University of Virginia

The University of Virginia is offering a core course and two peripheral courses. The core course is Judaism between Modernity and Secularization: An Introduction to Judaism as a Culture and the secondary courses are American Jewish Popular Music, Science and Judaism and Klezmer Ensemble.

Judaism between Modernity and Secularization: An Introduction to Judaism as a Culture

Beginning with the European Enlightenment, the Jewish experience of modernity was marked by a radical transformation of communal life, religious habits, and individual as well as collective self-definition. Modernity not only redefined the boundaries of Judaism from outside and from within, but also called for a Jewish response to the process of secularization. While the modern period in Europe ended, arguably, with the advent of the Holocaust, the process of secularization continues to manifest itself in contemporary Jewish culture, whether in Israel, the United States, or the reemerging centers of Jewish life in Europe. At the same time, the relative unity of Jewish culture and practice in pre-modern time has given way to a plurality of Judaisms, ranging from Orthodoxy to Secular Humanism.

This course attempts to develop the history and intellectual underpinnings of the Jewish experience of modernity and secularization. Over the course of two individual semesters, Judaism Between Modernity and Secularization will explore the variety of Jewish responses and adjustments to the modern world and their implications for present day Judaism in its many forms.

Course Outline and Readings

1. Thinking about Modernity
Michael A. Meyer, "Where does the Modern Period in Jewish History begin?"
Jurgen Habermas, "Modernity's Consciousness of Time," The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity

2. Secularization and Secularism
David Martin, "Secularization: The Range of Meaning," The Religious and the Secular
Harvey Cox, "The Biblical Sources of Secularization," The Secular City
Peter Berger, "The Process of Secularization," The Sacred Canopy
Isaac Deutscher, "The Non-Jewish Jew," The Jew in the Modern World

3. Spinoza and "Heretical Judaism" (I)
Yirmiyahu Yovel, "Prologue: Heretic and Banned," Spinoza and Other Heretics
Baruch Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise

4. Spinoza and "Heretical Judaism"(II)
Baruch Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise
Yirmiyahu Yovel, "Epilogue: The First Secular Jew?," Spinoza and Other Heretics

5.The Context of Enlightenment and Emancipation (I)
John Toland, "Reasons for Naturalizing the Jews," The Jew in the Modern World
Christian Wilhelm v. Dohm, "Concerning the Amelioration of the Civil Status of the Jews," The Jew in the Modern World

6. The Context of Enlightenment and Emancipation (II)
Reimarus, "Passage of the Israelites through the Red Sea," Peter Gay, The Enlightenment
Immanuel Kant, "What is Enlightenment?"
Mendelssohn, "On the Question: What does 'to enlighten' mean?"
Lessing, "The Jews," "Education of Mankind," Peter Gay, The Enlightenment

7. Haskalah - The Jewish Enlightenment (I)
Naphtali Herz Wessely, "Words of Peace and Truth," The Jew in the Modern World
Joseph Wolf, "Preface to Volume One of Shulamit," The Jew in the Modern World

8. Haskalah - The Jewish Enlightenment (II)
Moses Mendelssohn, "Jerusalem: On Religious Power"
Moses Mendelssohn, "Letter to Lavater," Glatzer, Modern Jewish Thought

9. Haskalah - The Jewish Enlightenment (III)
Berthold Auerbach: Selections from: Poet and Merchant. A Picture of Life from the Times of Moses Mendelssohn"
Solomon Maimon, Selections from Autobiography
George L. Mosse, "A Cultural Emancipation," German Jews Beyond Judaism

10. From Jewish Reforms to Reform Judaism (I)
"The Assembly of Jewish Notables: Answers to Napoleon," The Jew in the Modern World
Text Study: Reform and History (Handout)

11. From Jewish Reforms to Reform Judaism (II)
Moses Sofer, "Reply to the Question of Reform," The Jew in the Modern World
Conference of reform rabbis: Pittsburgh Platform, 1885 The Jew in the Modern World
Statement of Principles for Reform Judaism, 1999 (Meyer/Plaut: The Reform Judaism Reader)

12. Judaism as History and Culture - The Science of Judaism (i)
David Gans, "Why a Jewish Chronicle?" Meyer, Ideas of Jewish History
Immanuel Wolf, "On the Concept of a Science of Judaism," The Jew in the Modern World
Heinrich Graetz, Selection from "The Structure of Jewish History"

