Re: Klezmer in Germany

[Heiko Lehmann <hklehmann...>]

You´re right, Eliott. I didn´t think that that Buber´s influence and his
following was too big in this context, so I left him out.

This text is articulation to become part of a communication; there is no
intension in it to "rebuild" anything (as if there was a possibility).

Heiko.

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Eliott Kahn <Elkahn (at) JTSA(dot)EDU>
An: World music from a Jewish slant <jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org>
Gesendet: Freitag, 27. Oktober 2000 22:09
Betreff: Re: Klezmer in Germany





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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