Kálra Móricz
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520250888
- eISBN:
- 9780520933682
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520250888.003.0003
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
In an essay entitled “Aladdin's Lamp” and published on the occasion of the edition of An-sky's The Jewish Artistic Heritage, Abram Markovich Efros, a leading Russian art critic, described a form of ...
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In an essay entitled “Aladdin's Lamp” and published on the occasion of the edition of An-sky's The Jewish Artistic Heritage, Abram Markovich Efros, a leading Russian art critic, described a form of neonationalism. It was a creative combination of folk art and modernism in which the supposed authenticity of folk art lent stylistic credentials to modernist art. In the debates about the sources of Jewish art music, an opposition was similarly constructed between the near past and ancient times, between the Oriental-sounding Yiddish folk music and the less Orientally colored sacred music that, many believed, was historically traceable to Biblical times. In this new phase of Jewish art music, kuchkist preoccupation with folk music as an expression of national identity was replaced with a neonationalist orientation, in which national musical sources were abstracted.Less
In an essay entitled “Aladdin's Lamp” and published on the occasion of the edition of An-sky's The Jewish Artistic Heritage, Abram Markovich Efros, a leading Russian art critic, described a form of neonationalism. It was a creative combination of folk art and modernism in which the supposed authenticity of folk art lent stylistic credentials to modernist art. In the debates about the sources of Jewish art music, an opposition was similarly constructed between the near past and ancient times, between the Oriental-sounding Yiddish folk music and the less Orientally colored sacred music that, many believed, was historically traceable to Biblical times. In this new phase of Jewish art music, kuchkist preoccupation with folk music as an expression of national identity was replaced with a neonationalist orientation, in which national musical sources were abstracted.
Joseph Shatzmiller
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691156996
- eISBN:
- 9781400846092
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691156996.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
Demonstrating that similarities between Jewish and Christian art in the Middle Ages were more than coincidental, this book combines a wide range of sources to show how Jews and Christians exchanged ...
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Demonstrating that similarities between Jewish and Christian art in the Middle Ages were more than coincidental, this book combines a wide range of sources to show how Jews and Christians exchanged artistic and material culture. The book focuses on communities in northern Europe, Iberia, and other Mediterranean societies where Jews and Christians coexisted for centuries, and it synthesizes the most current research to describe the daily encounters that enabled both societies to appreciate common artistic values. Detailing the transmission of cultural sensibilities in the medieval money market and the world of Jewish money lenders, the book examines objects pawned by peasants and humble citizens, sacred relics exchanged by the clergy as security for loans, and aesthetic goods given up by the Christian well-to-do who required financial assistance. The work also explores frescoes and decorations likely painted by non-Jews in medieval and early modern Jewish homes located in Germanic lands, and the ways in which Jews hired Christian artists and craftsmen to decorate Hebrew prayer books and create liturgical objects. Conversely, Christians frequently hired Jewish craftsmen to produce liturgical objects used in Christian churches. With rich archival documentation, the book sheds light on the social and economic history of the creation of Jewish and Christian art, and expands the general understanding of cultural exchange in brand-new ways.Less
Demonstrating that similarities between Jewish and Christian art in the Middle Ages were more than coincidental, this book combines a wide range of sources to show how Jews and Christians exchanged artistic and material culture. The book focuses on communities in northern Europe, Iberia, and other Mediterranean societies where Jews and Christians coexisted for centuries, and it synthesizes the most current research to describe the daily encounters that enabled both societies to appreciate common artistic values. Detailing the transmission of cultural sensibilities in the medieval money market and the world of Jewish money lenders, the book examines objects pawned by peasants and humble citizens, sacred relics exchanged by the clergy as security for loans, and aesthetic goods given up by the Christian well-to-do who required financial assistance. The work also explores frescoes and decorations likely painted by non-Jews in medieval and early modern Jewish homes located in Germanic lands, and the ways in which Jews hired Christian artists and craftsmen to decorate Hebrew prayer books and create liturgical objects. Conversely, Christians frequently hired Jewish craftsmen to produce liturgical objects used in Christian churches. With rich archival documentation, the book sheds light on the social and economic history of the creation of Jewish and Christian art, and expands the general understanding of cultural exchange in brand-new ways.
Kálra Móricz
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520250888
- eISBN:
- 9780520933682
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520250888.003.0002
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
Leonid Sabaneyev, like other historians of Jewish music, identified the origin of Jewish art music with the foundation of the Society for Jewish Folk Music—Obshchestvo Yevreyskoy Narodnoy Muzïki ...