13. Judaism as History and Culture - The Science of Judaism (II)
Abraham Geiger, "General Introduction to the Science of Judaism," Chazan/Raphael, ed. Modern Jewish History
Zacharias Frankel, "On Changes in Judaism," The Jew in the Modern World
Eduard Gans, "A Society to further Jewish Integration," The Jew in the Modern World

14. S.R. Hirsch and the emergence of "secular" Orthodoxy
Selections from:
S.R. Hirsch, "A Sermon on the Science of Judaism"
S.R. Hirsch, "Religion Allied to Progress"
S.R. Hirsch, "Jewish Schooling"
Julius Carlebach, "The Foundations of German-Jewish Orthodoxy. An Interpretation"

15. Review
A synthesis of the material covered until now.

16. The Beginnings of Jewish Nationalism and Zionism (i)
Hans Kohn, "The Idea of Nationalism"
Simon Dubnow, "The Doctrine of Jewish Nationalism," Nationalism and History
Yael Zerubavel, "The Zionist Reconstruction of the Past," Recovered Roots
Moses Hess, Selections from "Rome and Jerusalem"
Theodor Herzl, Selections from The Jewish Sate and Old-New-Land
Max Nordau, "Jews of Muscle"

17.The Beginnings of Jewish Nationalism and Zionism (II)
Micha Berdichevski, "Wrecking and Building" and other selections, Hertzberg, The Zionist Idea
Achad Ha-Am, "Sacred and Profane," "Two Domains," "Ancestor Worship"
A.D. Gordon, "People and Labour," The Zionist Idea
Achdut Haavodah, "Proposal," The Jew in the Modern World
Proclamation of the State of Israel, The Jew in the Modern World

18. Bundism, Zionism, and the Revival of Jewish Culture in Eastern Europe (i)
From The Jew in the Modern World:
Statutes Concerning the Organization of Jews
Statutes Regarding the Military Service
Delineation of the Pale of Settlement
The May Laws

19. Bundism, Zionism, and the Revival of Jewish Culture in Eastern Europe (II)
Society for the Promotion of Culture among Jews, The Jew in the Modern World
Simon Dubnow, "Letters on Old and New Judaism"
The Bund: Decisions on the Nationality Question, The Jew in the Modern World

20. Film: Image Before My Eyes

21.The Renaissance of Jewish Culture
Martin Buber, "On the Jewish Renaissance"
Martin Buber, "The Productive Ones, The People, and the Movement," Schmidt, The First Buber
Franz Rosenzweig, "Towards a Renaissance of Jewish Learning"
Asher Biemann, "The Problem of Tradition and Reform in Jewish Renaissance and Renaissancism," Jewish Social Studies

22. The Aesthetics of Jewish Nationalism and Renaissance
Martin Buber, "Jewish Art"

23. The Discourse on Jewish Culture in America (i)
Kaufmann Kohler, "The Concordance of Judaism and Americanism," The Jew in the Modern World
Chaim Zhitlovsky, "What is Jewish Secular Culture?", Goodman, The Faith of Secular Jews
Horace Kallen, "Secularism and the Secularist Idea of God," Kallen, Secularism is the Will of God

24. Jewish Culture in America (II)
Mordecai Kaplan, "The Reconstruction of Judaism," The Jew in the Modern World
The Beginning of Secular Jewish Schools, The Jew in the Modern World

25. The "End" of Jewish Modernity
Bruno Bauer, "The Jewish Problem," The Jew in the Modern World
Wilhelm Marr, "The Victory of Judaism over Germandom," The Jew in the Modern World
Heinrich von Treitschke, "A Word about our Jewry," The Jew in the Modern World
Adolf Hitler, "A Letter on the Jewish Question," The Jew in the Modern World
Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf," The Jew in the Modern World

26. The End of the Secular Age?
Gershom Scholem, "Reflections on Jewish Theology," Scholem, On Jews and Judaism in Crisis
Jonathan Sacks, "Judaism and Politics in the Modern World," Martin, The Desecularization of the World

27. Transitions
Steven Kepnes et al.: Monologic Definitions (Kepnes, Reasoning after Revelation)
Vanessa Ochs: Inventing Jewish Ritual


