European Judaism

The journal has rarely published articles on Jewish music – one honourable exception being the article by Professor Alfred Fisher on Schoenberg (Autumn 1999). In the current issue we seek to remedy this gap with a preliminary venture into the field. As a non-specialist journal we cast our net quite wide and are particularly grateful to our Poetry Editor Ruth Fainlight for her contacts.

The Moon of Moses is the title of a work of mine for solo cello, composed in 1992 and inspired by the following poem from the collected works of First World War poet, Isaac Rosenberg.

The Book of Ruth has remained one of the most popular books of the Hebrew Bible throughout its existence. It is one of the few biblical stories that focuses on women and includes extensive dialogues between two women. It is also the only biblical text where the word ‘love’ is used to define the feeling of one woman for another (4.15).

The life and music of Salamone Rossi resonate for twenty-first century Jews in a surprisingly pertinent way. Additionally, some traditional musicological categories are inevitably challenged by the rehabilitation of this late 16th-early 17th century musician.

In this lecture I should like to describe and discuss certain aspects of the multilayered phenomenon of ‘Jewish sacred music by Israeli composers’. These are solely marginal aspects of a continuous, dynamic, contradictory and quite fragmented process, in which Israeli ‘identity’ has been situated ever since Zionist ideology began to shape it in a definitive manner.

The Holocaust was undoubtedly the single event that most influenced the course of Yiddish song during the twentieth century. Its effects on Yiddish culture were incalculable. Despite the increasing difficulty of Jewish life in central and Eastern Europe during the 1930s, this was also a period of flowering of Yiddish cultural life. Many believed that the strong network of Yiddish publications, education, cultural events and political organisations offered the promise of a secure and thriving Jewish life despite the restrictions being laid upon the Jews.

In this paper I would like to explore, in a somewhat whimsical way, certain aspects of popular songs written by Jewish composers and lyricists. In some cases simply eliciting the title evokes memories of a particular singer or context. In all cases they have about them a quality that has stamped them on the popular mind, often to become ‘classics’ of the repertory. The whimsical aspect of this paper lies in the attempt to relate them to themes to be found in the Hebrew Bible, though without venturing to suggest there is a direct line of connection. Rather this suggests that there are common life experiences to be found universally, each generation finding a popular way of expressing them in their own particular medium

We are grateful to Francis Clark-Lowes for translating this chapter of the Memoirs of Caesar Seligmann. It was written in 1941, and only one chapter seems to have been published. The translator preserved many of the difficult nuances of this German text.

At the dawn of the twenty-first century, it is only natural if not essential to reflect upon and evaluate the relationship that existed between Edmond Fleg (1874–1963) and André Neher (1914–1988), two eminent Jewish thinkers who exerted a profound influence upon French Jewry of the twentieth century and perhaps on Jews in the rest of the world considering the number of their works that were translated in several languages. As a son of moderately observant Jews, Fleg became a part of the Parisian intellectual and artistic life as a student at the Ecole Normale Supérieure and a successful playwright and theatre critic.

When I heard what the subject chosen for me tonight was, namely, ‘The concept of Jewish philosophy in the sixteenth century’, I was at first not a little worried. Were there any Jewish philosophers in the sixteenth century, and if so, did they produce a Jewish philosophy? I must admit that for me and other historians of Philosophy, the Kabbalah or Jewish Mysticism does not qualify as philosophy and therefore would have to be excluded from my talk.

The purpose of this paper is to enable rabbis, honorary and paid officers of synagogues, and those who train and support them, to gain a clearer understanding of the demands upon synagogue leaders. No leadership role can be understood without an understanding of the institution or organisation which is led. The demands of running a school or a theatre or a government department or the proverbial whelk stall are different, because the aims, ethos, scale and context of each enterprise is different; though they all include certain generic skills like planning, budgeting and holding intelligent conversations. The paper therefore sets out to explore how can we most usefully describe progressive synagogues as institutions.

The debate between brothers in the field of theology is always ascerbic, with little quarter given. When this controversy moves beyond the never rarified area of academic discourse and enters the area of contemporary events, a tragic dimension moves from the periphery to the centre. Recently, Prof. de Lange published an Ignaz Maybaum Reader (N.Y. & London, 2001), in which Prof. Maybaum states the sharpest possible Jewish approach to the issues involved.

In the Middle East conflict, which continues to cause so much anxiety virtually all over the world, especially since the outbreak of the Second Intifada, there is one factor, largely ignored by the media and unknown to the public, whose existence and numerous activities deserve attention: the Israeli Peace Camp. Although they form a minority in Israeli society, these peace activists are noteworthy for their strong conviction, dynamism and courage. They comprise several movements of which we shall mention some of the most important.

Oneg Shabbat By Yakov Azriel

Rapture Paradise By Louis Daniel Brodsky

1929 NETANYA By B.Z. Niditch

Morning Song of the Earth (Mahler) Crossing a Bridge By Lotte Kramer

Discover a Secret Here By Corinne Stanley

The Orange Trees of Seville Cordoba By Myra Schneider

The School of Death By Steven B. Katz

Against Hope By Zara Rabb Gardner

A Little Dark 1 By Jonathan A. Goldberg

Holocaust Theology: A Reader, compiled and edited by Dan Cohn-Sherbok, University of Exeter Press, 2002, 432 pp., paperback £17.99 hardback £47.50. ISBN 0 85989 624 2

The Rebbe the Messiah and the Scandal of Orthodox Indifference, David Berger, London, The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2001, 195 pp, ISBN 1-874774-88-9

Haskalah and History: The Emergence of a Modern Jewish Historical Consciousness, Shmuel Feiner, translated by Chaya Naor and Sondra Silverston, Oxford, The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2002, 404 pp, ISBN 1-874774-43-9

The Oxford Book of Hebrew Stories, edited by Glenda Abramson, Oxford University Press, 1996, £17.99. ISBN 0-19-214206-2