Re: Re[2]: Der yidisher tam

[Joe Kurland <ganeydn...>]

I'd like to say something on this subject that might undermine my own
position on the music.

We may borrow, we may change, we may have minhogim that go back millenia
and others that we can't trace back more than a few months.

What I think gives something a real yidisher tam is a relationship to Toyre
(Torah--in its broadest sense).

At a wedding--the most joyous of celebrations-- we break a glass because we
are supposed to remember that there is suffering in the world.  We are
commanded to rejoice at our holidays even if we have reason to be sad.  Our
best music expresses our joy and our sadness in a single utterance.  The
best Jewish music may be borrowed from Russian or Polish or German or
American music but if it doesn't transform it with our relationship to
Toyre, it isn't really Jewish music.  If it does transform it, then it is
no longer non-Jewish music.

I'm not saying that one has to be religious to have that yidishn tam.  But
that it comes from our relationship to toyre, whatever that relationship
may be.  (There were Jews who would deliberately eat pork on Yom Kippur.
What could be more Jewish than that as a form of rebellion.  But if a Jew
eats pork as a matter of course, then he or she is in danger of losing the
essence of yidishkayt.)

What does that have to do with music?  If someone sings a prayer to the
tune of a nursery rhyme, but with kavone (intention), then one fulfills the
mitzve.  The yidisher tam will be there.  If one sings it without kavone,
then the yidisher tam will disappear.

Now I may think that old Eastern European Jewish melodies make it easier to
sing with kavone, that they have a musical structure that lends itself to
the emotional content of the prayers. And I feel the same way about
Sephardic melodies and mizrakhi melodies that I've heard. But if you tell
me that, khas v'kholile, Western Classical style melodies or American folk
type melodies or modern jazz accomplish the same thing for you, then I
can't argue with that.

That said, I still don't like it when the nursery rhymes and Gilbert and
Sullivan themes are sung in my shul.  It interferes with my kavone.  But I
don't walk out.  I go deeper into my davening to find the place where I can
find it again, and when I have the chance I talk to people about the Jewish
musical traditions I know and am learning about in the hope that people
will recognize them as a path to more satisfying davening.

Gut Purim Yidn,

Yosl (Joe) Kurland
The Wholesale Klezmer Band
Colrain, MA 01340
voice/fax: 413-624-3204
http://www.crocker.com/~ganeydn