Music and Religious Change among Progressive Jews in London

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.