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Singing Jewishness: The Musical Nostalgia of Jewish Congregational Melodies
Author(s): Adelstein, Rachel
Editor(s): Norton, Kay; Morgan-Ellis, Esther M.
Date: 2024
Topics: Jewish Community, Liturgy, Jewish Music, Main Topic: Identity and Community, Synagogues, Religious Observance and Practice, Ritual
Abstract: Contemporary Anglophone Jewish congregants prize participatory worship and enjoy singing portions of the liturgy to a selection of familiar, beloved melodies. Hymnals are not used in synagogue worship; instead, congregants learn these melodies by ear, singing liturgical texts as “the song that goes like this.” Most do not know the origins of their favorite melodies, believing them to be much older than they really are. This chapter analyzes the cultural work that this group of liturgical melodies does in Jewish congregational life. Drawing on ethnographic research in the United States and the United Kingdom, as well as the sociology of nostalgia and Jewish history, author Rachel Adelstein argues that these melodies help to express “Jewishness” in worship. Adelstein positions congregational reliance on “the songs that go like this” as a response to the legacy of migration, the challenges of modernity, and the re-centering of Jewish life following the Holocaust. She argues that the veil of nostalgic anonymity placed over these songs gives Jewish congregations a sense of tradition upon which to construct a modern social and religious life. She also examine the threat that this anonymity presents to Jewish communities’ understanding of and reckoning with their own recent history and community structure.