American Jewish Popular Music

Dynamic changes in American Jewry since the late 1960s have brought forth a number of flourishing music genres which reflect the direction of American Judaism at the turn of the 21st century. These represent the legacy of the popular American Jewish entertainment music and culture which began to emerge in the last quarter of the 19th century. The most visible of these is the klezmer movement, which is arguably the most dynamic phenomenon in secular American Jewry today, reaching far beyond its roots in medieval minstrelsy and Jewish ritual and into the sphere of both popular and art music and culture. In this course we will investigate why this seemingly archaic musical tradition is so appealing to post-war American Jewish youth and how its meaning has been transformed by them in their quest for a new, post-Holocaust and post-Zionist identity. Beyond klezmer, a number of other secular music movements have emerged in recent decades, most notably the Radical Jewish Culture Movement of New York’s Downtown music scene led by John Zorn since the early 90s. Religious Jewish popular music, too, has flourished since the 60s. All of these will be seen to be different ways of establishing an American Jewish identity via music. They have also had a profound effect on mainstream American popular culture, influencing popular television shows such as “Sex and the City” and “The Nanny,” films like “Dummy,” and musicians as diverse as Carlos Santana, Ray Charles and Madonna. For the various contemporary Jewish popular music forms, the 1990s were a particularly fruitful decade. In order to understand these contemporary developments, we will first look at the emergence of Jewish popular culture — especially the culture of Yiddish speakers — beginning in the mid-19th century, a movement which reached its zenith in the 1920s. We will concentrate on expressions of popular culture within the Jewish communities, but also look at intersections between the music and culture of the Jewish “subculture” and and that of the dominant American “superculture” (e.g. Al Jolson’s The Jazz Singer in the late 1920s).

Required Reading:

Rubin, Joel, Jewish Diaspora. In: Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World, ed. John Shepherd, London; Continuum, 2005
Kligman, Mark. Contemporary Jewish Music in America. American Jewish Year Book, 2001
Cohen, Judah L. Exploring the Postmodern Landscape of Jewish Music. In: You Should See Yourself: Jewish Identity in Postmodern American Culture, ed. Vincent Brooks, Rutgers University Press, 2006.

Class Schedule:

1. Introduction: overview of course materials, course requirements, and the range of topics and music to be covered by course.

Unit 1: The European roots of American Jewish popular music

Professional traditions

2. Khazonim (cantors), klezmorim (instrumentalists) and badkhonim (wedding bards) in Central and East Europe.

Listening assignment:
all musical examples liturgical, klezmer, badkhones (see separate listing)

Reading:

Middleton, Richard. What is Popular Music? In: Studying Popular Music. Open University Press, 1990: 3-7.

Rubin, Joel E. The Art of the Klezmer: Improvisation and Ornamentation in the Commercial Recordings of New York Clarinettists Naftule Brandwein and Dave Tarras 1922-1929. Ph.D. thesis: City University (London), Department of Music, 2001, Chapter 3. Klezmorim in Europe: 47-74.

Slobin, Mark. Chosen Voices: The Story of the American Cantorate. Urbana/Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1989. Chapter 1. The Cantorate in Jewish Culture: 3-26.

Liptzin, Sol. Eliakum Zunser: Poet of His People. New York: Behrman House, Inc., 1950: 86-95.

3. Broder-zinger and the emergence of the Yiddish theater and popular song (Europe)

Assigned listening:
Broder Singers, European Yiddish theater (see separate listings)

Reading:

Slobin, Mark. Tenement Songs: The Popular Music of the Jewish Immigrants. Urbana/Chicago/London: University of Illinois Press, 1982. Chapter 1. The Mythic Old World: 11-31.

Supplementary reading:

Berkowitz, Joel. The Bard of Old Constantine. Pakn-treger 44 (Winter 2004): 11-19. [URL: http://yiddishbookcenter.org/pdf/pt/44/PT44_goldfaden.pdf]

4. Non-professional traditions: Yiddish folk songs, Hasidic nigunim (melodies of spiritual elevation), zemirot shel shabbat (religious folk songs for the Sabbath)

Assigned listenings:
Yiddish folk songs, Hasidic nigunim, Sabbath zmires/zemirot

Reading:

Slobin, Mark. Mariam Nirenberg: The Life of a Folk Singer. In: Worlds of Music: An Introduction to the Music of the World’s Peoples, ed. Jeff Todd Titon. New York/London: Schirmer Books, 1984: 202-206.

Rubin, Ruth. Voices of a People, 2nd ed. New York: McGraw Hill, 1973. Chapter III, Love and Courtship: 69-96.

