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171 Pages·2009·0.887 MB·English
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Perspectives on Jewish Music Perspectives on Jewish Music Secular and Sacred Edited by Jonathan L. Friedmann LEXINGTON BOOKS A division of ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC. Lanham (cid:129) Boulder (cid:129) New York (cid:129) Toronto (cid:129) Plymouth, UK LEXINGTON BOOKS A division of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200 Lanham, MD 20706 Estover Road Plymouth PL6 7PY United Kingdom Copyright © 2009 by Lexington Books All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. 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 (cid:2) 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

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