Revivalism against the limits of historical memory: Judith Berkson reimagines the female cantorial voice

• In Event: Gender and Genre Shifts in American Jewish Culture

Abstract

Judith Berkson is a performer of classic “Golden Age” cantorial recitatives and original compositions inspired by the cantorial tradition. Berkson is an internationally acclaimed artist better known for her experimental composition, her collaborations with Kronos Quartet, and her interpretation of contemporary classical song, yet she has carved out a place in her musical life for a profound examination of the cantorial canon. As Berkson has made clear in comments during concerts and interviews, her delving into the archive of cantorial sound is driven by a passion for old records, a deep familial connection to Jewish liturgical music, and a visionary sense of shared aesthetics between the sensibilities of the avant-garde and the syncretic sound of Eastern European cantors. Unlike contemporary cantors trained in the liberal movement seminaries, Berkson’s interest in cantorial music is primarily driven by a revivalist interest in classic Jewish records from the early 20th century. The revivalist impulse in relation to Golden Age cantorial sound puts her in the company of young singers who are predominantly Chassidic men, rather than the cohort of women cantors who have graduated from schools of sacred music operated by the liberal Jewish denominations.

In this essay I will respond to the complex aesthetic of Berkson’s music and the ways in which her bracing modernist sonic textures reinforce the dialectics of history and gender that her performance of the cantorial canon enacts. I will juxtapose Berkson’s musical explorations with the careers of the khazentes, the women cantors of the immigrant generation who built careers as performers of cantorial music but were excluded from synagogue prayer leading. Finally, I will show how Berkson’s work reveals the legitimacy of the role of the female voice in the authoritative era of classic cantorial music in a way that is only hinted at in the historical transcript, freeing the listener to imagine utopian side shadows to the decline narrative that dominates the telling of the history of Jewish music in America.

Author

• Jeremiah Daniel Lockwood, Stanford University