Koskoff, Ellen. The Language of the Heart: Music in Lubavitcher Life. In: New World Hasidim: Ethnographic Studies of Hasidic Jews in America, ed. Janet S. Belcove-Shalin. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995: 87-106.
[electronic resource: http://www.netlibrary.com/urlapi.asp?action=summary&v=1&bookid=5754]

Unit 2: Emigration: The emergence of a Yiddish-language popular entertainment and music culture in New York (klezmer, Yiddish theater and vaudeville, Sephardic traditions)

5. PAPER ABSTRACTS DUE

Klezmer in pre-war New York

Reading:

Rubin, Joel E., The Art of the Klezmer: Improvisation and Ornamentation in the Commercial Recordings of New York Clarinettists Naftule Brandwein and Dave Tarras 1922-1929. Ph.D. thesis: City University (London), Department of Music, 2001, Chapter 4, Changing meanings, changing contexts: Yiddish wedding and entertainment musicians in the New York immigrant milieu 1881-1929: 75-137.

Gold, Michael. Jews Without Money. New York: N. Douglas, 1930: 116-122.

Supplementary reading:

Loeffler, James. A Gilgul fun a Nigun: Jewish Musicians in New York 1881--1945. Harvard Judaica Collection Student Research Papers No. 3. Cambridge, MA: Harvard College Library, 1997. [On reserve in the music library]

Netsky, Hankus. The Klezmer in Jewish Philadelphia, 1915-70. In: American Klezmer: Its Roots and Offshoots, ed. Mark Slobin. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002: 52-72.
[Electronic resource: http://site.ebrary.com/lib/uvalib/Doc?id=10054443]

6. PRELIMINARY BIBLIOGRAPHIES DUE

Yiddish theater and vaudeville in New York; Early Sephardic popular music

Reading:

Ottens, Rita and Joel Rubin. Di Eybike Mame (The Eternal Mother):
Women in Yiddish Theater and Popular Song, 1905-1929
(URL: http://www.rubin-ottens.com/Eybike_Mame.pdf)

Burstein, Pesach’ke. What a Life!: The Autobiography of Pesach’ke Burstein, Yiddish Matinee Idol. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2003: Chapter 5: 51-75.

Seroussi, Edwin. New Directions in the Music of the Sephardic Jews. In: Studies in Contemporary Jewry Vol. IX: Modern Jews and Their Musical Agendas, ed. Ezra Mendelsohn. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press for the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1993: 61-77.

Supplementary reading:

Heskes, Irene. 1992. Yiddish American Popular Songs, 1895--1950: A Catalog Based on the Lawrence Marwick Roster of Copyright Entries. Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1992. Introduction: ix-xxxviii

Unit 3: Musical hybridity: the popular music of the first American-born generation

7. Klezmer = Jewish Jazz? “Black-Jewish relations” in music

Reading:

Rubin, Joel E. “Jewish Jazz?”: a trope for multivalent constructions of race and ethnicity. Unpublished paper, presented at the annual conference of the Association for Jewish Studies, Chicago, 2004. [for this section, read up to about the middle of page 7]

Melnick, Jeffrey. A Right to Sing the Blues: African Americans, Jews, and American Popular Song. Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard University Press 1999. Chapter 5. “Melancholy Blues”: Making Jews Sacred in African American Music: 165-196.

8. PAPER OUTLINES DUE

Screening: The Jazz Singer (1927) [89 minutes total], pt. I

Film will be discussed in following class period

9. Conclusion and discussion of Jazz Singer; Black-Jewish relations in music pt. II

Reading:

Rogin, Michael. Blackface, White Noise: Jewish Immigrants in the Hollywood Melting Pot. Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press, 1996. Chapter 4. Blackface, White Noise: The Jewish Jazz Singer Finds His Voice: 73-120.
[electronic resource: http://www.netlibrary.com/urlapi.asp?action=summary&v=1&bookid=6876]

Karp, Jonathan. Performing Black-Jewish Symbiosis: The “Hassidic Chant” of Paul Robeson. American Jewish History 91 (1) (2003) 53-81 (electronic resource)

Supplementary reading:

Netsky, Hankus. Cab Calloway: On the Yiddish Side of the Street. [URL: http://www.jbooks.com/secularculture/Netsky.htm]

10. “Yinglish” comedy of Mickey Katz

Reading:

Gans, Herbert J. “The ‘Yinglish’ Music of Mickey Katz.” American Quarterly. 5.3 (1953): 213-18. [electronic resource]

Katz, Mickey. Papa, Play for Me: The Autobiography of Mickey Katz. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1977/2002: Chapter 7, 88-101.

