|
Institute for Studies In American Music |
|
|
|
|
|
Inside
This Issue: The Composer, the Work, and Its Audience by Adrienne Fried Block Jewish American Music:
Review by Evan Rapport More News from Nowhere: Review by David G. Pier Reviving the Folk: Review by Ray Allen |
Jewish
American Music
Excerpt from Lekhah Dodi transcribed by Jeffrey Summit
Courtesy of Oxford University Press
Koskoff brings years of experience with her
subject matter to her monograph on the Lubavitcher Hasidim of Pittsburgh;
Crown Heights, Brooklyn; and St. Paul, Minnesota. Her long engagement with
the Hasidim, dating back to the start of her dissertation fieldwork in 1973
and her childhood in Pittsburgh, makes for cogent descriptions of difficult
concepts. She illustrates her exploration of Lubavitcher cosmology with
examples of Lubavitcher musical composition as performed and notated in
publications. In her study of Habad (the Lubavitcher religious
philosophy) in musical sound and structure, Koskoff demonstrates how four
stanzas of "The Rav's Nigun" correspond to "fours"
prominent in the Lubavitcher idea system: the four worlds, the four letters
of God's name, and the four-stage process of mystical unity with God,
consisting of reciting prayers or performing Commandments, introspection and
self-evaluation, work and service, and union with the divine. Music and related performance contexts such
as skits also provide a means to understanding Lubavitcher attitudes towards
the past, tradition, lineage, contemporary society, and identity. Koskoff
shows the permeability of denominational boundaries, providing a perceptive
look at the Ba'al Teshuvah, or person who "returns" to an
Orthodox lifestyle. Especially noteworthy is her attention to matters of
gender throughout the volume. She not only documents segregated musical
spaces for women, but also brings a nuanced analysis to the myriad ways
Lubavitcher men and women conceive of gender distinctions, how gender is
performed, and how gendered practices are related to the dictum Kol isha, a rule first formulated in the sixth century that
has led to a ban on women's singing voices being heard by men under certain
circumstances, is the nexus of Jewish musical issues of gender.
Koskoff's interviews with Lubavitchers on this subject reveal a wealth of
opinions and ideas from both men and women in the community. Her feminist
sensibilities often clashed with the Lubavitchers' values, but her
willingness to explore these dynamics helps to explain Lubavitcher attitudes
towards matters of gender and the relationship between liberal Jews (such as Koskoff)
and Hasidim. Some aspects of contemporary Lubavitcher
life are regrettably missing from Koskoff's study. Most conspicuously, there
is little analysis of two major and public areas of controversy: the tensions
between Lubavitchers and African Americans in Crown Heights that exploded in
the August 1991 riots, and the conflict between Lubavitchers and other Jews
over what seems to non-Lubavitchers to be, rightly or wrongly, an increasing
association of The Rebbe (the late Menachem Mendel Schneerson) with the
Messiah ("Moshiach"). These omissions may be due to the age of the
research—the book was published in 2001, but most of the interviews and
fieldwork dates from the mid-1970s and early 1990s—or perhaps Koskoff's
desire to avoid sensationalizing the Lubavitcher community. Jeffrey Summit is a Rabbi and the leader of
the Tufts University Hillel as well as an ethnomusicologist. He brings his
intimate familiarity with Jewish worship to his task of exploring five
worship communities in the Boston area, each associated with a distinct
approach to Judaism: the Tufts Hillel; B'nai Or, a havurah (small
fellowship group); Beth Pinchas, a Hasidic synagogue; Temple Israel, a Reform
congregation; and Shaarei Tefillah, a Modern Orthodox congregation. While
these five diverse groups share many qualities, all are Ashkenazic (following
Eastern and Central European custom), middle-class, and products of
institutions developed in the United States. And in all five communities, the
singing of the hymn Lekhah Dodi is a central moment in the Friday
night Shabbat (Sabbath) service. After a concise summary of Jewish worship
comes the book's centerpiece, a detailed comparison of various performances
of Lekhah Dodi. For each community, ethnography informs an analysis of
the meanings gleaned from this melody. By focusing on one tune, Summit is
able to compare and contrast the different worship communities effectively.
Later chapters expand the scope of inquiry, providing thought-provoking
though brief commentary on topics such as Jewish chant and choice of melody. The accompanying CD, featuring thirty-nine
examples that are tightly integrated with the text and musical notations, is
an essential part of the study that merits special attention. Since Jewish
law prohibits the use of recording devices on the Sabbath, Summit assembled
members of the congregations in the usual place of worship on other days of
the week to recreate the Shabbat service for recordings. As a result, the
listener is given the opportunity to hear important aspects of the experience
that are difficult to convey in prose, such as the acoustics of the space,
the interactions of worshippers, vocal styles, and pronunciation of the
texts. Summit acknowledges that his focus on how
worshippers interpret their own activities leads to "particular
challenges when the researcher is a bona fide member of a community being
studied" (p. 9). His status as a Rabbi certainly must have affected his
research and his interpretations. However, the dynamics between Summit and
his subjects are only rarely made explicit, and Summit's assumptions about
his subject matter remained under the surface in his writing when they could
have been explicitly theorized. For example, the kol isha prohibition
on men hearing women's voices in worship comes up only in a brief discussion
of Harvard students from different denominational backgrounds deciding how to
resolve the issue. Although interesting, a detailed look at kol isha
would have made more sense much earlier in the book, when the author first
mentions the Orthodox congregation, especially considering the jarring
contrast between the congregations with mixed voices and the all-male
Orthodox voices on the CD. Another possible consequence of Summit's
unique situation in researching Jewish identity is his use of the word
"tradition." In the statements he quotes from interviewers, the
terms "tradition" and "traditional" are repeatedly used
to establish a position on Jewish custom and practice. For example, a Reform
Rabbi from Temple Israel comments on changes in their service by explaining,
"Traditional Jews don't feel that this is a traditional service ...
[but] for some people [in the congregation] it may be too traditional" (p. 111). Although using the concept of
"tradition" uncritically is a natural stance for those he
interviews, Summit misses the chance to explore the multiple meanings and
associations of the term. Summit also refers to "traditional Jews"
or "traditional Jewish practice" without explaining exactly what qualifies
for the label. He points out an incongruity between a melody that seems to
have been used by Jews for over five hundred years and its listing as
"traditional" in many books (p. 135). The apparent
problem—that the tune was used in German church settings—leaves
one wanting Summit to spell out more explicitly the criteria for tradition
that operate throughout the book. Both of these absorbing volumes richly
enhance our understanding of the close relationship between music and
religious identity in America. Koskoff's and Summit's astute analytical work
with these varied Jewish worship communities reveals how religion can serve
as a space of dynamic intersection between the private and public spheres, an
arena in which the American belief in the autonomous individual is balanced
with a search for belonging. —Evan Rapport City University of New York, Graduate
Center |
