Re: Klezmer in Germany

[Eliott Kahn <Elkahn...>]

At 11:04 AM 10/27/00 +0200, you wrote:
>At WOMEX in Berlin a week ago I did a lecture on "Klezmer in Germany/Germans 
>and Klezmer: Reparation or Contribution". The (English) script can be seen 
>under
>  
><http://www.sukke.de/lecture.html>www.sukke.de/lecture.html
>  
>Heiko.


I found this essay extremely thoughtful and informative. Two brief comments:


1. "To Germans, this was to become a Jewish cliché later, and German Jews 
during the course of the Haskalah separated
themselves from the Hasidim; they wanted to look like Germans. So along with 
the decline of Yiddish culture in Germany, the
tradition of the letsonim or klezmorim also vanished to the point that it 
became nothing more than a synonym for a stereotype
about Jews. Neither German Gentiles nor German Jews liked it, the first 
thinking of it as ridiculous, the latter being afraid of
being taken for Eastern Jews."


Beginning in the first decade of the twentieth century there was actually an 
interest in a return to Eastern-European Jewish culture on the part of German 
Jews. Most of these folks--such as Martin Buber, with his "Tales of Rabbi 
Nachman" (1907) --were associated with a cultural offshoot of the political 
Zionist party. Although not a large movement, it grew somewhat, especially 
after the first world war. Writer/philosopher Franz Rosenzweig, with his 
founding of the Lehrhaus after the war, was an important member of this group. 
(Please see: Brenner, Michael, THE RENAISSANCE OF JEWISH CULTURE IN WEIMAR 
GERMANY, 1994--There should be a new German edition recently published.)

2. "Reparation or Contribution? An example.

Klezmer music in Germany is both. Some performers want to take an active part 
in the restoration of East European Jewish
culture. This position is problematic but not unintelligible. The fact that 
their efforts are mostly not accepted by Jewish people
always shocks them. The protagonists have no answer to the question of how to 
restore East European Jewish culture
without the actual Jews."

And they never shall, because it can't be done. I find it appropriate that 
young Germans refer to 1945 as "Zeit null." For me, as a Jew, and for the 
hundreds of other Jews I've spoken with, the Holocaust was a collective act so 
far beyond moral comprehension that somehow one would like to put a big gash on 
a timeline and say: this is where it all ended. The Jewish history in Europe. 
Western Civilization. I know in my lifetime I'll never be convinced otherwise.

Heiko, I applaud your candor and am confident you are seeking truth--which is 
essential to anyone who wishes to create art. But we should all let the dead 
sleep a little. It's too early--I believe--to "rebuild" anything.

Shalom aleichem,

Eliott Kahn 


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