Sounds of sensibility

Judaism, Wntr, 1998 by Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett

What can be learned in this regard from the fate of East European Jewish instrumental music among Hasidim and haredim in America and Israel? While an earlier American generation considered even kosher versions of swing and jazz "alien to a 'Jewish rejoicing' (yidishe simche)," their children and grandchildren were open to rock beat and to kosher rock, that is, to rock with acceptable lyrics, a shift that Soloveitchik attributes to the embourgeoisement of American-born haredim.(57) Hoping to find klezmer music still going strong and without interruption among those who seem to hew to tradition most vigorously, Joel Rubin mined to haredim in Israel, the subject of his essay in this issue. He offers several reasons for why he did not find what he expected, including the low status of professional musicians in haredi society and the rabbinical ban in the 1860s on instrumental music in Eretz Israel. In other words, Rubin found himself exploring music within a religious community, not a music scene. This is not to say that a religious music scene does not exist, whether here or in Israel, but only that klezmer music as such is not its focus.(58) According to Rubin, Hasidic and haredi communities in Israel are not part of the new klezmer scene, though there is some musical traffic and Rubin himself is something of a bridge between the two worlds. Those worlds are separated by more than music.

Catalytic Ruptures

A delay in the heritage process prior to the klezmer revival not only left Jewish party music to the vicissitudes of sensibility, but also spared it from the very ideological attachments, from the political and religious engagements, that gave other forms of Jewish music and musical practices a competitive advantage at the time. The music of American Jewish wedding musicians faded from view for some of the very reasons that would make it attractive to the generation that later picked it up. No movement, whether political or religious, had claimed this kind of music. Israeli music was sustained by the Zionist movement, the labor movement had its songs, mandolin orchestras, and choral groups, and both had their youth groups and summer camps. The synagogues had their cantors, choirs, and schools. In contrast, professional instrumentalists worked for a market, not a movement. Though movements also constitute a market of sorts, movements give precedence to ideological considerations.

To better understand why the lapse was catalytic, it is useful to compare the turning to "klezmer" music during the seventies, described by Frank London and Alicia Svigals in their contributions to this issue, with the turning from the "old but little-known happy Jewish music of the old country" that Mickey Katz was still playing in the fifties? The two moments are deeply implicated in one another, both musically (Katz's material has made a kind of comeback) and in terms of structures of feeling (his stigmatized irreverence is a badge of honor for a subsequent generation). As Don Byron explained, he was attracted to "the mischief in [klezmer] music" and found in Mickey Katz, a master of mischief: "I tend to gravitate to whoever is playing the trickiest, outest stuff, and that's where I live," whether the music be "klezmer, jazz, big band, or improvisation."(60)