Music and Religious Change among Progressive Jews in London

Being Liberal and Doing Traditional

By: Ruth Illman

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eBook | 15 September 2018

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This book analyses 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.

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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.’