Rumenishe Shtiklekh: klezmer music among the Hasidim in contemporary Israel

Judaism, Wntr, 1998 by Joel Rubin

22. Personal communication, AK, August 1993. Early musicians in Safed included Shimen Klineter (Shimen the clarinetist), a khosid (Hasid) in Safed who came originally from Romania and played at weddings; Yankele, who left Safed and went to Australia and Egypt, where he remained; Berele Klineter; as well as Elye Klineter Kuperman, who lived in Haifa and was already an old man at the time AS, who is now at least in his 60s, was a youth (Interview AS, August 1993).

23. Interview AS, August 1993. Hajdu also describes how the dancers would sing the nigunim for the klezmorim (Hajdu, "Le Niggun Meron," p. 81). Hajdu's informant Zilber noted two divergent sources for the "Meron" repertoire: one Arabo-Druze; and another as Hungaro-Rumanian. He says there was a famine in the Northern Galilee around 1910-1920, and that in combination with the threat of being conscripted into the Turkish army, caused a number of local residents to relocate to the USA and to Eastern European countries such as Romania and Hungary-wherever they could obtain passports. They later returned to Safed and Tiberias and brought with them what he termed "Gypsy melodies," which they then taught to the local klezmorim to play for them. Zilber mentions, for example, a man who had lived in Romania for 50 years. He subsequently returned to Israel, where he sang the melodies to the klezmorim, and this became part of the "Meron" repertoire (Hajdu, "Le Niggun Meron," pp. 93-94). It is plausible that these melodies have only been in Palestinian-Israeli repertoire since the second half of the nineteenth century. First of all, most klezmer repertoire that is known today seems to stem from no earlier than this period. In addition, the Ashkenazic pilgrimages to Meron began in the second half of the nineteenth century, approximately at the same time that instrumental music was banned in Jerusalem. If the melodies had been known earlier than that, it would seem logical that the Jerusalemites would have known these melodies and retained them in their vocal versions as part of their wedding repertoire. According to Hajdu, these melodies first became known in Jerusalem around 1960.

24. Argentinean-born clarinetist Giora Feidman, former bass clarinetist of the Israel Philharmonic, was, although not schooled in the traditional instrumental music of either the hasidic communities of Israel or the klezmorim of Eastern Europe, the first to popularize these repertoires-at first in Israel and thereafter internationally-and he maintained contact with some of the hasidic musicians in Israel, for example at the annual klezmer gathering organized by MB in Elkana, at which both he and his late father were participants.

25. The Sephardic and Oriental orthodox communities in Jerusalem do not observe Rabbi Auerbach's ban on instrumental music.

26. Interviews with GK, November 1992 and August 1993; EE, August 1993; BM, November 1992; PS, December 1990 and April 1994.

27. In addition, GK had begun to sing as well as to play, and one of his songs made it into the Hasidic hit parade charts on Israeli national radio, Kol Israel. This caused additional tensions for him, as his community is anti-Zionist.