Becraft, Steven Craig. An Exploration of Extra-Musical Issues in the Music of Don Byron. FSU, Doctor of Music thesis, 2005. Chapter 1: Klezmer and the Music of Mickey Katz: 6-35 [read here pages 9-20] [electronic resource Dissertations & Theses: Full Text 1861-present]

Supplementary reading:

Loeffler, James. Neither the King’s English nor the Rebbetzin’s Yiddish”: Yinglish Literature in the United States. In: American Babel: Literatures of the United States fro Abnaki to Zuni, ed. Marc Shell. Harvard: Harvard University Press, 2002: 133-162.

Kun, Josh. “The Yiddish Are Coming: Mickey Katz, Antic-Semitism, and the Sound of Jewish Difference,” American Jewish History. 87.4 (1999): 343-74.
[electronic resource]

11. The English-language comedy of Allan Sherman; nostalgia and the music of Theodore Bikel and Martha Schlamme

Reading:

Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, B. Sounds of Sensibility. In: Judaism (Issue no. 185, vol. 47, no. 1, Winter 1998). Read sections “Incipient Heritage” (pp. 62-64), “Fault lines of sensibility” & “Performing obsolescence” (pp. 65-71). [electronic resource: see library online e-journals]

Cohen, Mark. My Fair Sadie: Allan Sherman and a Paradox of American Jewish Culture. American Jewish History 93 (1) (2007) 51-71 [electronic resource]

Alex S. Freedman. The Folksinger: A Note on Ethnocentrism. Ethnomusicology, Vol. 9, No. 2. (May, 1965), pp. 154-156. [electronic resource]

Weber, Donald. Haunted in the New World : Jewish American culture from Cahan to The Goldbergs. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005. Epilogue, 174-195.

12. Yiddish radio

Reading:

Kelman, Ari. Station Identification: A Cultural History of Yiddish Radio in America. Introduction: The Culture of Yiddish Radio. Unpublished book chapter (forthcoming, 2007). Used by permission of the author.

Sapoznik, Henry, Chapter 9: A Brief Introduction to Jewish American Radio. In: Jews and American Popular Culture. Volume 2: Music, Theater, Popular Art, and Literature, ed. Josh Kun: 123-144.

13. PAPER DRAFTS DUE

The decline of klezmer music; early hasidic music in New York

Reading:

Rubin, Joel E., “They danced it, we played it”: Adaptation and revitalization in post-1920s New York klezmer music. Presented at the The Nineteenth Annual Klutznick-Harris Symposium, “I Will Sing and Make Music”: Jewish Music and Musicians Throughout the Ages (Creighton University, Omaha, Nebraska), October 29-30, 2006. Print publication forthcoming.

14. Fiddler on the Roof; the “shtetl myth”

Note: viewing of the film “Fiddler on the Roof” (1971) is mandatory. Since it is a 3 hour film, we will only be viewing short excerpts in class. You are expected to have viewed the film prior to this class. It is on reserve.

Reading:

Whitfield, Stephen J. Fiddling with Sholem Aleichem: A History of Fiddler on the Roof. In: Key Texts in American Jewish Culture, ed. Jack Kugelmass. New Brunswick, NJ/London: Rutgers University Press, 2003: 105-125.

Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara. Introduction. In: M. Zborowski und E. Herzog, Life is with People: The Culture of the Shtetl. New York: Schocken Books 1995: ix-xlviii.

Supplementary reading:

Frieden, Ken. A Century in the Life of Sholem Aleichem’s Tevye.
Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1997 (25 pp.). [on reserve]

15. Unit 4: The contemporary klezmer movement

The emergence of the klezmer revival in the mid-1970s

Reading:

Slobin, Mark. The Neo-Klezmer Movement and Euro-American Revivalism. Journal of American Folklore 97(383)(1982): 98-104. [electronic resource]

Dion, Lynn. Klezmer Music in America: Revival and Beyond. Jewish Folklore and Ethnology Newsletter 8(1-2)(1986): 2-14.

Slobin, Mark. Klezmer Music: An American Ethnic Genre. 1983 Yearbook for Traditional Music. New York: International Council for Traditional Music (16) (1984): 34-41.
[electronic resource]

Rosenberg, Neil V. (ed.). (1993). Transforming Tradition: Folk Music Revivals Examined. (Urbana/Chicago: University of Illinois Press). Named Systems Revivals: 177-182.

16. Screening of Jumpin’ Night in the Garden of Eden. Michal Goldman (USA, 1987), 80 min. The first documentary on the klezmer movement.

