By Eileen Wingard
LA JOLLA, California — I was thrilled to read the Yom Limmud roster of speakers and see that the distinguished music professor of the Hebrew University, Edwin Seroussi, was going to give two lectures during the day of learning, Sunday, August 24 at the Lawrence Family JCC.
Since hearing about his series as Irvine’s Community Scholar Program’s Summer Scholar, June 2-5, 2013, I had hoped that the San Diego Jewish Community might someday have the opportunity to hear him. I contacted Noah Hadas, Director of Adult Jewish Education, to suggest he invite Serrousi. Hadas told me he heard of Seroussi’s work from Arie Katz, the person in charge of Irvine’s CSP , but bringing him from Israel would be too costly. Hadas was able to bring Prof. Seroussi here this year because he is spending a sabbatical year in Boston.
The titles of Seroussi’s Irvine lectures were intriguing. They encompassed many facets of Jewish Music.The series was called, The Jewish Musical Experience. It was divided into four presentations:
1)“Tradition”: Eastern European Jewish music and its post-modern offsprings, 2) Judeo-Spanish mystique; “Ancient” and “modern” in contemporary Sephardi music, 3) Singing Israeliness: Popular music and Israeli cultural identity, and 4) Sound and Music of the Synagogue.
At San Diego’s Yom Limmud, Professor Seroussi delivered the first two lectures.
He opened his remarks by defining his field, musicology, as the understanding and reflecting on music.
“Why music, why tradition?” asked Seroussi. “Music matters!” he asserted. “It is not about entertainment. It carries meaningful emotional components of one’s individual identity and awareness of being part of a chain. It teaches about history and society in past and present. It enlightens us about relations between social groups.”
As for Eastern European Jewish music, he maintained that many musical traditions are constructions of the present, that a great deal of Jewish music which we may regard as traditional, entered the repertoire recently, such as the music from the 1964 musical, Fiddler on the Roof.
His audio examples began with a 1917 recording of Sholom Aleichem speaking in Yiddish. Sholom Aleichem’s stories about Tevye, der Milkhigder were the basis of Fiddler on the Roof. The next example was the great Jewish-American opera star and cantor, Jan Peerce, singing “If I Were A Rich Man,” in Yiddish. Seroussi pointed out that Fiddler, originally in English, was translated into Hebrew from which it was then translated back into Yiddish, the language in which Sholom Aleichem wrote his stories.
The lyrics in both Hebrew and Yiddish reverted to Sholom Aleichem’s original, “If I were a Rothchild.”
Another example of a song that has entered the tradition in synagogues throughout the world is “Oseh Shalom,” a song written in Israel in 1970.
Seroussi used maps to illustrate the migration of Jews into Eastern Europe in the 15th Century, after they were expelled from France and Germany. The music of the Pale of Settlements was a conglomerate of liturgical, folk songs and instrumental melodies. Some songs were local only to that region, while others spread and became more universal. The original klezmer instrumentation included violins, a tsimbel (hammered dulcimer), a cello or bass, and an occasional flute. In Moldavia, the clarinet and percussion were introduced. When Jews started to serve in the military, brass instruments from the military band came into the klezmer ensembles, and in Ruthenia, the accordion replaced the tsimbel. In the United States, some of the leading proponents of klezmer music were clarinetists, such as Dave Tarras, who incorporated jazz into their klezmer music and brought in saxophones. Klezmer musicians who traveled to Palestine to be part of the Jewish Yishuv, absorbed Arabic culture into their music, often sounding like a Turkish orchestra. In Eastern Europe, Gypsy musicians were sometimes part of the klezmer ensembles. The klezmer groups performed not only for Jewish celebrations, but for the celebrations of the non-Jews in the area.
Many interesting photos and paintings, as well as audio recordings, illustrated Seroussi’s talk. Wedding photographs and video clips showed how essential the musicians were in leading the procession and playing throughout with special dances for the various participants.
Although it was obvious from his lecture that Eastern European Jewish Music is hard to define, and it is a result of multiple outside influences, it still carries meaningful emotional components of our identity and teaches us about the history and geography of where the Jews have lived and continue to live.
Serrousi’s lecture on the Judeo-Spanish Mystique was a fascinating travelogue in time to trace the background of one Ladino song, “Las Horas de la Vida.” Joaquin Diaz, one of Franco Spain’s most revered singers, made it popular in the late 1960s. This non-Jewish singer learned it from the Folkways recording of Gloria Levy, who learned it from her mother, Izmir-born Emily Levy, who learned it from Haim Effendi (1872-1960), and he learned it from someone who learned it from Spanish singers touring Turkey. The Turkish Jews at that time thought that if they were singing in Spanish, which sounded like Ladino, they must be Jewish.
Seroussi has over 150 versions of this song, including an African-Canadian singer and an Irish group in Northern California.
When I asked about my favorite Ladino song, “Los Bibilicos,” also known as “La Rosa Enfloresa,” and incorporated in the Jewish liturgy by rabbis in Israel, the venerable professor said that the melody came from a Greek Orthodox hymn.
Seroussi is a remarkable researcher, musicologist and teacher. Born in Montevideo, Uruguay, he immigrated to Israel in 1971. He held posts at Tel Aviv University, at the Levinsky Teachers’ College in Tel Aviv, at Bar-Ilan University, and, since 2000, is the Emanuel Alexandre Professor of Musicology and Director of the Jewish Music Research Centre of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. We were indeed fortunate to have this wonderful scholar share his research and his passion with us.
Perhaps next year, we can invite him back to give the third and fourth lectures that the Jewish Community of Irvine was privileged to hear in 2013.
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Wingard is a freelance writer who specializes in coverage of the arts. She may be contacted via eileen.wingard@sdjewishworld.com