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Leonid Sabaneyev, like other historians of Jewish music, identified the origin of Jewish art music with the foundation of the Society for Jewish Folk Music—Obshchestvo Yevreyskoy Narodnoy Muzïki (OYNM) in St. Petersburg in 1908. The OYNM was an association of professional musicians and music lovers who sought to purvey Jewish music, both secular and sacred, to audiences both Jewish and non-Jewish. This chapter examines how the political vagaries within the Jewish national movement strongly affected the emergence and development of Jewish cultural organizations. The Russian nationalist model was crucial in turning the OYNM from an organization for the preservation and popularization of Jewish musical culture into a funnel for the creation of specifically Jewish art music. Ironically, the music written by composers whose ambition was to become the Mighty Band of Jewish music emulated their Russian models not only in technical details, but also in their willing embrace of stereotypes of Russian composers, exploited to depict the Oriental others, among them Jews.Less
Leonid Sabaneyev, like other historians of Jewish music, identified the origin of Jewish art music with the foundation of the Society for Jewish Folk Music—Obshchestvo Yevreyskoy Narodnoy Muzïki (OYNM) in St. Petersburg in 1908. The OYNM was an association of professional musicians and music lovers who sought to purvey Jewish music, both secular and sacred, to audiences both Jewish and non-Jewish. This chapter examines how the political vagaries within the Jewish national movement strongly affected the emergence and development of Jewish cultural organizations. The Russian nationalist model was crucial in turning the OYNM from an organization for the preservation and popularization of Jewish musical culture into a funnel for the creation of specifically Jewish art music. Ironically, the music written by composers whose ambition was to become the Mighty Band of Jewish music emulated their Russian models not only in technical details, but also in their willing embrace of stereotypes of Russian composers, exploited to depict the Oriental others, among them Jews.
Thomas C. Hubka
- Published in print:
- 1997
- Published Online:
- February 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781874774310
- eISBN:
- 9781800340671
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781874774310.003.0006
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism
This chapter focuses on a specific group of eighteenth-century wooden synagogues — labelled the Gwoździec–Chodorów group — within their east European context. It identifies the architectural ideas ...
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This chapter focuses on a specific group of eighteenth-century wooden synagogues — labelled the Gwoździec–Chodorów group — within their east European context. It identifies the architectural ideas and building traditions which generated these synagogues, and particularly to emphasize the role of ideas from Jewish sources and from the Jewish community in this process. This entails investigating all phases of building development, including sponsorship, inspiration, liturgy, design, construction, and painting, and then differentiating between non-Jewish east European sources and sources from the local and the broader Jewish community. The role of Jewish ideas requires careful differentiation because their influence on the architecture of the synagogues has been so loosely assumed and insufficiently documented in current scholarship. The chapter then suggests that the explosion of interest in kabbalah in Jewish society during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries may have informed the architecture of the synagogues.Less
This chapter focuses on a specific group of eighteenth-century wooden synagogues — labelled the Gwoździec–Chodorów group — within their east European context. It identifies the architectural ideas and building traditions which generated these synagogues, and particularly to emphasize the role of ideas from Jewish sources and from the Jewish community in this process. This entails investigating all phases of building development, including sponsorship, inspiration, liturgy, design, construction, and painting, and then differentiating between non-Jewish east European sources and sources from the local and the broader Jewish community. The role of Jewish ideas requires careful differentiation because their influence on the architecture of the synagogues has been so loosely assumed and insufficiently documented in current scholarship. The chapter then suggests that the explosion of interest in kabbalah in Jewish society during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries may have informed the architecture of the synagogues.
Yaacov Shavit
- Published in print:
- 1997
- Published Online:
- February 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781874774259
- eISBN:
- 9781800340879
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781874774259.003.0009
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion in the Ancient World
This chapter is devoted to the question as to whether Jews have imagination — namely, whether they have the creativity to produce works of art. In short, the chapter argues that there is a corpus of ...