17. PAPERS DUE

Discussion of Jumpin’ Night; Klezmer revival becomes established

Reading:

Rubin, Joel and Rita Ottens. An “Instinctive” Longing: Reflections on the Klezmer Revival. Excerpt from liner notes to the anthologies Doyres (Generations): Traditional Klezmer Recordings 1979-1994 (Trikont CD US-0206) and Shteygers (Ways): New Klezmer Music 1991-1994 (Trikont CD US-0207).

Wood, Abigail. The Multiple Voices of American Klezmer. Journal of the Society for American Music Volume 1, Number 3 (2007): 367–392. [electronic resource]

Hobsbawm, Eric. Introduction: Inventing Traditions. In: The Invention of Tradition, ed. Eric. Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983: 1-14.

Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London/New York: Verso, 1983, Chapter 11, Memory and Forgetting: 187-206.

Supplementary reading:

Slobin, Mark. Fiddler on the Move: Exploring the Klezmer World. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Chapter 4. Klezmer As Community: 67-93.

18. Klezmer and the search for identity

Required reading:

Rubin, Joel E. What is Jewish Music? The Quest for Identity on the
Jewish-Music Internet List. Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Association for Jewish Studies, Boston, December 21-23, 2003. Unpublished manuscript.

Svigals, Alicia. Why We Do this Anyway: Klezmer as Jewish Youth Subculture. In: American Klezmer: Its Roots and Offshoots, ed. Mark Slobin. Berkeley /Los Angeles/London: University of California Press, 2002: 211-219. [Electronic resource: http://site.ebrary.com/lib/uvalib/Doc?id=10054443]

London, Frank. An Insider’s View: How We Traveled from Obscurity to the Establishment in Twenty Years. In: American Klezmer: Its Roots and Offshoots, ed. Mark Slobin. Berkeley /Los Angeles/London: University of California Press, 2002: 206-210. [electronic resource: http://site.ebrary.com/lib/uvalib/Doc?id=10054443]

Slobin, Mark. Fiddler on the Move: Exploring the Klezmer World. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Chapter 3. Klezmer As an Urge: 37-67.

Baade, Christina L. 1998. ‘Jewzak and Heavy Shtetl: Constructing Ethnic Identity and Asserting Authenticity in the New-Klezmer Movement.’ Monatshefte 90(2): 208-19.

19. Klezmer, race, gender and authenticity

Borgo, David. Can Blacks Play Klezmer? Authenticity in American Ethnic Musical Expression
Sonneck Society for American Music. Bulletin, Volume XXIV, no. 2 (Spring 1998) [URL: http://www.american-music.org/publications/bullarchive/bongo.htm]

Astmann, Dana. Freylekhe Felker: Queer Subculture in the Klezmer Revival. Discourses in Music Volume 4 Number 3 (Summer 2003) [URL: http://www.discourses.ca/v4n3a2.html]

Becraft, Steven Craig. An Exploration of Extra-Musical Issues in the Music of Don Byron. FSU, Doctor of Music thesis, 2005. Chapter 1: Klezmer and the Music of Mickey Katz: 6-35 [read here pages 6-9 and 21-35] [electronic resource Dissertations & Theses: Full Text 1861-present]

Rubin, Joel E. “Jewish Jazz?”: a trope for multivalent constructions of race and ethnicity. Unpublished paper, presented at the annual conference of the Association for Jewish Studies, Chicago, 2004. [for this section, read from about the middle of page 7]

Supplementary reading:

Baade, Christina. Can This White Lutheran Play Klezmer? Reflections on Race, Ethnicity, and Revival. Sonneck Society for American Music. Bulletin, Volume XXIV, no. 2 (Spring 1998) [URL: http://www.american-music.org/publications/bullarchive/Baade.htm]

Baade, Christina L. In Response to "Freylekhe Felker: Queer Subculture in the Klezmer Revival" by Dana Astmann. Discourses in Music Volume 5 Number 1 (Spring 2004)
[URL: http://www.discourses.ca/v5n1a3.html]

Kaminsky, David. “And We Sing Gay Songs”: The Klezmatics: Negotiating the Boundaries of Jewish Identity. In Studies in Jewish Musical Traditions. Insights from the Harvard Collection of Judaica Sound Recordings. Harvard Judaica Collection Student Research Papers No. 7, ed. Kay Kaufman Shelemay. Cambridge, MA: Harvard College Library, 2001: 51-87. [on reserve]

20. Klezmer and Trauma

Hadda, J. Yiddish in Today’s America. Jewish Quarterly, no. 170 (Summer 1998). [archived on Mendele: Yiddish Language and Literature list, vol. 08.153 and 8.153a from May 20, 1999, at URL: http://metalab.unc.edu/yiddish/mendele.html]

Rubin, Joel E.Ambivalent Identities: The American Klezmer Movement as a Response to Rupture. Presented at the Society for Ethnomusicology Annual Conference. Estes Park, Colorado, 18 October, 2002.

