Re: Debbie Friedman and shtetl redux

[Ari Davidow <ari...>]

Again, I apologize for responding to a nit and begging time to think more about 
the general issues you raise.

>But but but, I finally come around to saying: Baruch Hashem for people
>like Debbie Friedman.  I may not care for her take on it, but clearly
>it is a voice that speaks to many Jews and speaks to both their heart
>and their heads.  I don't know who her audience is, but obviously
>she's got one.

Let me be clear that while I am not a major fan of Debbie Friedman, I =do= 
concur with you: baruch hashem that she has written prayers that speak to so 
many people. The point I was trying to make, and perhaps I'll be able to make 
it better here, is that folkie religious music =does= represent a break with 
the melodies and nusakh of the past. That doesn't make it bad, but I'm not 
convinced that makes it music that will speak to Jews 100 years from now the 
way that I would expect more traditional melodies to be around.

The hard part, at least for me, is the transformation of Jewish practice, given 
that, with all the respect that I am indicating for those wonderful traditional 
prayers, as written, I won't say some of them, and others I have grown used to 
editing in my head as I daven. So, if I had descendents, and they were 
following Nusakh Ari, how likely is it that =they= would be davenning Nusakh 
Ari or its descendetn 100 years from now--the time span I used to dismiss 
Debbie Friedman.

I don't have an answer yet. I may never have one. But, rightly or wrongly, I am 
convinced that some paths are =not= the answer. Whether the one I have chosen 
truly has a heart, and whether that heart can be passed on, I dunno. 

In my mind I see a dichotomy of sorts. Now mind you, as I see this, most people 
are somewhere in the middle, nowhere near my extreme, nor at the extreme I 
think I see. In my case, I think that it is my obligation to pick up those 
questions that were being wrestled with when Hitler ended the discussion, at 
least, for those communities and that time, and to renew that wrestling with 
our time and tradition, now. And the big part of that wrestling lies in the 
need to help build community, a new community. 

I also see some people looking for simple myths--for reconstructions of the 
past where they can belong to a myth community--Anatevka, for instance--and 
that's why I am so suspicious of nostalgic or pseudo-hip attempts to use the 
term "shtetl" as a positive place to be Jewish. And that gets us way far beyond 
Jewish music than any discussion of where to get good kosher eats whilst 
record-shopping, so I'll stop.

Maybe someone who feels very differently about the connotations of the term 
wants to speak to what it says to them? Maybe there is room to find some 
understanding in the middle, or at least to talk about the communities in which 
we make music, or hope to make music (among other spiritual acts).

ari


Ari Davidow
ari (at) ivritype(dot)com
list owner, jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org
the klezmer shack: http://www.klezmershack.com/

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