In this essay, I explore the use of rap and hip-hop conventions as they have developed within the self-consciously contemporary American Jewish ‘hipster’ scene between c. 1986 and 2006, framed particularly around the way these genres have addressed the discourses of masculinity within Jewish culture. By exploring the works and actions of such artists as Matisyahu and the Hip Hop Hoodíos within the context of both American Jewish masculinity discussions and the historical relationship of Jews with commercial hip-hop performance, I attempt to explore how a population’s attempts at musical ‘change’ act as a crucial part of the religious and ethnic transmission and preservation process. Although outwardly seen as based on mimesis and even novelty, ‘Jewish’ hip hop, I suggest, instils a deep sense of identity into a population often characterised as iconoclastic, dynamic, politically inclusive and culturally mutable. Masculinity therefore serves largely as a vessel for young Jews to fashion a sense of self into a conversation from which they had previously been largely absent: one of several strategies used both to unmoor and to redefine what it means to be a ‘new’ Jew.

No abstract

No abstract

The relationship between sound and material culture entails a variety ot creative processes that illustrate how extensive the interface between the two can be. In this essay I explore three processes ot Jewish sonic materialization: appropriation, sacralization, and play. Appropriation, or the process of imbuing common objects with the potential to produce sound that is understood as Jewish, manifests itself in Reform Jews' adoption of the guitar in liturgical and paraliturgical settings. Saoralization, or the aot of creating musioal material objects specifically to enhance Jewish religious rituals, wiil be discussed in reference to two twentieth-century attempts to modernize worship music through the use of recorded sound during services. Play, or the incorporation of soundbearing objects into Jewish recreational activities, will be illustrated through a disoussion of "singing" toys and Jewish musio boxes. These case studies demonstrate the value of scrutinizing the interrelation of sound and material culture for the study of religion; moreover, with regard to material culture studies, this approach oan nuance the very concept of materiality.

In this essay, I explore the history of what has conventionally been described as “Jewish music” research in relation to parallel developments in both ethnomusicology and Jewish studies in the American academic world during the twentieth century. As a case study, I argue, the issues inherent in understanding Jewish music's historical trajectory offer a complex portrait of scholarship that spans the discourses of community, practice, identity, and ideology. Subject to the principles of Wissenschaft since the second half of the nineteenth century, Jewish music study has constantly negotiated the lines between the scholar and practitioner; between the seminary, the conservatory, and the university; between the good of science, the assertion of a coherent Jewish narrative in history, and the perceived need to reconnect an attenuating Jewish populace with its reinvented traditions; and between the core questions of musicology, comparative musicology, theology, and modern ethnomusicology.