Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The Debbie Friedman Problem: Performing Tradition, Memory, and Modernity in Progressive Jewish Liturgy

2012; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 28; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/0458063x.2012.724311

1557-3001

Joshua Edelman,

Diverse Musicological Studies

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes I use the term progressive Judaism as an umbrella for the more liberal strand of non-Orthodox contemporary Jewish practice. In the United States and Canada, such Judaism is generally represented by the Reform movement, though the boundaries between Reform and Conservative American Judaism are not always well defined. In other parts of the world, different terms are used (Liberal Judaism in Britain, for instance). The term progressive is an attempt at a neutral and international term, and one used by, for example, the World Union of Progressive Judaism (WUPJ). A good summary of Friedman's work and career can be seen in the documentary A Journey of Spirit, dir. Ann Coppel (Seattle: Ann Coppel Productions, 2005). The only comparison that could possibly be made is to the huge response to the death of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the leader of the Chabad-Lubavich movement, in 1994. But the differences between the two could hardly be more profound. Friedman's work deserves far more attention than the neglect it has thus far received. I have found precious few academic works that mention her. She occupies an important place in Mark Kligman's “Contemporary Jewish Music in America” (American Jewish Year Book, 2001), 88f. It seems that her music is too popular for serious music scholars and not obscure (or complex) enough to interest ethnomusicologists. I take the term “performances of memory” from one of the giants of American performance studies, the great Joseph Roach. His book Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1996) traces out the way that the twin cities of New Orleans and London have come to terms with their knotty and ticklish histories through various funerals, memorial performances, and celebrations of the dead. Through a study of these performances, Roach is able to show patterns in English and American cultural memory that have often escaped the notice of official accounts. For the standard history of the Haskalah and the development of Reform Judaism, see Michael A. Meyer, Response to Modernity: A History of the Reform Movement in Judaism (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1988). Benje-Ellen Schiller, “The Hymnal as an Index of Musical Change in Reform Synagogues,” in Sacred Sound and Social Change, ed. Lawrence A. Hoffman and Janet R. Walton (Notre Dame, Ind.: Notre Dame Univ. Press, 1992), 193. Nusach refers to traditional patterns of Jewish cantillation used in the prayer service. There are many different patterns particular to different Jewish communities worldwide; nusachim also reflect the nature of the passage being chanted, and often change during festivals. Niggunim are wordless songs, traditionally sung at the end of a Shabbat meal. They tend to repetition and playfulness and are well adapted to communal singing. In the terms of social theorist Pierre Bourdieu, the values and patterns of camp song-leading were part of the “habitus”—the potent, durable dispositions—that Friedman learned from the camp environment. For a full description of the theory of the habitus, see Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge: Polity, 1990). Readers may wish to listen to versions of these songs in reading the following paragraphs. Both can be easily found online, especially through YouTube. A good version of the Carlebach version (by a more contemporary Modern Orthodox Israeli band) can be found at http://youtu.be/9eDB7t3cLXw. Good recordings of Friedman's setting are a bit harder to find. She released it on her album Songs of the Spirit in 2005. A recoding can be accessed at her MySpace page, http://www.myspace.com/debbiefriedmanofficial; look for “The Angels' Blessing.” Both last accessed April 3, 2012. The names of these angels, of course, evoke Divine attributes: Michael (“Who is like God?”), Rafael (“God's healing”), Gabriel (“God's strength”), and Uriel (“God's light”). These archives have recently been placed online at the Cantors' Assembly website, cantors.org. Ben Steinberg, “Response to Gershon Silins,” CCAR Journal 33, no. 18 (1991): 21. Gallantly, Steinberg never does name his target, but it is clear enough that Carlebach is not the one intended here. This is not only because of the denominational difference—Steinberg is Reform, Carlebach Orthodox—but because Carlebach's guitar work would never be called “driving” and, of course, Steinberg refers to camp songs. Lawrence A. Hoffman, The Art of Public Prayer: Not for Clergy Only (Washington, D.C.: The Pastoral Press, 1988). Ibid. Though again, he almost never mentions her by name. She may not have been as famous in 1988 as a few years subsequently, or he may have been trying to be diplomatic in a guide meant for a larger community of both Jews and Christians. Victor Turner, a highly influential cultural anthropologist and comparative scholar of religion, coined the term communitas to describe a “generic feeling of human relatedness” that comes from extraordinary experiences that happen outside of formal social structures. (Turner's original examples were pilgrimages, rites of passage, and so on.) What makes communitas different from community is that the former is strictly nonhierarchical and is based on the erasure of distinctions of status (or even identity), not a harmonious relationship between them. The earliest and clearest presentation of the concept is in Victor Turner, Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1974). The quotation above comes from that text, p. 33. Central Conference of American Rabbis, Siddur Mishkan T'filah (New York: CCAR Press, 2007), 109. A fairly typical performance version (from 2008 in Los Angeles) can be found at http://youtu.be/DUp2MTfyfrI. While the quality of this video is not ideal, it does show the audience's response in a very helpful way. Often in performance studies, the audience's response is at least as important a subject for analysis as the performance to which it is responding. See Central Conference of American Rabbis, Rabbi's Manual (Cincinnati: CCAR, 1928 [1936]). Traditionally speaking, Yizkor is said four times a year—at Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Pesach, and Shavuot. But the reform tradition generally conducts a Yizkor service on Yom Kippur alone. To see a video of this concert, visit http://rememberingdebbie.weebly.com/. Last accessed April 4, 2012. Ruth Langer, “Liturgy,” Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd ed. (New York: Macmillan Reference, 2007), 19:131. Additional informationNotes on contributorsJoshua A. EdelmanJoshua A. Edelman is Fellow in Research and Enterprise in the Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London, United Kingdom.