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My Musical Roots Are Closer To Mahalia Jackson Than Yossele Rosenblatt: Music and Political Engagement in American Synagogues

Mon, December 17, 5:00 to 6:30pm, Seaport Hotel & World Trade Center, Harborview 1 Ballroom

Abstract

When the Baby Boomers brought the folk-rock music of the 1960s and 1970s into the American synagogue, they brought more than just a new sound. In creating a musical connection between Jewish liturgy and the music of American life, this generation of synagogue composers opened a new pathway for Jewish congregations to engage in the American political and cultural conversations of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The participatory nature of contemporary synagogue music has brought a sense of democracy and engagement to congregations. In turn, rabbis, cantors, and other musical leaders have used musical choices, musical programming, and even sermons in song to focus that engagement on the political questions facing the United States as a culture and as an actor on the world stage.

This paper explores Jewish responses to issues of race, gender, and sexuality in the United States through synagogue music. Using ethnographic encounters with congregants, rabbis, and cantors, especially members of the Women Cantors’ Network, as well as recent discussions in Jewish news outlets and online fora, I show how American synagogues use music as a tool for education, organization, and cross-cultural reconciliation. Through song and ritual, American synagogues have established themselves as both religious and cultural institutions, where interested congregants grapple with the questions of how best to be both Jewish and American.

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