A Feminist Ethnomusicology: Writings on Music and Gender

Chapter 7 The Language of the Heart: Music in Lubavitcher Life

7 The Language of the Heart Music in Lubavitcher Life I was asked to write this article for a book examining contemporary Hasidic culture in the United States. This collection, New World Hasidim: Ethnographic Studies of Hasidic Jews in America, edited by Janet S. Belcove-Shalin, appeared in 1995 and contained perhaps the first collection of articles about Hasidic culture based on the ethnographic method of fieldwork. My article was the only one addressing music and its role in Hasidic ritual and spiritual life, and it was perhaps the first published discussion of Hasidic musical culture that integrated women’s musical practices with those of men. This volume strove to move the previous historical study of Hasidic culture in two new directions: toward the anthropology of religion and toward feminist theory. Also to appear in this volume were two articles, one by Debra Kaufman, “Engendering Orthodoxy: Newly Orthodox Women and Hasidism,” and the other by Bonnie Morris, “Agents or Victims of Religious Ideology: Approaches to Locating Hasidic Women in Feminist Studies,” both of which used recent feminist anthropological theories surrounding individual agency and autonomy to argue that within the constraints of orthodoxy , women were actively and successfully negotiating new positions of social and ritual power. Some of the material presented here was used later in my book Music in Lubavitcher Life (2001). * * * As a small child growing up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the late 1940s, I was often drawn to the sounds I heard when, on my way to school each day, I passed the Lubavitcher yeshiva (school) at my corner. I was struck by the spirit and intensity both of the singing and of the radiant faces of the men and 106 part ii: 1990–2000 boys I could see through the window on Hobart Street. I would often stop to listen, attracted by the sense of purpose that the singing seemed to have and by the sometimes joyful, sometimes yearning, quality of the music. Coming from a secular Jewish family where I was expected to become a classical musician, I could not fully understand the relationship these people had to Judaism or to their music. Later, as an ethnomusicologist—a trained outside observer—I came not only to better understand this relationship, but also to develop a high regard for the musicianship and musical creativity of the men and women with whom I worked. This article examines the traditional music of Lubavitcher Hasidism (nigun ), its meaning and use in Lubavitcher life, and its role in the ongoing negotiation between traditional Lubavitcher values and those of the U.S. urban mainstream. I regard nigun as a musical expression of essential Lubavitcher religious and philosophical beliefs and its performance as an articulation of these beliefs within the realm of social and musical action. “Making a nigun” is not simply a joyous activity for Lubavitchers; it is a religious act, carrying with it the same awesome responsibility as prayer. The Contemporary Setting The contemporary Lubavitcher court, led by the late rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson (1902–94), is the largest of the modern Hasidic courts, its members numbering around 250,000 worldwide. The Brooklyn community of Crown Heights (approximately 100,000), according to Lis Harris, encompasses an area “whose borders are loosely defined by their synagogue [770 Eastern Parkway], schools, kosher shops, and the last Hasidic family on a block” (1985, 13). Contemporary Lubavitchers in Brooklyn live in many ways much as their eastern European counterparts did in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries . Strictly adhering to the laws of Orthodox Judaism, wearing specific garments of piety that mark their identity, and joyously, often loudly, participating in frequent gatherings (farbrengens) with their rebbe (religious leader), Lubavitchers seem anachronistic to their New York neighbors. Moreover, their activities are often a point of curiosity, sometimes ridicule, for fellow less observant Jews from Manhattan and elsewhere. Although they may resemble their eastern European ancestors, contemporary Lubavitchers do recognize considerable differences in class and economic opportunity in America that would have been impossible in Europe. For example, some hold jobs outside the community, many live quite comfortably on the tree-lined streets of residential Brooklyn, and some women The Language of the Heart 107 even continue to work, most often within the community as teachers, after children begin to arrive. Lubavitchers feel that this increase in social and economic access is primarily the result of an unprecedented tolerance of Jews in today’s America. Such...