. It is the second, and the third, and the years after, when the novelty is gone and the audience asks, in effect, what else have you got. Ben Zaken answered with songs, one after another, year after year. She sang with other Israeli stars, and those duets did what duets are supposed to do: they introduced her to listeners who had never bought her records, and they showed that her voice could stand beside anyone’s without shrinking.

Her songs also moved into the places where Israeli music actually lives. Not just the radio, but weddings, where a couple picks a song for their first dance and then hears it for the rest of their lives; henna nights; birthday parties; long drives down to Eilat with the windows open. A song that lives in those places has passed a harder test than any chart. It has become part of people’s memories, and Ben Zaken’s songs did that. When a bride hears one of them now, she remembers her own wedding, and the singer becomes part of the memory.

She sang about women in a way that felt direct rather than decorated. Not as symbols, but as people who want, who wait, who leave, who stay, who get angry, who forgive. That directness is why her audience is so loyal, and why so many of her listeners are women who hear their own lives in her choruses. She does not sing down to them. She sings beside them.

The radio kept playing her, and the streaming numbers kept climbing, but the truer measure was simpler: when she walked onto a stage, the crowd already knew the words. They sang them back to her, loudly, and she sang over them, louder still. That exchange, singer and crowd feeding each other, is the heart of a live career, and Ben Zaken built hers on it.

By the end of the decade she was one of the biggest female voices in the country, and she had done it without a single gimmick. No scandal, no reinvention, no desperate grab for attention. Just songs, sung well, year after year.

A Wedding, a Family, and Singing Through It All

In 2018 Ben Zaken married Shuki Biton, and her life widened in the way a life does when a person builds a home. Marriage for a touring singer is a negotiation: the road pulls one way, home pulls the other, and the singer has to learn to live in the middle. Ben Zaken learned it in public, with cameras nearby, and she did it without drama. She kept recording, she kept performing, and she kept her home life mostly her own, which in her line of work is an achievement in itself.

Motherhood followed, and it changed her singing in a way listeners can hear. A voice does not change its shape when a woman becomes a mother, but the feeling behind it deepens. She has more to sing about, and more to lose, and that shows up in the slower songs, where she lets a line hang in the air a beat longer than she used to. Her fans heard the change and loved it, because it sounded like a person growing up in front of them, not like a star pretending to stay nineteen forever.

The logistics are unglamorous and worth saying plainly. Touring means nights away. Recording means long days in a studio. A small child means early mornings and a home that needs its mother present. Ben Zaken has managed it by planning, by saying no to work that does not matter, and by bringing her family with her when she can. She has talked about the difficulty without complaining about it, which is the honest way to talk about it. It is hard. She does it anyway.

She also guards her children’s privacy, and that is a choice worth respecting. She will post a song, a stage, a dress, a crowd, but the children’s faces stay out of it. A child deserves a childhood that is not performed, and Ben Zaken has given hers that. Her fans understand the boundary, and they love her music without needing to cross it.

None of this slowed her down. If anything, the records got stronger, because they were sung by a woman with a fuller life behind her. A singer who has loved, married, and become a mother has more to draw on than one who has only known a stage, and Ben Zaken draws on it openly.

Critics, Fashion, and the Choice to Stay Herself

Every long career collects critics, and Ben Zaken has collected hers. Some say her songs are too similar to each other. Some say Mizrahi pop is too commercial, too loud, too easy. She has heard all of it, and she has answered it the only way that counts for a singer: by making another record. A critic can write a paragraph. A singer can only answer with a song, and Ben Zaken has answered, again and again, with songs that her audience loves.

Fashion is the other pressure. Pop moves fast, and every year there is a new sound, a new beat, a new star who does everything differently. Ben Zaken has watched those sounds come and go without chasing them. She has tried new producers, she has let her arrangements breathe a little differently, but she has never tried to become someone else. That stubbornness is a strength. An audience can tell when a singer is pretending, and they stop listening. They have not stopped listening to her.

There is also the pressure that falls on women in pop and almost never on men: the endless talk about how she looks, what she wears, whether she has changed. Ben Zaken has lived with that talk since she was nineteen, and she has handled it by refusing to make it the story. The story is the voice. She keeps putting the voice first, night after night, and the talk fades beside it. That is a discipline, and it is one she has kept for more than a decade.

