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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.
Berlin Klezmer and Urban Scenes
Author(s): Alexander, Phil
Editor(s): Frühauf, Tina
Date: 2023
Topics: Cities and Suburbs, Jewish Music, Main Topic: Culture and Heritage, Klezmer
Abstract: This chapter considers klezmer music’s changing social role: from the ritual musical expression of distinct ethnic and geographic nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Ashkenazic Jewish communities in eastern Europe and subsequently the United States, to a looser twenty-first-century articulation of musical connectivity, as expressed within multiple local scenes. It focuses particularly on developments in Berlin over the past three decades, during which time the city has hosted the busiest and most dynamic klezmer scenes outside of North America. The analysis follows a narrative that has moved from committed but isolated pioneers, through a rapid post-reunification take-up (initially by a majority of non-Jews), to a contemporary sense of community as seen in the work of a group of younger, international musicians, some of whom have also brought a renewed emphasis to the Jewishness of klezmer. The chapter argues that the city and its cosmopolitanism facilitate the conjuncture of local scene and transnational community.
Why Do People Discriminate against Jews?
Author(s): Fox, Jonathan; Topor, Lev
Date: 2021
Topics: Antisemitism, Antisemitism: Discourse, Anti-Zionism, Discrimination, Main Topic: Antisemitism
Abstract: Why Do People Discriminate against Jews? provides a data-rich analysis of the causes of discrimination against Jews across the globe. Using the tools of comparative political science, Jonathan Fox and Lev Topor examine the causes of both government-based and societal discrimination against Jews in 76 countries. As they stress, anti-Semitism is an attitude, but discrimination is an action. In examining anti-Jewish discrimination, they combine ideas and theories from classic studies of anti-Semitism with social science theories on the causes of discrimination. On the one hand, conspiracy theories, a major topic in the anti-Semitism literature, are relatively unexplored in the social science literature as a potential instigator of discrimination. On the other, social science theories developed to explain how governments justify discrimination against Muslims are rarely formally applied to the processes that lead to discrimination against Jews. Fox and Topor conclude by identifying three potential causes of discrimination: religious causes, anti-Zionism, and belief in conspiracy theories about Jewish power and world domination. They conclude that while all three influence discrimination against Jews, belief in conspiracy theories is the strongest determinant. The most rigorous and geographically wide-ranging analysis of discrimination against Jews to date, this book reshapes our understanding of the persecution of religious minorities in general and the Jewish people in particular.

Contents:
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Patterns of Discrimination
Chapter 3: Religious Anti-Semitism
Chapter 4: Anti-Zionism and Anti-Israel Behavior and Sentiment
Chapter 5: Conspiracy Theories
Chapter 6: The British Example
Chapter 7: Conclusions
Appendix
Bibliography
Judaism and Europe
Author(s): Freud-Kandel, Miri
Editor(s): Davie, Grace; Leustean, Lucian N.
Date: 2021
Topics: Jewish History, Main Topic: Other
Abstract: It is not possible to make sense of Judaism today without understanding how it evolved in Europe. It was in Europe that the multiple options took shape for thinking about what Jewishness could mean once it became just one component among others in an individual’s sense of self. At the same time, European Jewry has endured a long and painful journey as it tried to create confident accounts of how Jewish identity could be understood. This journey reflects a struggle faced right across Europe between accommodating difference and acknowledging the inherent limitations of tolerance. With this in mind, this chapter examines the different pathways that have been forged by Jews across Europe as they sought to construct proud interpretations of both Judaism and Jewishness. In so doing, key themes are explored: cultural Judaism, religious reform, assimilation, anti-Semitism, secularization, and Zionism.
Soviet Jews and the Future of the Global Jewish Diaspora
Author(s): Shneer, David
Editor(s): Diner, Hasia R.
Date: 2021
Topics: Diaspora, Soviet Jewry, Russian-Speaking Jews, Aliyah, Immigration, Main Topic: Other
Jewish Museums in the Federal Republic of Germany
Author(s): Bertz, Inka
Editor(s): Cohen, Richard I.
Topics: Holocaust Commemoration, Holocaust Memorials, Jewish Museums, Main Topic: Culture and Heritage
Abstract: This chapter examines the history of Jewish museums in the Federal Republic of Germany. It describes the different phases of public presentations of Jewish history and culture characterized by dramatic changes in museological emphases. These include the first phase in the early 1960s which coincided with efforts at examining the history and legacy of National Socialism and the Holocaust; the second phase began in the mid-1970s with the founding of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft judischer Sammlungen; the third phase in the 1980s; and the fourth phase in which Holocaust remembrance was reconfigured.
