BEKI Series Explores History of Jewish Music

“Questions in Jewish Music,” a program of five January sessions, will be held at Beth El – Keser Israel on Wednesday evenings from 7:30 to 9 p.m.

Led by Dr. Rachel Adelstein, an ethnomusicologist who has produced podcasts about music in Jewish life around the world and has presented her research internationally to academic and public audiences, the sessions in the Rosenkrantz Family Library are free of charge and open to the community:

January 2.......... The Basics
January 9.......... Cantorial Music
January 16........ Jewish Music and Modernity
January 23........ Women’s Voices in Jewish Music
January 30........ Music and the Politics of Memory

The program will explore the history of Jewish music from biblical times to the present, and how Jewish communities have used music to define their sense of who they are in a changing modern world.

Adelstein received her PhD in 2013 from the University of Chicago, where she completed her doctoral dissertation entitled “Braided Voices: Women Cantors in Non-Orthodox Judaism.” She currently is expanding this research into a monograph that examines the relationship between women cantors and an emerging American style of Jewish ritual practice. For more information, call (203) 389-2108 or go to beki.org.

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