Setbacks have come in the ordinary way they come to any working singer: a song that does not catch, a show that does not sell out, a year when a younger voice takes the attention. She has met those years by working, not by panicking. She goes back to the studio, she writes, she sings, and she comes back to the stage. That steadiness is the real reason her career has lasted, and it is the thing her fans admire most, even if they would not put it in those words.

She has also lent her voice to causes she cares about, quietly rather than loudly, and she has spoken about her beliefs without turning a concert into a lecture. That balance is hard, and she keeps it. Her audience knows where she stands, and they respect her for standing there without shouting about it.

Roses Still Blooming

The last few years have brought more records, more halls, more nights when the crowd sings every word back to her. She works with younger writers now, and she lets them bring new ideas into the studio, but the centre of the sound has not moved: a big voice, a strong beat, a melody that turns the way it has always turned. Her newer songs show a singer who is comfortable in her own skin, willing to slow down, willing to let a song be tender as well as loud. That willingness is the mark of an artist who is still growing, not one who is repeating herself.

Her place is secure. She is one of the leading women of Israeli pop, a singer whose name belongs on any list of the country’s biggest voices, and whose songs are part of the sound of Israel in the 2010s and 2020s. Younger singers look at her and see a path: a girl from Jerusalem, second on a television show, who built a career song by song until the whole country knew her name. That path is real, and she walked it.

She is still young, still recording, still filling halls, and still singing with the same rough-edged power that first made people notice her. The Queen of Roses is not a title from a contest. It is a title her audience gave her, and they gave it because the roses kept coming: album after album, song after song, year after year. They are still coming, and they are still blooming.

The Sound of a City That Never Sits Still

There is a reason Ben Zaken’s records sound like Jerusalem, and it is not only that she was born there. Jerusalem is a city that never sits still: buses, markets, prayers, arguments, music from open windows, all of it at once. Her songs carry that restlessness. They do not settle into one mood and stay there. They move, they climb, they break, they come back. A listener who knows Jerusalem hears the city in them. A listener who has never been there feels it anyway, because restlessness is a feeling everyone knows.

Her voice fits that city because it is restless too. It does not sing a line the same way twice. It pushes, it pulls back, it finds a new edge. That is why her live shows are different from her records: the voice is alive in the room, and it changes with the night. A singer whose voice is alive is a singer worth seeing in person, and Ben Zaken’s audiences know it. They come to hear what she will do with a song they already know by heart.

The songs also carry the feeling of a Friday afternoon in Jerusalem, when the week is ending and the city is getting ready for rest. Shops close, families gather, and music plays in kitchens. Ben Zaken’s songs belong to those hours, and to the hours after, when the night begins and the city lights up. A song that fits a Friday afternoon and a Saturday night is a strong song, and she has many of them.

She has also learned to sing for a crowd that is not hers. A festival audience, a television audience, a crowd in another country: each one needs something different, and Ben Zaken gives it without changing who she is. She sings the same way in every room, and the room changes around her. That is the mark of a singer who trusts her voice, and whose voice deserves the trust.

In the end, her sound is the sound of a city that holds many lives at once, and of a singer who holds them all in one voice. That is a rare thing, and it is why her records last. A voice that can hold a whole city will not be forgotten, and Ben Zaken’s voice will be heard in Jerusalem for many years to come.

My Take:

When I listen to Eden Ben Zaken, the first thing I feel is the size of her voice. It is not a small, careful voice. It is a big voice, full of feeling, and it fills a room the moment she begins to sing. I have heard many singers who can hit a high note, but fewer who can make a high note feel like it means something. Ben Zaken makes it mean something, because she sings as if she believes every word. That belief is what draws me in, and it is what keeps me listening long after the first chorus.

I admire the way she handled second place on The X Factor. She was nineteen years old, she had reached the final, and she lost to a singer with a powerful story and a powerful voice. That is a hard moment for a teenager, and it could have broken her confidence. Instead, she took the second place and turned it into a beginning. She did not wait for someone to give her a career. She went out and built one, song by song, show by show. I think that takes a kind of strength that is easy to miss, because it does not look dramatic. It looks like work, day after day, and Ben Zaken did that work.

