The Jewish Music Forum
A Project of the American Society for Jewish Music
is pleased to present:
"'The iron skeleton is silent like my comrade': Israeli Songs as War Memorials"
featuring Dr. Michael A. Figueroa
Thursday, January 26, 2023
7:30-9:00 PM Eastern
Center for Jewish History
15 W. 16th St. NYC
Kovno Room
This in-person event is FREE- Register HERE today!
This lecture concerns commemorative song and commemorative landscape in Jerusalem, discussing how music and monuments work in tandem to narrate past violence from the early statehood period (c. 1948–1967). Through an analysis of the career of musical renditions of Haim Gouri’s “Bab El Wad” (1949) and Yoram Taharlev’s “Ammunition Hill” (1968), we will explore the poetics of bereavement and its emplacement within the city of Jerusalem. The exposition will include covers and parodies of memorial repertory that illuminate how bereavement has emerged in the twenty-first century as a site of political debate.
Learn more about the event HERE.
"Kol Mekadesh Shevi'i: Resounding Synagogue and Home in Ashkenaz"
Dr. Naomi Cohn Zentner
with a response from Dr. Eliyahu Schleifer
ZOOM Program
Wednesday, February 1, 2023
1:00 PM Eastern
Click HERE to register and receive the ZOOM link
"Kol Mekadesh Shevi’i" was one of the most well known Zemirot (Sabbath table songs) sung by Eastern European Jews before the holocaust, and it is still known today by some Ashkenazi families. We shall follow the path that kol mekadesh leads us from medieval France to Sixteenth century Germany, as this song was sung at first as a historical piece and later set to both Catholic and Protestant polemical poetry. Join us in asking how singing Kol Mekadesh around the family table led a well-known German folk song to become part and parcel of Ashkenazi nusah for Shabbat.
with a response from Dr. Eliyahu Schleifer
ZOOM Program
Wednesday, February 1, 2023
1:00 PM Eastern
Click HERE to register and receive the ZOOM link
"Kol Mekadesh Shevi’i" was one of the most well known Zemirot (Sabbath table songs) sung by Eastern European Jews before the holocaust, and it is still known today by some Ashkenazi families. We shall follow the path that kol mekadesh leads us from medieval France to Sixteenth century Germany, as this song was sung at first as a historical piece and later set to both Catholic and Protestant polemical poetry. Join us in asking how singing Kol Mekadesh around the family table led a well-known German folk song to become part and parcel of Ashkenazi nusah for Shabbat.
Kurt Weill's America
Dr. Naomi Graber
with response by Dr. Kim H. Kowalke
Thursday, February 9, 2023
7:00 PM
ZOOM
Register HERE to receive the Zoom link
In 1947, Kurt Weill, Elmer Rice, and Langston Hughes's Street Scene opened on Broadway. Although Weill referred to the work as a "Broadway opera," Street Scene embodies what Michael Denning calls a “ghetto pastoral,” a genre that arose in the early 1930s depicting violent, yet innocent coming-of-age stories in ethnic or black urban working-class neighborhoods, combining naturalism and allegory to prove that urban communities could produce a new style of folk hero. Within this pastoral-folkloric atmosphere, Jewish characters take center stage. Sam Kaplan, the Jewish hero of "Street Scene," is the moral center of the community, and sings in the most folkloric genres, cementing his status as a true “American.” He also presents a strong contrast to his father, an ardent Communist, proving that second-generation immigrants could assimilate, even if their parents could not. Still, notes and drafts for Street Scene reveal that Weill and Rice struggled with both characters. Over the course of production, Sam became more traditionally “heroic,” while his father’s Communist leanings were significantly toned down. "Street Scene" thus demonstrates the difficulties of inserting Jews into American folklore in a post-Holocaust United States.
with response by Dr. Kim H. Kowalke
Thursday, February 9, 2023
7:00 PM
ZOOM
Register HERE to receive the Zoom link
In 1947, Kurt Weill, Elmer Rice, and Langston Hughes's Street Scene opened on Broadway. Although Weill referred to the work as a "Broadway opera," Street Scene embodies what Michael Denning calls a “ghetto pastoral,” a genre that arose in the early 1930s depicting violent, yet innocent coming-of-age stories in ethnic or black urban working-class neighborhoods, combining naturalism and allegory to prove that urban communities could produce a new style of folk hero. Within this pastoral-folkloric atmosphere, Jewish characters take center stage. Sam Kaplan, the Jewish hero of "Street Scene," is the moral center of the community, and sings in the most folkloric genres, cementing his status as a true “American.” He also presents a strong contrast to his father, an ardent Communist, proving that second-generation immigrants could assimilate, even if their parents could not. Still, notes and drafts for Street Scene reveal that Weill and Rice struggled with both characters. Over the course of production, Sam became more traditionally “heroic,” while his father’s Communist leanings were significantly toned down. "Street Scene" thus demonstrates the difficulties of inserting Jews into American folklore in a post-Holocaust United States.
The Jewish Music Forum is a project of the American Society for Jewish Music,
with the support of YIVO Institute for Jewish Research
and the Center for Jewish History.
Founded in 2004, the Jewish Music Forum is now in its eighteenth season in 2021-22
All programs of the Jewish Music Forum are free and open to the public.
For more information please visit
http://www.jewishmusic-asjm.org
Copyright © 2021 by the American Society for Jewish Music
Site last updated July 27, 2022
Site last updated July 27, 2022
