Re: making judaism cool

[Rachel Fischer <ruchelk...>]

I don't know much about this, and don't remember everything that was said at the
lecture, but it seemed like it wasn't specific to a certain group but can be
applied to any.
rachel

Eliezer Kaplan wrote:

> > He said that the revival has to do
> > with the "third generation effect."  That is when the third generation
> > of a family that immigrated to another country like america becomes
> > interested in learning about their culture.  The first generation wanted
> > to asssimilate and didn't pass down much and so the 2nd generation is
> > very assimilated.
>
> That is a theory of Margaret Mead's. I'm not so sure it applies here, unless
> you're talking primarily about the descendents of Holocaust survivors whose
> families fled to America. I feel as if the 'yishuv' here is for the most
> part older than that.
>                                 EK
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Rachel Fischer <ruchelk (at) mediaone(dot)net>
> To: World music from a Jewish slant <jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org>
> Sent: Tuesday, June 20, 2000 1:14 PM
> Subject: re: making judaism cool
>
> > Hi everyone!
> >     Thanks, Ari, for letting us know about that article.  It's a very
> > good discussion piece.  I'll introduce myself first, since I don't say
> > much on the list.  I'm Rachel, 17, and will be going to u. of Hartford
> > in the fall.  I play flute/piccolo with the Maxwell St. Junior Klezmer
> > Orchestra.  I've been playing klezmer music on and off for seven years
> > and hope to continue.  Somehow my mom found out about the band starting
> > up, when I was in 6th grade, and I thought it would be a good experience
> > to learn the music of my culture.  At first I thought it would just be
> > Hava Nagila type of songs, but when I actually started playing it I
> > realized it was very different and "cool".  I guess I might be
> > considered one of the Radical Jewish Culture people, although I never
> > thought about it till recently.  I did go to Sunday school, but my
> > parents raised me in way that made Judaism my culture and not just a
> > religion.
> >     I read that article very carefully and found several points I
> > disagree with.  I'll just stick with the music subject, though.  To me
> > the author doesn't like the direction that klezmer music is going in,
> > and infact doesn't like where it went in the first half of the 20th
> > cen.  With his use of quotation marks it seems to me that he doesn't
> > think that that music was truly klezmer music, because it was a little
> > different than what was played in Europe.  Klezmer music along with this
> > world is constantly changing.  Music is like a language.  It has to
> > change with the time, or else people will loose interest and it will be
> > lost.  People always borrow  words from other languages and music from
> > other cultures, and I don't think there is anything wrong with that.  In
> > the latter part of the first half of the 20th cen.  people were loosing
> > interest in klezmer music because of the popularity of jazz.  Besides
> > making klezmer music interesting in a different way, historically, it
> > helped keep people interested in it.
> >     Today, it's a little different.  I don't know first hand about the
> > revival, since it happened when I was very young and didn't even know it
> > was a revival when I started playing klezmer music.  I like literally
> > all kinds of klezmer.  At the Midwest Klezmer weekend, Avi Hoffman spoke
> > in a lecture about yiddish culture.  He said that the revival has to do
> > with the "third generation effect."  That is when the third generation
> > of a family that immigrated to another country like america becomes
> > interested in learning about their culture.  The first generation wanted
> > to asssimilate and didn't pass down much and so the 2nd generation is
> > very assimilated.  Right now there are many of those third generation
> > members, like me, trying to find out more about their culture.  A lot of
> > them feel very connected to american culture, which is a mish mosh of
> > many cultures around the world.  Reggae, for example, has always been
> > popular.  To me it's almost a natural occurance that someone Jewish who
> > likes Reggae would come up with Jewish Reggae.  I personally don't like
> > the lyrics of the example in the article.  They are just combining two
> > things they are familiar with.  Kind of like cross polination of a
> > flower that doesn't happen naturally.
> >     As for religion being more popular, I don't think it has much to do
> > with the music.  It's not only Judaism.  There are many people I know,
> > from unrelilgious families, that have done there own research and have
> > turned to other religions, particularly Christianity, Budhism, and
> > Taoism.
> >     I think I'll stop there for now, since this is the first post about
> > it.
> > rachel
> >
> >
> >
>

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