Jewish Heritage and Cultural Revival in Poland
Author(s): Duch-Dyngosz, Marta
Date: 2021
Topics: Bibliography and Literature Reviews, Jewish Revival, Jewish Culture, Jewish Heritage, Main Topic: Culture and Heritage
The Vanishing State: Religious Education and Intolerance in French Jewish Schools
Author(s): Arkin, Kimberly A.
Editor(s): Seligman, Adam B.
Date: 2014
Topics: Main Topic: Education, Jewish Schools, Jewish Identity, National Identity, Religious Education
Abstract: France does not offer religious education in public schools. The French state does, however, fund private religious schools. The author focuses on the unintended consequences of one aspect of this practice—the decision to finance, but not regulate, Jewish day schools. The French Department of Education intends for Jewish school students (like their Catholic school counterparts) to see themselves as simultaneously French AND religious. But in the mid-2000s, the reality was quite different. The author argues that the content of religious education did not necessarily stop day schoolers from generalizing their trust beyond other Jews. Rather, it was the context of Jewish schooling that allowed Jewish students to understand themselves as “not French.” By funding and ignoring day schools, the State made this context, and thus the separation of religious and national identities, possible.
Hungarian Jewish Politics from the End of the Second World War until the Collapse of Communism
Author(s): Kovács, András
Editor(s): Mendelsohn, Ezra
Date: 2004
Topics: Main Topic: Other, Jewish Politics, Politics, Communism, Post-War Jewish History
Abstract: The present study examines Jewish politics in Communist Hungary. As it is widely known, politicians of Jewish origin played an important role in the political life of post-war Hungary as leaders of the Communist party or as officials in the Communist governments. Their activity had a considerable effect, both directly and indirectly, on the life of Hungarian Jews. "Judeo-Bolshevic" rule is still a favorite topic of contemporary antisemitic publiciations. No doubt, the question of whether the Jewish origin of these politicians had an impact on their decisions, and if so, to what extent, could be a relevant subject for historical study. However, this essay deals with a different topic. It is concerned only with those politicians in post-war Hungary who identified themselves publicly as Jews or openly
represented Jewish causes. How did these politicians, who viewed Jews as a collectivity and sought to defend the Jews’ collective interests, act in the troublesome post-war decades?
Grandmothers, mothers and daughters: women of formerly displaced families in three Jewish communities
Author(s): Inowlocki, Lena
Editor(s): Bertaux, Daniel; Thompson, Paul
Date: 1993
Topics: Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Trauma, Age and Generational Issues, Jewish Women, Holocaust Survivors, Holocaust Survivors: Children of, Parenthood, Oral History and Biography
Humor and Russian Jewish Identity
Author(s): Shternshis, Anna
Editor(s): Lederhendler, Eli; Finder, Gabriel N.
Date: 2016
Topics: Main Topic: Culture and Heritage, Oral History and Biography, Interviews, Humour, Soviet Jewry
Language as quasilect: Hebrew in contemporary Anglo-Jewry
Author(s): Glinert, Lewis
Editor(s): Glinert, Lewis
Date: 1993
Topics: Language, Hebrew, Main Topic: Other, Linguistics
Klezmer's Afterlife: An Ethnography of the Jewish Music Revival in Poland and Germany
Author(s): Waligórska, Magdalena
Date: 2013
Topics: Klezmer, Jewish Music, Jewish - Non - Jewish Relations, Holocaust Commemoration, Memory, Jewish Heritage, Cultural Politics, Jewish Culture, Jewish Revival, Ethnography, Ethnomusicology, Main Topic: Culture and Heritage
Abstract: Klezmer in Europe has been a controversial topic ever since this traditional Jewish wedding music made it to the concert halls and discos of Berlin, Warsaw, Budapest and Prague. Played mostly by non-Jews and for non-Jews, it was hailed as "fakelore," "Jewish Disneyland" and even "cultural necrophilia." Klezmer's Afterlife is the first book to investigate this fascinating music scene in Central Europe, giving voice to the musicians, producers and consumers of the resuscitated klezmer. Contesting common hypotheses about the klezmer revival in Germany and Poland stemming merely from feelings of guilt which emerged in the years following the Holocaust, author Magdalena Waligorska investigates the consequences of the klezmer boom on the people who staged it and places where it occurred. Offering not only a documentation of the klezmer revival in two of its European headquarters (Kraków and Berlin), but also an analysis of the Jewish / non-Jewish encounter it generates, Waligorska demonstrates how the klezmer revival replicates and reinvents the image of the Jew in Polish and German popular culture, how it becomes a soundtrack to Holocaust commemoration and how it is used as a shining example of successful cultural policy by local officials
Sources for the Demographic Study of the Jews in the Former Soviet Union
Author(s): Tolts, Mark
Editor(s): Rebhun, Uzi
Date: 2014
Topics: Demography, Bibliography and Literature Reviews, Main Topic: Demography and Migration, Censuses, Aliyah, Migration, Soviet Jewry
Abstract: The article shows that demographic study of the Jews in the Former Soviet Union has a long and well established tradition based on the very rich amount of data: i.e., vital and migration statistics, and census results. The analysis started from an overview of the Tsarist and Soviet statistical legacies. However, most of the attention is focused on findings of the last quarter century. The study examines both the role of the Soviet internal passport which, because it listed ethnicity, was the basis for Jewish statistics, and the consequences of the elimination of compulsory ethnic identification in the post-Soviet Slavic countries.
