Defining Jewish Music Before, After, and Beyond Idelsohn

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Abstract

Musicologists and cultural historians have long recognized that concepts of “Jewish music” vary across time and among communities and individuals. Therefore, musical expressions of Jewishness resist straightforward categorization and invite scholarly exploration of the historical, artistic, and cultural mechanisms behind these different articulations. Still, many definitions ultimately return to that of Avraham Zvi Idelsohn (1882-1938): “the song of Judaism through the lips of the Jew…the tonal expression of Jewish life and development over a period of more than two thousand years” (JEWISH MUSIC IN ITS HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT, 1929). Taking up Lila Corwin Berman’s provocation to explore “Jewish History Beyond the Jewish People” (2018), this roundtable challenges Idelsohn’s genealogical model and considers how better understanding Jewish music can benefit Jewish Studies.

Participants:
Amanda Ruppenthal Stein will address how conceptions of Jewishness in music emerged during social assimilation, political emancipation, and religious reform, shaping European music in the long nineteenth century.

Jules Riegel will discuss how Eastern European Yiddish speakers (re)defined Jewish music before and during the Holocaust, focusing on entanglements of musical aesthetics with competing visions for Jewish futures.

Nicolette van den Bogerd will discuss how composer Alexandre Tansman (1897-1986) embarked on a post-Holocaust intellectual journey to define Jewish music, drawing on his postwar French identity, Israel’s establishment, Jewish spirituality, and Jewish universalism.

Rachel Adelstein will explore contemporary liturgical composition in the U.S. and U.K., focusing on female composers, showing how playful approaches to text, language, and musical style bridge universal and local concepts of Jewishness in Anglophone communities.

Moderator Kay Kaufman Shelemay will ensure continuity between speakers and raise new questions suggested by the discussion.

Questions:

1. What is the relationship between Jewish music and language?

2. To what degree was the Holocaust a rupture in Jewish music history and/or efforts to define Jewish music?

3. How have those seeking to define Jewish music understood its relationship with the land (and/or state) of Israel?

4. How do definitional questions surrounding “Jewish music” reflect and illuminate debates within Jewish Studies? Why should Jewish Studies scholars consider what it means to “sound Jewish”?

Sub Unit

• Jews, Film, and the Arts

Moderator

• Kay K Shelemay, Harvard University

Discussants

• Amanda Ruppenthal Stein, Carroll University

• Jules Riegel, Harvard University

• Nicolette van den Bogerd, Indiana University Bloomington, Borns Jewish Studies Program

• Rachel Adelstein

Zoom Host

• Zoom Host 04