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This chapter is devoted to the question as to whether Jews have imagination — namely, whether they have the creativity to produce works of art. In short, the chapter argues that there is a corpus of literary and artistic work created by Jews, which encompasses works of art and literature of all types and reveals a vast and copious creative imagination. However, during the nineteenth century, a different image prevailed, as a popular notion emerged which painted Jews as being without imagination. The chapter stresses that these anti-Jewish notions were even accepted by some Jewish writers. These notions become even clearer when the Jewish mind is contrasted with the Greek mind.Less
This chapter is devoted to the question as to whether Jews have imagination — namely, whether they have the creativity to produce works of art. In short, the chapter argues that there is a corpus of literary and artistic work created by Jews, which encompasses works of art and literature of all types and reveals a vast and copious creative imagination. However, during the nineteenth century, a different image prevailed, as a popular notion emerged which painted Jews as being without imagination. The chapter stresses that these anti-Jewish notions were even accepted by some Jewish writers. These notions become even clearer when the Jewish mind is contrasted with the Greek mind.
Assaf Shelleg
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- November 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199354948
- eISBN:
- 9780199354962
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199354948.003.0002
- Subject:
- Music, Ethnomusicology, World Music, History, Western
Chapter 1 discusses music by and about Jews in early twentieth-century Europe, and the ways that Jews have grappled with the musical stereotypes that spelled their “otherness.” While persistently ...
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Chapter 1 discusses music by and about Jews in early twentieth-century Europe, and the ways that Jews have grappled with the musical stereotypes that spelled their “otherness.” While persistently engaged with a foreign view of Jewish culture, assimilated and estranged Jewish composers became more familiar with the exoticism attributed to Jews in Western art music than with the actual sounds coming from Jewish vernacular traditions or from the synagogue. Unfolding the continuum of Jewish composers haunted by the Wagnerian regime of representation and the noisy tropes associated with musical Judaism, the chapter includes a discussion on Ernest Bloch, Arnold Schoenberg, Erich W. Sternberg, and Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco and their perceptions of the “Jewish East” (either Eastern Europe and/or Palestine). As most Jewish and non-Jewish composers gravitated to the Eastern European soundscape, musicological historiography followed suit and focused mainly on composers who drew on this inventory. Decentering of the Eastern European soundscape through the above-mentioned case studies serves the double function of underscoring the various importations of Jewish musics silenced by musicological historiographies and the mapping of the emerging habitat in Palestine and later Israel.Less
Chapter 1 discusses music by and about Jews in early twentieth-century Europe, and the ways that Jews have grappled with the musical stereotypes that spelled their “otherness.” While persistently engaged with a foreign view of Jewish culture, assimilated and estranged Jewish composers became more familiar with the exoticism attributed to Jews in Western art music than with the actual sounds coming from Jewish vernacular traditions or from the synagogue. Unfolding the continuum of Jewish composers haunted by the Wagnerian regime of representation and the noisy tropes associated with musical Judaism, the chapter includes a discussion on Ernest Bloch, Arnold Schoenberg, Erich W. Sternberg, and Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco and their perceptions of the “Jewish East” (either Eastern Europe and/or Palestine). As most Jewish and non-Jewish composers gravitated to the Eastern European soundscape, musicological historiography followed suit and focused mainly on composers who drew on this inventory. Decentering of the Eastern European soundscape through the above-mentioned case studies serves the double function of underscoring the various importations of Jewish musics silenced by musicological historiographies and the mapping of the emerging habitat in Palestine and later Israel.
Joseph P. Ansell
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- February 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781874774945
- eISBN:
- 9781789623314
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781874774945.003.0018
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism
This chapter considers who or what makes a Jewish artist. The issue is one that art historians and artists alike have debated for many years. Defining what is and is not Jewish art has continued to ...
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This chapter considers who or what makes a Jewish artist. The issue is one that art historians and artists alike have debated for many years. Defining what is and is not Jewish art has continued to be a troubling issue — more so for how it relates to Arthur Szyk's work in particular. Though Szyk considered himself a Jewish artist and Jewish art and subject-matter extensively permeated his life and work, he is curiously absent from most discussions of twentieth-century Jewish artists. His work focused on Jewish subjects far more than most of the artists who have been included in that discourse. The chapter thus makes the case for Szyk's inclusion in the realm of Jewish art discourse.Less
This chapter considers who or what makes a Jewish artist. The issue is one that art historians and artists alike have debated for many years. Defining what is and is not Jewish art has continued to be a troubling issue — more so for how it relates to Arthur Szyk's work in particular. Though Szyk considered himself a Jewish artist and Jewish art and subject-matter extensively permeated his life and work, he is curiously absent from most discussions of twentieth-century Jewish artists. His work focused on Jewish subjects far more than most of the artists who have been included in that discourse. The chapter thus makes the case for Szyk's inclusion in the realm of Jewish art discourse.
