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Migration and Remembrance: Sounds and Spaces of Klezmer ‘Revivals’
Author(s): Ray, Larry
Date: 2010
Topics: Klezmer, Jewish Culture, Jewish Revival, Memory, Main Topic: Culture and Heritage
Abstract: This article discusses the cultural meanings of recent revivals in Yiddish music in the USA and central Europe. It does this with reference to Adorno’s critique of lyrical celebration of the past as a means of forgetting. It examines the criticisms that recent ‘Jewish’ cultural revivals are kitsch forms of unreflective nostalgia and considers the complexity of meanings here. It then explores the ways in which klezmer might be an aural form of memory and suggests that revivals can represent gateways into personal and collective engagement with the past. It further argues that experimental hybrid forms of new klezmer potentially open new spaces of remembrance and expressions of Jewish identity.
“Where Do You Draw the Line?” Negotiating Kashrut and Jewish Identity in a Small British Reform Community
Author(s): Diemling, Maria; Ray, Larry
Date: 2014
Topics: Reform/Liberal/Progressive Judaism, Food, Kashrut, Small Jewish Communities, Main Topic: Identity and Community
Abstract: This study explores the importance of food and the negotiation of kosher laws in the context of strategies to maintain an individual and collective Jewish identity among a British Reform Jewish community in a non-metropolitan area. Based on interviews with active members of the local synagogue, it explores the challenges to maintaining Jewish life in a small, disparate community remote from any major Jewish settlement. In the interview data, food emerges as a major point of reference for defining identity and for positioning members of the community in relation to religious traditions. Food observance further serves as a means of defining boundaries within as well as outside the community. This discussion raises several important issues: the place of religious observance in modern societies, the question of membership and boundaries of communities, the diversity of contemporary Jewish Reform observance and, finally, the specific role of food and foodways in negotiating these challenges.