Swinging Hava Nagila: “Jewish Jazz” And Jewish Identity

This essay examines “Jewish jazz”—attempts to combine “Jewish music” and jazz into a new genre—from the perspective of Jewish ethnic identity. The movement began with two albums in the early 1960s and then reemerged in a second wave in the 1990s. I analyze these musical forays as attempts to explore and expand modern American Jewish identity. Jewish jazz began tentatively, reflecting the assimilationist leanings of American Jews in the post-World War II era. As multiculturalism emerged in the late twentieth century, Jewish jazz became brasher in proclaiming its Jewishness. These performances sought to expand Jewish identity to fit a multicultural society, and sometimes black musicians stretched their identities as well by expanding into Jewish music. At its best, Jewish jazz reaffirmed Jewishness while revealing connections with African Americans, with whom Jews have shared a diasporic, urban American culture. Such assertion and expansion of identity encountered fierce resistance in a society that is still attached to rigid ethnic categories.