Ehud Segev

World renowned mentalist Ehud Segev, aka The Mentalizer, was born in 1979 in the Israeli city of Safed, long known as the spiritual center of the Jewish world. In the 16th century Safed emerged as the city of Kabbalah, the oldest, most influential wisdom of mysticism from throughout history. Most of the great scholars and Rabbi’s who studied and taught the secrets of Kabbalah lived in this great city, and it is also where Ehud Segev began his spiritual destiny.

Early on, Ehud’s mother knew he had a gift of insight. As he remembers, “When I was twelve, I took the entire shelf of books that dealt with mysticism and spiritualism from the library, and my mother had to sign a permission form since I was too young for this topic. The librarian may have thought I lost my mind but my mother was ever so supportive. I’ll never forget that.”

His first experience with mysticism came when a young Segev begged his mother to buy him Tarot cards, because he could see and feel a powerful energy from them. At the age of 12 he started doing Tarot readings friends and neighbors. Segev used these cards as a tool to connect to the universe’s powers as his own connection to himself developed.

“Others call it intuition. I don’t. I call it connections. You connect to yourself and then to others. The more you are connected, the bigger the miracles you can perform in your life. I don’t have any supernatural powers, on the contrary – my powers are so natural that they are super natural. In my show I combine my special abilities as a performer with magic and spirituality. My goal: to make this world a better place and to help people realize that our deepest desires aren’t materialistic, but spiritual. If I can use all the publicity and stage-presence I get to bring people closer to the light, my destiny is fulfilled.”

By age 13, the whole neighborhood began to hear of him but no one knew his real name. Segev has said, “I used to shock everybody in school. I knew the topics for the tests before the teacher would say one word.” Because of his extraordinary abilities Segev became known as “The Magic Man,” and his popularity in Israel grew.

Fascination with Segev continued and people began asking him to communicate with parallel universes. Hundred of séances were conducted and thousands of people’s lives were touched by the amazing power Segev possesses. His first TV appearance was at age 16, and three years later he set out to perform the largest recorded séance for national broadcast. This feat was accompanied with controversy and skepticism as religious leaders sought to ban the séance which was planned to channel slain Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Segev eventually gave in to the rabbis and the séance was never performed.

At 19 he continued to shock and amaze throughout Israel. In one newspaper article titled “The Prophecy”, Segev predicted who would win the race for the mayors’ chair in several Israeli cities. The article was published 11 days before the elections took place.

With only a photo to reference, Segev, as he put it, “used his inner Kabbalistic energy to analyze each candidate and foresee the winners.” Segev was 100% right. This is when people started calling him the Mental Analyzer, or soon to be nicknamed The Mentalizer.

“The Mentalizer” phenomenon quickly spread and Segev said he knew he had a mission. He wanted to use his publicity to help people everywhere; he put together a special performance and, with “The Mentalizer Show,” Segev was able to entertain and touch audiences throughout the world. His stated mission is not to provide merely entertainment, but to have people leave his show with the feeling they learned something about life.

In the summer of 2004 Segev premiered his “Mentalizer Show” in Theatre Row at 42nd street, at the heart of the theatre district in Broadway, New York. Then, in January 2006, Segev had the debut of his play “ANOMAL“, which tells Segev’s life story in a unique ‘half-play-half-act’ concept.

Around the same time Segev became one of the small percentage of entertainers that signed an exclusive contract with the US army to entertain far away troops in bases around the world.

On August 9th, 2006, while Ehud was performing his tour through Mexico, his only brother, Nimrod Segev, was killed in combat in Lebanon. Ehud returned to Israel and soon established “Cafe Nimrod“, a unique restaurant in the Tel Aviv Seaport, to commemorate his brother. At the same time he also founded Free Freedom, a movement that attempts to forge an anti-terrorist alliance consisting purely of civilians. His goal is spreading the message that it is the responsibility of ordinary citizens to keep raising voices against terrorism.

In December 2006, Ehud starred in the record breaking Israeli Reality TV series “Ha Yoresh”. This series, which aired weekly on the Israeli network Keshet, was set to declare an official successor to international superstar Uri Geller. This series has launched all 9 participants into Israeli superstardom, but has especially made Ehud Segev a household name around the country, where he was already well known for his mayorial predictions in 1998.

One of Segev’s biggest TV achievments occurred when he was carefully selected as one of the worlds’ greatest mentalists to compete in NBC’s primetime TV series “PHENOMENON“, which is based on his earlier Israeli TV show, “Ha Yoresh”.

Segev is also currently working on his first book, “The Mentalizer Way” that will describe his unique perception of life. He also finished working on his first music album as a singer called “Exposing it all” (in Hebrew). Segev also wrote a musical called “Legend of the 21st Century” which was never produced.