Wood, Abigail C. Commemoration and Creativity: Remembering the Holocaust in Today’s Yiddish Song. European Judaism: A Journal for the New Europe 02/2 (2002): 43-56. [electronic resource]

Shandler, Jeffrey. Adventures in Yiddishland: Postvernacular Language and Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006. Chapter 6. Wanted Dead Or Alive: 177-202.

21. Klezmer and religion/spirituality

Reading:

Rubin, Joel E. Of Golems and Dybbuks: The Contemporary American Klezmer Movement as a Microcosm of the Religio-Secular World. Paper presented at the American Anthropological Association Meeting, Chicago, November 19-23, 2003, as part of the panel “Choosing Jewish: Ethnicity, Performance, and the Cultural Politics of Jewishness”.

Wood, Abigail. 2007. Stepping Across the Divide: Hasidic Music in Today’s Yiddish Canon. Ethnomusicology 51(2): 205-237.

Supplementary reading:

Prell, Riv-Ellen. Prayer & Community: The Havurah in American Judaism Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1989, Chapter 2, Havurah Judaism: Old World Decorum and Countercultural Aesthetics: 69-111.

22. Screening of the film “Dummy”

Unit 5: Religious popular music

23. Discussion of Dummy; Neo-hasidic and Orthodox popular music

Required reading:
Kligman, Mark. On the Creators and Consumers of Orthodox Popular Music in Brooklyn, in YIVO Annual 23 (1996): 259-293.

Ariel, Yaakov. Hasidism in the Age of Aquarius: The House of Love and Prayer in San Francisco, 1967-1977. Religion and American Culture, Vol. 13, No. 2. (Summer, 2003): 139-165. [electronic resource]

24. Continuation of Orthodox popular music; Reform and conservative Jewish music; music of Jewish renewal

Required reading:
Kligman, Mark. Contemporary Jewish Music in America. American Jewish Year Book, 2001: 88-141, pp. 88-91, 115-129.

Unit 6: Radical Jewish Culture movement and the klezmer fringe

25. The Radical Jewish Culture Movement; Jewish hip hop; Sephardic and Mizrakhi- (Eastern Jewish) influenced popular music

Required reading:
Barzel, T. If Not Klezmer, Then What? Jewish Music and Modalities on New York City’s Jewish-Downtown Scene. Michigan Quarterly Review, Januar 2003 (special issue: Jewish in America). [electronic resource]

Mandel, Howard. Vibes from the Tribe. Jazz Times (Sept. 2001): 60-65, 135-138, 145.

Melnick, Jeffrey. Soul. Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies vol. 24 no. 4 (2006): 13-21 [electronic resource]

Lubet, Alex. Transmigrations: Wolf Krakowski’s Yiddish Worldbeat in its Sociomusical Context. Polin 16, 2003.

Cohen, Judith R. Back to the Future: New Traditions in Judeo-Spanish Song. In From Iberia to Diaspora, ed. Yedida K. Stillman and Norman A. Stillman. Leiden: Brill, 1998: 496-514.

Supplementary reading:

“Music for Jews of Today”: Identity Construction in John Zorn’s Radical Jewish Culture Series. David R. Brand, Florida State University (Music) [URL: http://dscholarship.lib.fsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1274&context=undergrad], undergraduate honor’s thesis.

Randal, Julia Phillips. 2001. Musical Constructions of History: Performance Practices in Recent Recordings of Judeo-Spanish Song. In: Studies in Jewish Musical Traditions. Insights from the Harvard Collection of Judaica Sound Recordings. Harvard Judaica Collection Student Research Papers No. 7, ed. Kay Kaufman Shelemay. Cambridge, MA: Harvard College Library, 2001: 113-151.

26. Alicia Svigals visit

Founding member of The Klezmatics; bandleader and violinist) will play for us and discuss her involvement in the klezmer revival.