Nadia Malinovich
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- February 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781904113409
- eISBN:
- 9781800342637
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781904113409.003.0007
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism
This chapter focuses on the expansion of the Jewish press, the development of a lively Jewish art and music scene, and the strengthening of the interfaith movement. It discloses the creation of a ...
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This chapter focuses on the expansion of the Jewish press, the development of a lively Jewish art and music scene, and the strengthening of the interfaith movement. It discloses the creation of a wide variety of journals of differing Zionist, literary, and religious orientations that marked an important change in contemporary French Jewish life. It also investigates the journals that served as a vehicle to discuss new developments in the Jewish associational and cultural life of the day and provided a forum to discuss diverse aspects of Jewish culture and history. The chapter discusses the prominence of Jewish artists in the international Ecole de Paris as another important development in Jewish cultural life during the 1920s. It also describes French Jews that formed musical societies and choruses to perform Jewish music, from traditional religious compositions to Yiddish folk songs, in public settings.Less
This chapter focuses on the expansion of the Jewish press, the development of a lively Jewish art and music scene, and the strengthening of the interfaith movement. It discloses the creation of a wide variety of journals of differing Zionist, literary, and religious orientations that marked an important change in contemporary French Jewish life. It also investigates the journals that served as a vehicle to discuss new developments in the Jewish associational and cultural life of the day and provided a forum to discuss diverse aspects of Jewish culture and history. The chapter discusses the prominence of Jewish artists in the international Ecole de Paris as another important development in Jewish cultural life during the 1920s. It also describes French Jews that formed musical societies and choruses to perform Jewish music, from traditional religious compositions to Yiddish folk songs, in public settings.
Joseph P. Ansell
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- February 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781874774945
- eISBN:
- 9781789623314
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781874774945.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism
Artist and illustrator Arthur Szyk was a Polish Jew whose work was overwhelmingly Jewish in theme and content. The mission he set himself was to use his artistic talents to serve humanity and the ...
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Artist and illustrator Arthur Szyk was a Polish Jew whose work was overwhelmingly Jewish in theme and content. The mission he set himself was to use his artistic talents to serve humanity and the Jewish people. His work as a political artist went well beyond a narrow definition of the Jewish cause. He is best known among Jews for his illustrated Haggadah, but the majority of his work deals with contemporary political themes and social causes. In Poland, Szyk promoted the causes of freedom, toleration, and human dignity. He believed that as a Jewish artist he had a responsibility to speak for all minorities. He worked for years on behalf of the Polish government in an effort to strengthen the Jews' position. Szyk left Europe in 1940 and arrived in the United States later the same year. Determined to use his art for political purposes, he crusaded against the Nazis. Convinced that Hitler would not stop with the Jews but would suppress all freedom-loving people, he supported the war effort through his striking propaganda images of the German and Japanese armies, to great effect. After the war he turned his efforts to promoting the idea of a Jewish homeland in Israel. In every phase of his career, one finds Szyk looking to the past but hoping for the future; he believed that art could make a difference in the world, politically and socially. This biography makes a singular contribution to the history of Jewish art and of Polish–Jewish relations in the first half of the twentieth century.Less
Artist and illustrator Arthur Szyk was a Polish Jew whose work was overwhelmingly Jewish in theme and content. The mission he set himself was to use his artistic talents to serve humanity and the Jewish people. His work as a political artist went well beyond a narrow definition of the Jewish cause. He is best known among Jews for his illustrated Haggadah, but the majority of his work deals with contemporary political themes and social causes. In Poland, Szyk promoted the causes of freedom, toleration, and human dignity. He believed that as a Jewish artist he had a responsibility to speak for all minorities. He worked for years on behalf of the Polish government in an effort to strengthen the Jews' position. Szyk left Europe in 1940 and arrived in the United States later the same year. Determined to use his art for political purposes, he crusaded against the Nazis. Convinced that Hitler would not stop with the Jews but would suppress all freedom-loving people, he supported the war effort through his striking propaganda images of the German and Japanese armies, to great effect. After the war he turned his efforts to promoting the idea of a Jewish homeland in Israel. In every phase of his career, one finds Szyk looking to the past but hoping for the future; he believed that art could make a difference in the world, politically and socially. This biography makes a singular contribution to the history of Jewish art and of Polish–Jewish relations in the first half of the twentieth century.
Joseph P. Ansell
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- February 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781874774945
- eISBN:
- 9781789623314
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781874774945.003.0003
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism
This chapter covers the period after Arthur Szyk's departure from Poland. He left the country for multiple reasons, both political and artistic, and came to settle in Paris by 1921. There was a ...
