Winner of the 2000 Musher Publication Prize by the National Foundation for Jewish Culture

Description

Across the United States, Jews come together every week to sing and pray in a wide variety of worship communities. Through this music, made by and for ordinary folk, these worshippers define and re-define their relationship to the continuity of Jewish tradition and the realities of American life.

Combining oral history with an analysis of recordings, The Lord's Song in a Strange Land examines this tradition incontemporary Jewish worship and explores the diverse links between the music and both spiritual and cultural identities. Alive with detail, the book focuses on metropolitan Boston and covers the full range of Jewish communities there, from Hasidim to Jewish college students in a transdenominational setting. It documents a remarkably fluid musical tradition, where melodies are often shared, where sources can be as diverse as Sufi chant, Christmas carols, rock and roll, and Israeli popular music, and where the meaning of a song can change from one block to the next.

Reviews

"Lucidly written and argued...impressively reaches out to a number of readerships." --Journal of Religion

"Jeffrey Summit takes insider ethnography home to Boston, exploring Jewish worship across denominational lines and musical boundaries. An eye- and ear-opening exploration of the changing nature of musical tradition in American Jewish life." --Kay Kaufman Shelemay, Harvard University, author of Let Jasmine Rain Down: Song and Remembrance Among Syrian Jews

"...innovatively connects prayer and performance with broader social dynamics, examining musical sound in several dimensions and problematizing its relationship to social structure... skillfully grounded in ethnographic theory and rich with vibrant ethnographic material."--Ethnomusicology

"In his fascinating The Lord's Song in a Strange Land, Jeffrey Summit, rabbi and Hillel director at Tufts University, studies the link betwen music and identity--spiritual and cultural--in five very different metropolitan Boston congregations....Well-written [and] accessible to anyone interested in the role of music in prayer."--Jerusalem Post

"An illuminating study that shows the importance ethnographic research can have in contributing to Jewish musical scholarship....Through well-written studies such as this one, we may gain a broader and more nuanced understanding of synagogue musical expression, less as a test of historical trajectory than as a place where history and legitimacy are constantly subjected to rich layers of negotiation."--Language, Literature, and the Arts

"Jeffrey Summit's well-researched book on contemporary Jewish worship in America is a superb way of understanding what keeps Jewish communities inspired and motivated."--Elie Wiesel

"Useful to students in general religious as well as musical studies...this work gives an insider's insights and understanding, and a scholar's attention to the world of Jewish diversity." --Notes

Product Details

224 pages; 25 halftones & music examples; 6-1/8 x 9-1/4; ISBN13: 978-0-19-516181-6ISBN10: 0-19-516181-5

About the Author(s)

Companion Resources

The following resources are available from the "Lord's Song in a Strange Land" companion site: