With its five thematic sections covering genres from cantorial to classical to klezmer, this pioneering multi-disciplinary volume presents rich coverage of the work of musicians of Jewish origin in the Polish lands. It opens with the musical consequences of developments in Jewish religious practice: the spread of hasidism in the eighteenth century meant that popular melodies replaced traditional cantorial music, while the greater
acculturation of Jews in the nineteenth century brought with it synagogue choirs. Jewish involvement in popular culture included performances for the wider public, Yiddish songs and the Yiddish theatre, and contributions of many different sorts---technical and commercial as well as creative---in the interwar years. Chapters on the classical music scene cover Jewish musical institutions, organizations, and education; individual composers and musicians; and a consideration of music and Jewish national identity. One section is devoted to the Holocaust as reflected in Jewish music, and the final section deals with the afterlife of Jewish musical creativity in Poland, particularly the resurgence of interest in klezmer music. The essays in this collection do not attempt to to define what may well be undefinable---what ‘Jewish music’ is. Rather, they provide an original and much-needed exploration of the activities and creativity of ‘musicians of the Jewish faith’.
CONTRIBUTORS: Eliyana R. Adler, Michael Aylward, Sławomir Dobrzański, Paula
Eisenstein-Baker, Beth Holmgren, Sylwia Jakubczyk-Ślęczka, Daniel Katz, James
Loeffler, Michael Lukin, Filip Mazurczak, Bożena Muszkalska, Julia Riegel, Ronald
Robboy, Robert Rothstein, Joel E. Rubin, Adam J. Sacks, Amanda (Miryem-Khaye)
Seigel, Eleanor Shapiro, Carla Shapreau, Tamara Sztyma, Bella
Szwarcman-Czarnota, Joseph Toltz, Maja Trochimczyk, Magdalena Waligórska, Bret
Werb, Akiva Zimmerman
Author Biography:
François Guesnet is Professor of Modern Jewish History, University College London. He is chair of the Institute for Polish-Jewish Studies and secretary of the European Association for Jewish Studies and has held research fellowships and visiting teaching positions at the University of Pennsylvania, University of Oxford, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Dartmouth College, Potsdam University, Vilnius University, and the Jagiellonian University, Kraków. He is the editor, with Jerzy Tomaszewski, of Sources on Jewish Self-Government in the Polish Lands from Its Inception to the Present (2022). Benjamin Matis is the spiritual leader of Agudath Achim Synagogue in Altoona, Pennsylvania. He qualified as a cantor and a Master of Sacred Music at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. Antony Polonsky is Emeritus Professor of Holocaust Studies, Brandeis University, and Chief Historian of the Global Educational Outreach Project at the Museum of Polish Jews in Warsaw. He holds honorary doctorates from the University of Warsaw (2010) and the Jagiellonian University (2014), and in 2011 was awarded the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit of Polonia Restituta and the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit of Independent Lithuania. His many publications include The Jews in Poland and Russia, 3 vols. (Littman Library, 2010–12), which in 2012 was awarded the Pro Historia Polonorum prize of the Polish Senate for the best book on the history of Poland in a non-Polish language written in the previous five years.