Contradictory Constructions of "Jewish" in Britain's Political and Legal Systems
Author(s): Graham, David
Editor(s): Rebhun, Uzi
Date: 2014
Topics: Law, Politics, Main Topic: Other
An Unfortunate Coincidence: Jews, Jewishness, and English Law
Author(s): Herman, Didi
Date: 2011
Topics: Law, Main Topic: Other
Abstract: This book examines how English judges discuss and depict Jews and Jewishness in the 20th and 21st centuries. It is a study of legal judgments in a range of areas, tracing continuities and discontinuities in representations of Jews and Jewishness over time. The book shows the part played by racial and religious understandings in legal decision-making, addressing the place of a minority with a long history in England and within the English cultural imagination. It considers the complex and often contradictory approaches to Jews and Jewishness within judicial discourse, challenging both assumptions about tolerance and neutrality in English law and any simple narrative of 'antisemitism'. While its focus is on the distinctive character of the English context, the book has resonance for thinking more generally about racial and religious representations in law.
Sounding Jewish in Berlin: Klezmer Music and the Contemporary City
Author(s): Alexander, Phil
Date: 2021
Topics: Main Topic: Culture and Heritage, Jewish Music, Klezmer, Ethnomusicology, Cities and Suburbs, Jewish Space
Abstract: How can a traditional music with little apparent historical connection to Berlin become a way of hearing and making sense of the bustling German capital in the twenty-first century? In Sounding Jewish in Berlin, author Phil Alexander explores the dialogue between the city's contemporary klezmer scene and the street-level creativity that has become a hallmark of Berlin's decidedly modern urbanity and cosmopolitanism. By tracing how klezmer music engages with the spaces and symbolic meanings of the city, Alexander sheds light on how this Eastern European Jewish folk music has become not just a product but also a producer of Berlin.

This engaging study of Berlin's dynamic Yiddish music scene brings together ethnomusicology, cultural studies, and urban geography to evoke the sounds, atmospheres, and performance spaces through which klezmer musicians have built a lively set of musical networks in the city. Transcending a restrictive framework that considers this music solely in the context of troubled German-Jewish history and notions of guilt and absence, Alexander shows how Berlin's current klezmer communitya diverse group of Jewish and non-Jewish performersimaginatively blend the genre's traditional musical language with characteristically local tones to forge an adaptable and distinctively twenty-first-century version of klezmer. Ultimately, the music's vital presence in Berlin is powerful evidence that if traditional music is to remain audible amid the noise of the urban, it must become a meaningful part of that noise.
Modern British Jewry
Author(s): Alderman, Geoffrey
Date: 1992
Topics: Jewish History, Jewish Community, Jewish Communal Politics, Main Topic: Other
Abstract: An authoritative and comprehensive history of the Jews of Britain over the last century and a half, this book examines the social structure and economic base of Jewish communities in Victorian England and traces the struggle for emancipation. Alderman analyzes the effects of the large-scale immigration for the early twentieth century, and charts the development of the Zionist movement in Britain. Alderman takes his account up to the present day, exploring the concerns and self-image of contemporary Jewish communities in Britain and their place in an increasingly pluralist society. Based on a wealth of primary and secondary sources and written by a leading Jewish historian, Modern British Jewry is a political, social, and intellectual history of British Jews which is critical, scholarly and immensely readable.