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This chapter covers the period after Arthur Szyk's departure from Poland. He left the country for multiple reasons, both political and artistic, and came to settle in Paris by 1921. There was a thriving Polish Jewish artistic community in the region, although Szyk soon began to distinguish himself from them. Despite building close relationships with many of his fellow Jewish artists, Szyk differed from them in several significant ways — most visibly in style and subject matter. All of the artists among whom Szyk moved worked in some variation of contemporary artistic trends. Szyk, on the other hand, while maintaining a professional place within this milieu, eschewed the contemporary approaches and experiments of his colleagues and friends, preferring to look to history for his inspiration and seeking to convey a message rather than to produce art for its own sake. He also focused extensively on Jewish subject matter. The chapter explores his growing artistic fame during this period, including the first of his governmental honours conferred upon him during his artistic career.Less
This chapter covers the period after Arthur Szyk's departure from Poland. He left the country for multiple reasons, both political and artistic, and came to settle in Paris by 1921. There was a thriving Polish Jewish artistic community in the region, although Szyk soon began to distinguish himself from them. Despite building close relationships with many of his fellow Jewish artists, Szyk differed from them in several significant ways — most visibly in style and subject matter. All of the artists among whom Szyk moved worked in some variation of contemporary artistic trends. Szyk, on the other hand, while maintaining a professional place within this milieu, eschewed the contemporary approaches and experiments of his colleagues and friends, preferring to look to history for his inspiration and seeking to convey a message rather than to produce art for its own sake. He also focused extensively on Jewish subject matter. The chapter explores his growing artistic fame during this period, including the first of his governmental honours conferred upon him during his artistic career.
Jerzy Malinowski
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- February 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781874774730
- eISBN:
- 9781800340732
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781874774730.003.0035
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism
This chapter focuses on Jerzy Malinowski's Malarstwo i rzeźba Żydów polskich w XIX i XX wieku (The Painting and Sculpture of Polish Jews in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries). Among the men ...
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This chapter focuses on Jerzy Malinowski's Malarstwo i rzeźba Żydów polskich w XIX i XX wieku (The Painting and Sculpture of Polish Jews in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries). Among the men Jerzy Malinowski, an authority on Polish art and Polish Jewish culture, discusses are many unknown or virtually unknown artists. He begins his story in the mid-nineteenth century with the appearance of the first Polish artists of Jewish origin, of whom Aleksander Lesser was the most important. This was an easy decision, but other decisions made by the author are more difficult and more problematic. What exactly does he mean by Polish Jewish artists? More significant is the question of what Malinowski means by ‘Jewish artists’ and ‘Jewish art’. In his very brief introduction, he explains that he has included artists who identified themselves as belonging to the Jewish national camp, and artists who, even if they did not identify themselves in this way, took an active part in Jewish life. Those who qualify on neither of these grounds are branded as ‘assimilationists’ and omitted.Less
This chapter focuses on Jerzy Malinowski's Malarstwo i rzeźba Żydów polskich w XIX i XX wieku (The Painting and Sculpture of Polish Jews in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries). Among the men Jerzy Malinowski, an authority on Polish art and Polish Jewish culture, discusses are many unknown or virtually unknown artists. He begins his story in the mid-nineteenth century with the appearance of the first Polish artists of Jewish origin, of whom Aleksander Lesser was the most important. This was an easy decision, but other decisions made by the author are more difficult and more problematic. What exactly does he mean by Polish Jewish artists? More significant is the question of what Malinowski means by ‘Jewish artists’ and ‘Jewish art’. In his very brief introduction, he explains that he has included artists who identified themselves as belonging to the Jewish national camp, and artists who, even if they did not identify themselves in this way, took an active part in Jewish life. Those who qualify on neither of these grounds are branded as ‘assimilationists’ and omitted.
Assaf Shelleg
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- November 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199354948
- eISBN:
- 9780199354962
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199354948.003.0004
- Subject:
- Music, Ethnomusicology, World Music, History, Western
After the linear properties of non-Western Jewish musical traditions had destabilized Zionist Eurocentric formulations, the theological undercurrents nationalized by the Hebrewist discourse grew more ...