The nickname “Queen of Roses” stays with me, because it is a title that she earned rather than one that was given to her by a contest. A rose is beautiful, but it also has thorns, and I think that fits Ben Zaken. Her music is beautiful, but it is not soft. It has a strength to it, a feeling that the singer has lived through something and is still standing. When she sings about love, she does not sing like a girl who has only read about love. She sings like a woman who knows what love costs, and that knowledge gives her songs their weight.

I think about Jerusalem, and about what it means to grow up in that city. Jerusalem is not a simple place, and a child who grows up there learns that the world is full of different people, different beliefs, and different stories. Ben Zaken carries that learning into her music. She does not sing as if the world were simple. She sings as if she knows it is complicated, and as if love and strength are the things that help a person live in it. That is a mature view for a singer who became famous so young, and it is one I respect.

What moves me most about her story is the balance she has found between her career and her family. She married, she became a mother, and she kept singing. That is not easy, and I do not want to pretend that it is. A singer who tours and records while raising children must make hard choices every week, and she must live with the feeling that she is never doing quite enough in either place. Ben Zaken has been honest about that difficulty, and I admire her honesty. She did not pretend that it was easy, and she did not hide her family to protect her image. She lived her life, and she let her music grow with it.

I also think about the women who listen to her songs, and what those songs give them. A woman who is going through a hard time can hear a Ben Zaken song and feel that she is not alone. A woman who is celebrating can hear her song and feel that her joy is shared. That is a real gift, and it is one that a singer gives without always knowing it. Ben Zaken’s songs speak to women in a direct way, about love, about strength, and about standing on one’s own, and I believe that is why her audience is so loyal. They do not only like her voice. They trust her.

I do not love every song she has made, and I want to be honest about that. Some of her records sound very similar to each other, and I sometimes wish she would take a bigger risk with her sound. A singer with a voice as strong as hers could try a slower, quieter album, or a song that tells a longer story, and I think her audience would follow her. She has shown that she can sing a personal song, but she does not do it as often as I would like. That is not a harsh criticism. It is a wish from a listener who believes her voice can carry more than the songs she usually sings.

I also wonder about the pressure that comes with being judged on appearance as well as on voice. Ben Zaken is a beautiful woman, and she is also a strong singer, but the music world often talks about the first more than the second. That is unfair, and it is a pressure that male singers do not feel in the same way. I respect the way she has handled it, by keeping the focus on her music and by refusing to let the talk about her looks drown out her songs. Her voice is the reason people come to her shows, and she has made sure of that by singing well, night after night.

What I learn from her life is that second place is not the end of a story. In a contest, only one person wins, and the rest are forgotten by the show. But in a real career, the show is only the beginning. Ben Zaken proved that a runner-up can become a star, and that a singer who works hard after the cameras leave can build something that lasts longer than a television title. That is a lesson for anyone who has ever come second, or who has ever felt that they missed their chance. The chance is not only in the contest. It is in the work that follows.

I think about the young girls who watch her and dream of singing. They see a woman from Jerusalem who became a queen of roses, and they think it can happen to them. I would tell them that it can, but only if they are willing to do what Ben Zaken did: to sing in small rooms, to learn their craft, to take a loss and keep going, and to build a career one song at a time. Fame looks easy on television, but it is work, and Ben Zaken’s story is a story of work. That is the part I want young singers to hear, more than the part about the crown.

Her voice also reminds me that Mizrahi pop is not a small corner of Israeli music. It is the sound of many homes, and it belongs on the biggest stages. Ben Zaken took that sound to halls and to festivals, and she sang it with pride. She did not make it smaller to suit a wider audience. She made it bigger, and she let the audience come to her. That matters, because it tells young singers from Mizrahi homes that their music belongs everywhere, not only in their own neighbourhoods.

I have listened to her songs on long drives, and I have noticed how they change the mood of a car. A Ben Zaken song can make a tired driver feel stronger, and it can make a quiet evening feel warmer. That is a small thing, but it is a real thing. Music that can change a mood is music that matters, and her songs do that for many people. I think that is why they are played at weddings, at parties, and on the radio: they make people feel more alive.

