This book analyzes religion and change in relation to music within the context of contemporary progressive Judaism. It argues that music plays a central role as a driving force for religious change, comprising several elements seen as central to contemporary religiosity in general: participation, embodiment, experience, emotions and creativity. Focusing on the progressive Anglo-Jewish milieu today, the study investigates how responses to these processes of change are negotiated individually and collectively and what role is allotted to music in this context. Building on ethnographic research conducted at Leo Baeck College in London (2014-2016), it maps how theologically unsystematic life-views take form through everyday musical practices related to institutional religion, identifying three theoretically relevant processes at work: the reflexive turn, the turn within and the turn to tradition.
The analytic approach of vernacular religion functions as the structuring framework for the analysis, relating the locally embedded in-depth data to wider issues of relevance for larger Jewish contexts. The book explores how individuals and communities find ways of "being and doing Jewish" that feel historically and religiously grounded, yet meet their personal needs and correspond to the secular, urban lifestyle of their surrounding context. Themes arising in the analysis include the concepts of ambiguity, flexibility, and innovation as well as practices of bricolage and apprehensions of authenticity. The book also offers a detailed presentation of practices that arise as concrete insignia of these abstract processes of change: the (mostly) wordless singing of niggunim, exploring the traditional Jewish chant, nusach, and the increased interest in using Hebrew as a liturgical language in progressive settings.
Vernacular religiosity takes form through a constant dialogue between personal, everyday creativity and historical, social, and theological structures. Therefore, the voices from the field are presented in dialogue with the theoretical arguments from Jewish studies, religious studies, and ethnomusicology. By bringing together individual stories and overarching societal trends, the study provides an inclusive perspective, integrating versatile dimensions of private and public, internal and external, personal and shared, expressed and experienced.
Industry Reviews
This carefully researched book is based on the author's longstanding experience. Its innovative exploration of how vernacular religion uses music to link with tradition has implications far beyond the community on which it is focused, particularly in the area of identity construction. Its lively use of narratives makes it a fascinating read. -- June Boyce-Tillman, University of Winchester
The main merit of Ruth Illman's book is that it takes music seriously in the study of religion. She explores music as an instigator and insignia of religious change by carrying out in-depth, ethnographic research into the field of progressive Judaism. By doing this, Illman brings theory and the complexity of the everyday lived religion together in a well-structured book. She shows that musical practices provide a religious language that is border-crossing: merging the intellectual and the emotional, and facilitating interreligious explorations. Music is an intermediary space, or-as one of the interviewees says-'In some ways music is the religious experience.' -- Martin Hoondert, Tilburg University
An important and innovative exploration of music, change, and tradition in the synagogue practice of progressive Jews in Great Britain. Ruth Illman's engaging scholarship deepens our understanding of the centrality of music in contemporary religious life. -- Jeffrey A. Summit, Tufts University
In Music and Religious Change Among Progressive Jews in London: Being Liberal and Doing Traditional, Ruth Illman investigates three 'turns' in vernacular Judaism that have enabled five persons connected with London's Leo Baeck College to experience more embodied, emotionally engaging, and distinctively Jewish expressions of faith: a reflexive turn (which addresses the importance of personal religious and spiritual choice), a turn within (which enables an emotional and embodied experience of doing Jewish), and a turn toward tradition (which recovers the use of several practices of Orthodox Judaism within Liberal and Reform Judaism in England.) The key to this commitment to 'being liberal and doing traditional' for all five key narratives in the ethnographic study Illman presents is the role of music as both an instigator and an insignia of religious change within the synagogues in which each correspondent participates. Two practices characteristic of traditional Judaism that are vital to this Jewish sonic space are the inclusion of niggunim (wordless melodies that function as prayer) and nusach (chanting, rather than simply reading texts from Torah and traditional prayers of worship). Illman's contribution to understanding the hunger for authentic practices of faith within Jewish communities in England is appreciated, and her discussion of the role of music in filling that hunger is significant. -- Alan Smith, Florida Southern College