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After the linear properties of non-Western Jewish musical traditions had destabilized Zionist Eurocentric formulations, the theological undercurrents nationalized by the Hebrewist discourse grew more visible. Art music of the 1960s and ’70s saw a dialectical return to the Jewish worlds from which Hebrew culture sought to be “healed.” Hasidic stories enacted in modernist musical syntaxes now avoided both the otherness embedded in post-romantic and auto-exoticist constructions in the spirit of the Yishuv while the properties of both the Eastern European soundscape and non-Western Jewish oral musical traditions gave birth to new modes of cultural memory. Paradoxically, the aftermath of the 1967 War accelerated the dialectical return to Jewish culture outside of the land, underscoring the subterranean presence of linguistic and theological strata that manifested themselves both culturally and politically. The collapse of national rhetoric that formerly distinguished between diasporic and Hebrewist cultures now enabled the reemergence of repressed exilic pasts that defined Jewishness through its symbiotic qualities, rather than the translation of theology into politics that gave rise to territorial maximalism in the 1970s.Less
After the linear properties of non-Western Jewish musical traditions had destabilized Zionist Eurocentric formulations, the theological undercurrents nationalized by the Hebrewist discourse grew more visible. Art music of the 1960s and ’70s saw a dialectical return to the Jewish worlds from which Hebrew culture sought to be “healed.” Hasidic stories enacted in modernist musical syntaxes now avoided both the otherness embedded in post-romantic and auto-exoticist constructions in the spirit of the Yishuv while the properties of both the Eastern European soundscape and non-Western Jewish oral musical traditions gave birth to new modes of cultural memory. Paradoxically, the aftermath of the 1967 War accelerated the dialectical return to Jewish culture outside of the land, underscoring the subterranean presence of linguistic and theological strata that manifested themselves both culturally and politically. The collapse of national rhetoric that formerly distinguished between diasporic and Hebrewist cultures now enabled the reemergence of repressed exilic pasts that defined Jewishness through its symbiotic qualities, rather than the translation of theology into politics that gave rise to territorial maximalism in the 1970s.
Bracha Yaniv
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- February 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781906764371
- eISBN:
- 9781800343436
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781906764371.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism
The carved wooden Torah arks found in eastern Europe from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries were magnificent structures, unparalleled in their beauty and mystical significance. The work of ...
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The carved wooden Torah arks found in eastern Europe from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries were magnificent structures, unparalleled in their beauty and mystical significance. The work of Jewish artisans, they dominated the synagogues of numerous towns both large and small throughout the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, inspiring worshippers with their monumental scale and intricate motifs. Virtually none of these pieces survived the devastation of the two world wars. This book breathes new life into a lost genre, making it accessible to scholars and students of Jewish art, Jewish heritage, and religious art more generally. Making use of hundreds of pre-war photographs housed in local archives, the author develops a vivid portrait of the history and artistic development of these arks. Analysis of the historical context in which these arks emerged includes a broad survey of the traditions that characterized the local workshops of Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine. The author provides a detailed analysis of the motifs carved into the Torah arks and explains their mystical significance, among them representations of Temple imagery and messianic themes — and even daring visual metaphors for God. Fourteen arks are discussed in particular detail, with full supporting documentation; appendices relating to the inscriptions on the arks and to the artisans' names will further facilitate future research. The book throws new light on long-forgotten traditions of Jewish craftsmanship and religious understanding.Less
The carved wooden Torah arks found in eastern Europe from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries were magnificent structures, unparalleled in their beauty and mystical significance. The work of Jewish artisans, they dominated the synagogues of numerous towns both large and small throughout the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, inspiring worshippers with their monumental scale and intricate motifs. Virtually none of these pieces survived the devastation of the two world wars. This book breathes new life into a lost genre, making it accessible to scholars and students of Jewish art, Jewish heritage, and religious art more generally. Making use of hundreds of pre-war photographs housed in local archives, the author develops a vivid portrait of the history and artistic development of these arks. Analysis of the historical context in which these arks emerged includes a broad survey of the traditions that characterized the local workshops of Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine. The author provides a detailed analysis of the motifs carved into the Torah arks and explains their mystical significance, among them representations of Temple imagery and messianic themes — and even daring visual metaphors for God. Fourteen arks are discussed in particular detail, with full supporting documentation; appendices relating to the inscriptions on the arks and to the artisans' names will further facilitate future research. The book throws new light on long-forgotten traditions of Jewish craftsmanship and religious understanding.
Assaf Shelleg
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- November 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199354948
- eISBN:
- 9780199354962
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199354948.003.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Ethnomusicology, World Music, History, Western
Unfolding the dialectical processes that connect the three central chapters of the book—from modern Jewish art music in Europe through its migration to Mandatory Palestine and to the post-statehood ...
