Perspectives on Jewish Music: Secular and Sacred

171 Pages·2009·0.887 MB·English

by  Jonathan L. Friedmann

Perspectives on Jewish Music

Perspectives on Jewish Music
Secular and Sacred
Edited by
Jonathan L. Friedmann
LEXINGTON BOOKS
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ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC.
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Copyright © 2009 by Lexington Books
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Perspectives on Jewish music : secular and sacred / edited by Jonathan L. Friedmann.—
1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7391-4152-6 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-7391-4154-0 (electronic)
1. Jews—Music—History and criticism. 2. Synagogue music—History and criticism.
I. Friedmann, Jonathan L., 1980–
ML3776.P47 2009
780.89'924—dc22 2009020002
Printed in the United States of America
(cid:2) ™
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
(cid:2)
Contents
Preface vii
Introduction 1
Jonathan L. Friedmann
Chapter 1 A Tale of Four Diasporas: Case Studies on the
Relevance of “Diaspora” in Contemporary
American Jewish Music 9
Jeff Janeczko
Chapter 2 The Folk and Folk/Rock Movement of the Sixties
and Its Influence on the Contemporary Jewish
Worship Service 41
Mark S. Goodman
Chapter 3 Humility, Prayer, and the Cantorial Ideal 57
Jonathan L. Friedmann
Chapter 4 Gender and Liturgy in Music: Masculine and
Feminine Forms of Language and Ritual in
Sephardic Secular and Sacred Music 77
Vanessa Paloma
Chapter 5 Trust the Process: My Life in Sacred Song 97
William Sharlin as told to Jonathan L. Friedmann
v
vi (cid:2) Contents
Selected Bibliography 137
Index 151
About the Contributors 161
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Preface
In the early twentieth century Abraham Z. Idelsohn embarked on an ambi-
tious project to record the musical traditions of the diverse Jewish commu-
nities living in Palestine. In 1914 he published the first installment of his
ten-volume Thesaurus of Hebrew Oriental Melodies (1914–1933), focusing
on the music of Yemenite Jews. Over the next twenty years, this project ex-
panded to include musical transcriptions of Babylonian, Persian, Bukharian,
Oriental Sephardic, Moroccan, German, Eastern European, and Hassidic
Jewish communities living in Palestine and the diaspora. For this and other
research, Idelsohn became known as the father of Jewish musicology.
Since Idelsohn’s time almost everyone who has studied Jewish music has
been struck by its diversity. National and regional variations, denomina-
tional and generational preferences, community and personal choice, and
other factors have made isolating what is “Jewish” in Jewish music an almost
impossible task. While early efforts in Jewish music research were driven in
large part by the desire to uncover a common strand that links all Jewish
music to an ancient source, most contemporary scholars deny the existence
of such a unified musical stream, and even refrain from determining which
styles of music are fundamentally Jewish in character. Instead, they argue
that it is best to define Jewish music as that music which functions Jewishly:
music for the synagogue, Jewish weddings, Jewish theater, and so on.
The idea for this book grew out of several conversations I had with indi-
viduals engaged in different areas of Jewish music research and performance.
It became clear to me through these talks that not only does Jewish music
vii
viii (cid:2) Preface
include a wide variety of musical genres and styles, but that this music of-
ten means different things and serves different purposes for the people who
produce and/or experience it. The major concerns and movements of the
Jews, both historically and in the present day, have found clear expression in
music, from assimilation and the search for Jewish “authenticity,” to ethnic
identification and gender equality.
This book presents unique and engaging explorations of Jewish music.
With only five chapters, this is a representative rather than a comprehen-
sive volume; but its wide-ranging topics and approaches should provide an
understanding of the centrality of music in Jewish secular and religious life.
Areas covered include self-expression in contemporary secular Jewish music,
the rise of popular music in the American synagogue, the theological and
personal requirements of the cantorate, the role of women in Sephardic mu-
sic and society, and the personal reflections of a leading figure in American
synagogue music. It is my hope that from these studies readers will gain an
appreciation of both what Jewish music is, and what it does.
(cid:2)
Introduction
Jonathan L. Friedmann
I
Historian Max I. Dimont argued that the survival of the Jews throughout
centuries of dispersion depended upon two central factors: internal cultural
stability and the absence of Jewish governmental authority. “The wars with
Rome freed the Jews from the fate awaiting them as a civilization,” wrote
Dimont, “by dispersing them into the Diaspora. The Jews were exiled to free-
dom.”1 Living in scattered and portable communities, Jews escaped the inevi-
table rise and fall of the world’s great civilizations. They were sustained by a
seemingly invincible sense of identity, informed by religious convictions—a
sense of chosenness, love of Torah, respect for sages, and collective sacred
past—as well as by the realities of diaspora life, which “freed the Jews from
time, from history, and from death as a civilization.”2
In a similar vein, late Judaic scholar Simon Rawidowicz wrote that Jewish
perseverance has in fact been strengthened by the looming existential fear of
both cultural and physical annihilation:
I am often tempted to think that this fear of cessation in Israel was funda-
mentally a kind of protective individual and collective emotion. Israel has
indulged so much in the fear of its end, that its constant vision of the end
helped it to overcome every crisis, to emerge from every threatening end as
a living unit, though much wounded and reduced. In anticipating the end,
it became its master. Thus no catastrophe could ever take this end-fearing
people by surprise, so as to put it off its balance, still less to obliterate it—as
1