In the end, I will remember Eden Ben Zaken as a singer who turned second place into a crown, and who wore that crown while building a family and a career. She was a girl from Jerusalem with a voice too big to hide, and she became a woman who sings for her country with honesty and strength. That is a hopeful story, and it is one that stays with me. It says that a loss on television is not a loss in life, and that a singer who keeps singing will find her stage. I hope she keeps singing, and I hope her roses keep blooming for many years.

I also think about the mothers who listen to her songs while they work, drive, and care for their children. A song can be a companion in a busy day, and Ben Zaken’s songs are good companions. They are strong, they are warm, and they remind a listener that she is not alone in her feelings. I have seen how a song can lift a tired person, and I believe her songs do that for many women who are doing hard work every day. That is a gift that a singer gives without always knowing it, and it is one of the reasons her audience stays loyal.

Her concerts also stay with me, because they feel like a gathering rather than a show. The crowd sings with her, word for word, and the room feels like a family. That is not an easy feeling to create, and it comes from a singer who talks to her audience as if they are friends. Ben Zaken does that, and her fans repay her by coming back, year after year, to sing with her again. A singer who can create that feeling has done something that no award can measure.

I want to say something about her voice and its rough edge, because that edge is part of what makes her special. A smooth voice can be beautiful, but it can also be forgettable. A voice with a rough edge sounds like a real person, and it carries feeling in a way that a perfect voice cannot. Ben Zaken’s voice has that edge, and she uses it well. When she sings about love, I can hear the longing. When she sings about strength, I can hear the effort. That honesty is what makes her songs stay in the head.

I think about the young singers who are now where Ben Zaken was in 2013, standing on a television stage and hoping for a chance. They watch her and they see that second place is not the end. They see that a singer can lose a contest and still become a star, if she is willing to work. That message matters, because contests make young people believe that only the winner matters. Ben Zaken’s career says otherwise, and it says it clearly. The work after the show matters more than the show itself.

I also admire the way she has grown as a singer. Her early songs were strong, but her later songs are deeper, and they show a woman who has lived more. A singer who grows with her life is a singer who will last, because her music grows with her audience. Ben Zaken’s audience has grown with her, from teenagers to adults, and her songs have grown with them. That shared growth is the reason her concerts feel like a reunion.

In the end, I will remember Ben Zaken for her voice, for her crown of roses, and for the work that turned a runner-up into a queen. She was a girl from Jerusalem who sang with all her heart, and she became a woman who sings for her country with honesty and strength. That is a story worth telling, and it is one I will keep returning to whenever I hear her voice on the radio.

I also think about the roses themselves, and about what they mean in her music. A rose is a flower that is given in love, and it is also a flower that is grown with care. Ben Zaken’s songs are like that: they are given with love, and they are grown with work. I hope she keeps growing them, and I hope her audience keeps receiving them with the same love.

In the end, I will remember her as a singer who lost a contest and won a career, and who did it with a voice that was too big to hide. That is a story worth telling, and it is one I will keep returning to whenever I hear her voice on the radio. Her roses are still blooming, and I believe they will bloom for many years to come.

Frequently Asked Questions

How did Eden Ben Zaken become famous in Israel?

Eden Ben Zaken became famous on the first season of The X Factor Israel in 2013, where she reached the final as a nineteen-year-old and finished as runner-up. She then built her own career with her debut album and a string of hit songs.

Where was Eden Ben Zaken born and when?

She was born in Jerusalem on 8 June 1994, and she grew up in the city, singing at home and at school before she auditioned for television. Jerusalem gave her a strong sense of place that she has carried into her music.

Why is Eden Ben Zaken called the Queen of Roses?

She is called the Queen of Roses after her debut album and title song “Malkat Hashoshanim”, which means “Queen of Roses”, released in 2015. The name has followed her ever since, and she has embraced it as a title for her music.

What kind of songs does Eden Ben Zaken sing?

She sings Mizrahi pop, with modern beats, strong melodies, and words about love, longing, and strength. Her songs are often played on the radio, at weddings, and at celebrations, and they suit her big, emotional voice.

Is Eden Ben Zaken married and does she have children?

Yes, she married Shuki Biton in 2018, and she later became a mother. She has continued to record and perform while building her family life, and she protects her children’s privacy.

What has Eden Ben Zaken done since her first album?

She has released many more songs and albums, performed in large halls and outdoor venues across Israel, and collaborated with other Israeli singers. She remains one of the leading female voices in Israeli pop.