Reading:

Netsky, Hankus. Klez Goes to College. In: Performing Ethnomusicology: teaching and representation in world music ensembles, ed. Ted Solis. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004: 189-201. [electronic resource: http://site.ebrary.com/lib/uvalib/Doc?id=10068592]

27. Jewish hip hop revisited and review for final exam

Readings:

TBA (various journalistic articles about Matisyahu and other artists)


Science and Judaism

An introductory study of the place of science in Judaism, focusing on the example of creation. Topics include: The Genesis story and Evolution; Myth, Science, and Religion; Newton, Quantum Physics, and Judaism; The Big Bang through the history of Jewish reasoning.

Required Readings:

Jewish Pub Society - Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures
Polkinghorne - Quantum Theory, A Very Short Introduction
Schroeder - Genesis and the Big Bang
Tirosh-Samuelson - Judaism and Ecology
Ruderman - Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery in Early Modern Europe
Polkinghorne - Quantum Physics and Theology
Fern - Nature God and Humanity

Library Closed Reserve

Efron, Noah, Judaism and Science
Funkenstein, Amos, Theology and the Scientific Imagination
Harvey, Warren Zev, Physics and Metaphysics in Hasdai Crescas
Heisenberg, Warner, Physics and Philosophy
Newton, Isaac, Philosophical Writings
Peak, David, Chaos Under Control
Ruderman, David, Kabbalah, Magic, and Science
Samuelson, Norbert, Judaism and the Doctrine of Creation
Samuelson, N., The First Seven Days
Sarna, Nahum, Understanding Genesis
Toulmin, Stephen, Physical Reality

Syllabus:

1-2: Introduction to the Course
3: Genesis Up Close: the text in plain sense
4: Genesis Up Close: the text itself in plain sense #2
5: Genesis Up Close: the text within the history of ancient near eastern literature
6: Genesis Read: the text read by ancient rabbis
7: Genesis Read: the text read by medieval philosophers
8: Creation and Evolution: the modern controversy
9: Judaism, Science, and Evolution: alternative views
10: Midterm: Scripture and Creation in text, tradition, and scientific reasoning.
11: “Pre-beginnings:” Creation, Big-Bang, and Physics
12: Newton and Creation: the modern challenge to scripture
13: After Newton: An Introduction to Quantum Theory
14: Continued Studies in Quantum Theory
15: Quantum Logic, Scriptural Prayer: “Jewish Sciences”
16: Theology and Quantum Theory: a panel discussion
17: Religion, Mysticism, Magic, Medicine and Science in Early Modern Judaism:
Medieval Judaism and Nature
18: Religion, Mysticism, Magic, Medicine and Science in Early Modern Judaism:
Judaism and Medicine
19: Religion, Mysticism, Magic, Medicine and Science in Early Modern Judaism:
Judaism, Science, and Kabbalah
20: Nature and Creation in Judaism (A): Jewish Theologies of Nature
21: Nature and Creation in Judaism (B): The Doctrine of Creation
22: Nature and Creation in Judaism (C): Nature, Torah, and Ethics
23: Nature and Creation in Judaism (D): Foundations for Jewish Ecological ethics
24: Nature and Creation in Judaism (E): Environmental Ethics and Judaism
25: TBA


Klezmer Ensemble

Klezmer, originally the ritual and celebratory music of the Yiddish-speaking Jews of Eastern Europe, was brought to North America by immigrants around the turn of the last century. Since the 1970s, a dynamic revival of this tradition has been taking place in America and beyond. Klezmer’s recent popularity has brought it far from its roots in medieval minstrelsy and Jewish ritual and into the sphere of mainstream culture. The traditional klezmer style presents the experienced instrumentalist with a range of technical challenges with its characteristic note bends, rubati, Baroque-style embellishments and other micro-improvisational techniques, opening up a world of expressive possibilities not available to them from either classical music or jazz. This music was passed on orally from generation to generation, and many of the ornaments which are so integral to the klezmer sound can only be approximated by Western staff notation – not to mention the patterns of improvised variation which are the cornerstone of the style. There will therefore be an emphasis on learning by ear as much as possible, but we will be using music in the form of lead sheets and other written instructional materials to supplement sound examples.

We will be focusing this semester on Alicia Svigals’ repertoire, much of which consists of hasidic nigunim (songs of spiritual elevation). The purpose of the ensemble is to study and perform music from these traditions. Emphasis will be on learning by ear, improvisation within a modal context, and learning to develop a cohesive ensemble sound. Concentration, practice, and good attendance are required of each ensemble member.

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