Sara Levy's World: Gender, Judaism, and the Bach Tradition in Enlightenment Berlin ed. by Rebecca Cypess and Nancy Sinkoff (review)

This well-written, insightful, interdisciplinary, and excellent work is an effort to explore the facets of Sara Levy's complex world and in so doing bring that remarkable woman from the margins of intellectual and cultural history. It places Sara Levy (1761–1854) center stage and gives her the historical due that she deserves by honoring this very talented musician, committed Jew, and "enlightened person" (p. 12). The book stems from an international conference at Rutgers University in 2014 that explored anew the roles of gender, music, aesthetics, modernity, and anti-Judaism in Levy's accomplishments. The multidisciplinary conference involved scholars of intellectual-socialcultural history, Jewish studies, musicology, and philosophy to create a "polyphonic perspective" (p. 8).

The German Jewish women who hosted salons not only were patrons but, as in the case of Levy, were also intellectuals for whom music was a critical vehicle for becoming modern Europeans. Levy helped form German musical history by promoting the revival of baroque music, particularly the appreciation of Johann Sebastian Bach. Fanny, Sara's younger sister, became a prominent Viennese salonnière who established the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde and the music hall that became the home of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. She hosted Mozart at her home in 1781. Sara, who studied music with Wilhelm Friedemann Bach and was a patron of his brother Carl Philipp Emanuel, was a gifted keyboardist who performed at both her home and the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin. Levy influenced the zeal of her grandnephew, Felix Mendelssohn, for the Bach tradition, although unlike Mendelssohn, Levy remained a committed and devoted Jew. For example, Levy was a great philanthropist of many Jewish causes who willed her considerable fortune to the Jewish orphanage in Berlin. According to these essays, her "deep engagement with music—even with a tradition dominated by Christian motifs—did not threaten her Jewishness" (p. 5). This conclusion contradicts the views of historians Heinrich Graetz (1817–1891) and Shimon Dubnov (1860–1941), who viewed the salonnières as "traitors who severed their ties" with the Jewish community. On the other hand, feminists and scholars of gender studies see role models in these extraordinary independent women of high culture who "challenged the patriarchal conventions of traditional Jewish life" (p. 5).

The context of the modern Enlightenment musical and literary salons that met on jours fixes, hosted by Jewish women, provided a place of culture (Bildung) in which music played an essential place, that promoted a society of virtue (Tugendbund), self education, moral improvement, aesthetic refinement, and intellectual discourse. In addition to Levy, salonnière hosts included Amalie Beer (mother of Giacomo Meyerbeer), Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel (sister of Felix Mendelssohn), Rahel Varnhagen (1771–1833), Henriette Herz (1764–1847), and Dorothea von Schlegel (1764–1839).

Visited by poets, philosophers, musicians, artists, scientists, and scholars, these salons hosted by Jewish women, who championed religious tolerance, allowed what Immanuel Kant and Moses Mendelsohn called "the pursuit of Enlightenment." Yet Nancy Sinkoff's introduction points to Ruth HaCohen's argument that the libel against the Jews implicit in Western Christian music never allowed this utopian ideal of equality, sympathy, mutuality, and a culture of redemption (Ruth HaCohen, The Music Libel Against the Jews [New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011]).

Sara Levy's World shows that this secular Enlightenment (Aufklärung) worked in tandem with the Haskalah. While Sara Levy's world emphasized Bildung (the German word for culture), Haskalah placed emphasis on tarbut (the Hebrew word for culture). The Haskalah leaders known as maskilim were dedicated to the modernization of the Talmudic heder (elementary and high school) and yeshivot (college-level Rabbinic studies) designed to produce Talmidei Chachamim (Talmud scholars). This Haskalah trend was towards moderate modernization while at the same time emphasizing knowledge of...