The Lord's Song in a Strange Land: Music and Identity in Contemporary Jewish Worship » (BOOK & CD)

Jeffrey Summit is the Rabbi and Director of the Hillel Foundation at Tufts University, where he also teaches ethnomusicology and Judaic Studies.

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 people, 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 the music in contemporary Jewish worship and explores the diverse links between this 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.

The Lord's Song in a Strange Land is the first volume in Oxford's new American Musicspheres series. Featuring a CD of field recordings for many of the songs discussed, the book will prove an invaluable guide for a wide range of scholars and students of ethnomusicology and religion.

Publishers Weekly

This study, part of a series on American music in the early 21st century, examines music as a defining component of Jewish identity and affiliation. Summit, rabbi, director of the Hillel Foundation and associate professor of music at Tufts University, considers five "worship communities" from among Boston's 114 congregations: one each from the modern Orthodox, Conservative, Reform and Hasidic movements, and a Jewish renewal havurah. He examines the Friday night service, particularly one prayer, "Lekhah dodi," which welcomes the Sabbath, in numerous settings influenced by everything from rock and roll to Sufi chants. The power of singing together, agree the congregants he quotes anonymously, allows them to "hear and feel what it means to blend voice and breath, to create, though only temporarily, a transcendent community of palpable beauty and harmony." Unfortunately, that inspired sense comes through only intermittently in Summit's smorgasbord of interviews and detailed references to melodies that may be unfamiliar to readers, although some are noted in the text and available in accompanying recordings (not heard by PW). Summit's intention to study not only the music but also the men and women who make it is muddled by repetitious sentiments that fail to create living portraits of individuals. (Sept.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|