An interesting and important stage in BenHaim's life is his work with the famous Yemenite Jewish folk singer Bracha Zefira who had a seminal impact on Israel’s cultural life. He began working with her at the end of the 1930s, and the differences between the two evolved into a mutual creative process that profoundly influenced Ben-Haim's musical language. Through the arrangements he wrote for her, he became more familiar with Jewish music from different origins. These arrangements later appeared in the composer's largescale works. Ben-Haim's first attempt to compose a symphony was in 1916, with Mahler's symphonies in mind as his model and inspiration. He ceased writing during his military service and never returned to complete it. His first completed symphony was written in Tel Aviv in 1940, followed by the second symphony which was written between 1942 and 1945 and premiered in 1948. Mahler's influence on Ben-Haim remained dominant, especially in his perception of the symphonic genre. In the book about the composer's life and work, musicologist Yehoash Hirschberg quotes a music critique from the "Palestine Post" newspaper, written after the premiere of the Second Symphony: "It is true that the symphony does not include direct influences of Mahlerian thematic material and rhetoric […] Mahler's influence on Ben-Haim is revealed in the deepest layer of perceiving the symphony as the broadest medium through which the composer conveys his internal world, using musical types, associations, and rhetorical motives…”. On the title page of the autograph BenHaim wrote a motto from a poem by Israeli poet Sh. Shalom: "Wake up with the dawn, O my soul, on the peak of the Carmel above the sea." It is on this title page where he first signed his Hebrew name "P. Ben-Haim". The symphony was dedicated to the writer and philosopher Max Brod, who was also a musician that held great admiration for Ben-Haim. Brod was dealing with the subject of Jewish and Hebrew identity and its creation through music. Regarding the Second Symphony he wrote that it “satisfies to a high degree our longing for an explicitly Jewish music.” Ben-Haim was not necessarily searching for a distinct Israeli character. Many of his compositions incorporate influences from the different periods of his life, creating a unique style of his own. When he was asked whether there is such a thing as an "Israeli composer" he answered: "I do not think about it that much […] The importance of Israeliness isn't that great. Rather, the importance of the composition itself.” This symphony, which is Ben-Haim's longest symphonic piece, is in the Classical-Romantic customary form of four movements. The first movement opens with a flute melody, joined by other wind instruments, creating a pastoral atmosphere. As the strings and percussion are added, the music becomes more rhythmic and energetic. This is a monothematic movement, meaning it unfolds through a single theme (first introduced by the flute) which undergoes various transformations. The second movement (scherzo) opens quietly and with a mysterious tone and then transforms into an energetic and lively movement. As in the traditional form, the scherzo is followed by a slower part with a different character. In this movement, we can clearly hear the synthesis between late Romanticism and the new influences that the composer absorbed in his new surroundings: in this scherzo, which may remind us of Mahler’s music, Ben-Haim quotes a phrase from the song Mibein lahakat segel ("From among the group of beauties I singled you out") by the Sephardic poet Isaac Eliyahu Navon, a song he arranged for Bracha Zefira.
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