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Unfolding the dialectical processes that connect the three central chapters of the book—from modern Jewish art music in Europe through its migration to Mandatory Palestine and to the post-statehood dynamism of Israeli art music—the introduction displays the book’s main themes: the regime of representation in the post-Wagnerian era and its affect on Jewish composers in Europe, the historiography of modern Jewish art music, art music within and outside of the Wastern–European soundscape, ideological pressures in the Jewish community of Palestine, occidental imageries of Arab Jewish Music and its social hierarchies in the Yishuv and Israel, the theological undercurrents of the Zionist discourse, linear (serial) compositional devices and their weakening of national romanticist musical edifices in Hebrew culture, and the reemergence and reconfiguration of Jewish topoi in Israeli art music of the 1960s and 1970s. An additional discussion explicates the book’s methodology and theoretical framework.Less
Unfolding the dialectical processes that connect the three central chapters of the book—from modern Jewish art music in Europe through its migration to Mandatory Palestine and to the post-statehood dynamism of Israeli art music—the introduction displays the book’s main themes: the regime of representation in the post-Wagnerian era and its affect on Jewish composers in Europe, the historiography of modern Jewish art music, art music within and outside of the Wastern–European soundscape, ideological pressures in the Jewish community of Palestine, occidental imageries of Arab Jewish Music and its social hierarchies in the Yishuv and Israel, the theological undercurrents of the Zionist discourse, linear (serial) compositional devices and their weakening of national romanticist musical edifices in Hebrew culture, and the reemergence and reconfiguration of Jewish topoi in Israeli art music of the 1960s and 1970s. An additional discussion explicates the book’s methodology and theoretical framework.
Assaf Shelleg
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- November 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199354948
- eISBN:
- 9780199354962
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199354948.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Ethnomusicology, World Music, History, Western
Jewish Contiguities and the Soundtrack of Israeli History revolutionizes the study of modern Israeli art music by tracking the surprising itineraries of Jewish art music in the move from Europe to ...
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Jewish Contiguities and the Soundtrack of Israeli History revolutionizes the study of modern Israeli art music by tracking the surprising itineraries of Jewish art music in the move from Europe to Mandatory Palestine and Israel. Leaving behind clichés about East and West, Arab and Jew, this book provocatively exposes the legacies of European antisemitism and religious Judaism in the making of Israeli art music. Studying the emergence of modern Jewish art music Shelleg introduces the reader to music written by and “about” Jews, music whose aesthetics ranges from auto-exoticism through the hues of self-hatred to the disarticulation of Jewish musical markers. Moving on to consider part of this musics’ translocation to Mandatory Palestine, Shelleg studies the paradoxes embedded in a national Zionist culture whose rhetoric negated its pasts, only to mask process of hybridizations enchained by older legacies. Unearthing the mechanism of what “Zionist musical onomatopoeias,” Shelleg analyzes their entropy and dilution by non-western Arab Jewish oral musical traditions (the same traditions Hebrew culture sought to westernize and secularize). And what had begun with composers’ movement towards the musical properties of non-western Jewish musical traditions grew in the 60s and 70s to a dialectical return to exilic Jewish cultures. In the aftermath of the Six-Day War, which reaffirmed Zionism’s redemptive and expansionist messages, Israeli composers (re)embraced precisely the exilic Jewish music that emphasized Judaism’s syncretic qualities rather than its territorial characteristics. In the 70s, consequently, while religious Zionist circles translated theology into politics and territorial maximalism, Israeli composers deterritorialized the national discourse through a dialectical return to the spaces shared by Jews and non-Jews, devoid of Zionist appropriations.Less
Jewish Contiguities and the Soundtrack of Israeli History revolutionizes the study of modern Israeli art music by tracking the surprising itineraries of Jewish art music in the move from Europe to Mandatory Palestine and Israel. Leaving behind clichés about East and West, Arab and Jew, this book provocatively exposes the legacies of European antisemitism and religious Judaism in the making of Israeli art music. Studying the emergence of modern Jewish art music Shelleg introduces the reader to music written by and “about” Jews, music whose aesthetics ranges from auto-exoticism through the hues of self-hatred to the disarticulation of Jewish musical markers. Moving on to consider part of this musics’ translocation to Mandatory Palestine, Shelleg studies the paradoxes embedded in a national Zionist culture whose rhetoric negated its pasts, only to mask process of hybridizations enchained by older legacies. Unearthing the mechanism of what “Zionist musical onomatopoeias,” Shelleg analyzes their entropy and dilution by non-western Arab Jewish oral musical traditions (the same traditions Hebrew culture sought to westernize and secularize). And what had begun with composers’ movement towards the musical properties of non-western Jewish musical traditions grew in the 60s and 70s to a dialectical return to exilic Jewish cultures. In the aftermath of the Six-Day War, which reaffirmed Zionism’s redemptive and expansionist messages, Israeli composers (re)embraced precisely the exilic Jewish music that emphasized Judaism’s syncretic qualities rather than its territorial characteristics. In the 70s, consequently, while religious Zionist circles translated theology into politics and territorial maximalism, Israeli composers deterritorialized the national discourse through a dialectical return to the spaces shared by Jews and non-Jews, devoid of Zionist appropriations.
