Jewish Music from Jerusalem to Jerusalem: The Mediterranean Timeless Music

Philip Bohlman in his book Jewish Music and Modernity (2008) claims that ‘Jewish music is re-imagined as timeless, the Jewish music of the people without history came to reside, above all, in the landscapes of Diaspora stretching eastward across the Mediterranean. (p.17)’ Jewish music is divided between two eras, one without and the other with history, one ancient and the other modern. Jewish music is also divided between religious music and secular music. Jewish music in modern times has also a national-geographic music, the music of Israel. In this paper I will discuss and try to demonstrate through musical examples and analysis the complexity of Jewish musical scholarship and the need to collect recordings of Jewish music as well as non-Jewish music. In this paper I will show the musical translations across the Mediterranean of Jewish and non-Jewish music, of Israeli and other Mediterranean musical cultures and the ongoing problem of defining musical-national-religious music in the Mediterranean.