Richard I. Cohen (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- August 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780190912628
- eISBN:
- 9780190912659
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190912628.003.0035
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism, Religion and Society
This chapter reviews the book Looking Jewish: Visual Culture and Modern Diaspora (2012), by Carol Zemel. In Looking Jewish, Zemel explores normative historical accounts of “Jewish art.” She probes a ...
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This chapter reviews the book Looking Jewish: Visual Culture and Modern Diaspora (2012), by Carol Zemel. In Looking Jewish, Zemel explores normative historical accounts of “Jewish art.” She probes a “diasporic position” between the Scylla and Charybdis of the nation and the modern, offering a detailed analysis of an array of visual artifacts and their creators. The book features “pictures by Jewish artists that deal with the status and character of Jews in modern diasporic communities.” The art and artists are characterized by the notion of standing on a threshold—at the edge of place, on the cusp of time. Through her meticulous and engaging readings of images in their historical context, Zemel examines the notion of diaspora as an analytical term and its particular meaning for Jewish studies.Less
This chapter reviews the book Looking Jewish: Visual Culture and Modern Diaspora (2012), by Carol Zemel. In Looking Jewish, Zemel explores normative historical accounts of “Jewish art.” She probes a “diasporic position” between the Scylla and Charybdis of the nation and the modern, offering a detailed analysis of an array of visual artifacts and their creators. The book features “pictures by Jewish artists that deal with the status and character of Jews in modern diasporic communities.” The art and artists are characterized by the notion of standing on a threshold—at the edge of place, on the cusp of time. Through her meticulous and engaging readings of images in their historical context, Zemel examines the notion of diaspora as an analytical term and its particular meaning for Jewish studies.
Assaf Shelleg
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- November 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199354948
- eISBN:
- 9780199354962
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199354948.003.0005
- Subject:
- Music, Ethnomusicology, World Music, History, Western
The postlude discusses the non-differential proliferation of modern Jewish art music in Europe, Mandatory Palestine, and Israel, and the collapse of the mechanism that nationalized the theological in ...
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The postlude discusses the non-differential proliferation of modern Jewish art music in Europe, Mandatory Palestine, and Israel, and the collapse of the mechanism that nationalized the theological in Hebrew culture. The gradual usurping of linear compositional devices exposed the theological undercurrents of the Zionist project that had outgrown the secular space allocated to them in the Hebrewist discourse. Within the different rhythms responding to Hebrewism and dismantling it from within, only the simultaneity of adjacency and oppositionality could signal a break away from the dominant national-ideological discourse that still remained the beaten sounding board of modern Hebrew literature and poetry in the 1970s. Eventually, once the gap between messianism and redemption had been narrowed in the 1970s, Hebrewism in its socialist and statist modes appears as a short-lived project while its demise uncovers a network of Jewish contiguities that inspired the Hebrewist core but ultimately upstaged it.Less
The postlude discusses the non-differential proliferation of modern Jewish art music in Europe, Mandatory Palestine, and Israel, and the collapse of the mechanism that nationalized the theological in Hebrew culture. The gradual usurping of linear compositional devices exposed the theological undercurrents of the Zionist project that had outgrown the secular space allocated to them in the Hebrewist discourse. Within the different rhythms responding to Hebrewism and dismantling it from within, only the simultaneity of adjacency and oppositionality could signal a break away from the dominant national-ideological discourse that still remained the beaten sounding board of modern Hebrew literature and poetry in the 1970s. Eventually, once the gap between messianism and redemption had been narrowed in the 1970s, Hebrewism in its socialist and statist modes appears as a short-lived project while its demise uncovers a network of Jewish contiguities that inspired the Hebrewist core but ultimately upstaged it.