Today I am delivering on a promise I made last June — to write my PhD on Substack:
I have written forty weeks of articles since then, many dealing with fascinating questions and rediscovered sources from my doctoral research. But this post will go a little deeper than that. This week, I want to invite you into my dissertation process, the “state” of the thing, and solicit your feedback directly on my work-to-date.
Jewish tradition has long championed the chevruta — the partnered study of sacred text. This socially-mediated learning experience uniquely builds both relationship and wisdom alike. As the Talmudic rabbi Rabbi Hama b. Hanina taught: “Just as one iron sharpens the other, so too do two scholars sharpen each other studying together.”1 I found this true to be true not only in religious studies, but in the project-based world of academia.
Before I began my PhD, I noticed that my previous successes in publishing (all primarily as an editor) were linked with a very interactive process with fellow co-writers and scholars. Approaching the very individual project of the dissertation, I tried to mirror these successes by chunking my writing into short-term, project-based goals: giving academic talks, penning reviews, participating in writing groups, and publishing an early chapter of my dissertation.
My sojourn into the world of Substack is part of this mode of scholarship. Over the last forty weeks, I have cooked up a selection of academic amuse bouches from my dissertation research, including on Jewish Baroque music, Ashkenazi choristers (meshorerim), early modern British cantors, synagogue melodies from the Hamburg Opera, and James Brown’s secret connection to the High Holidays. But the main course of my writing here has been much more than that —it has been an entrée to broader thinking about Jewish music. And more importantly, it has given me a valuable outlet to discuss these ideas with others, opening up new chevruta opportunities with many types of people.
I won’t lie — Substack has certainly slowed down my dissertation writing. But it also has given me a wonderful crucible for working out new ideas, as well as sharing humorous tidbits of cantorial history — like this one.
I. Cantors at a Czech Hot Springs
By the turn of the eighteenth century, a hip new group of Ashkenazi cantors and their mesheorerim (choristers) had become gigging musicians, traveling all over the Bohemian and Moravian countryside to make a living. This was very disruptive compared to the then institutional cantorate, in which cantors were contractually hired by local communities to perform religious services on weekdays, Sabbaths and festivals for years at a time, and who were barred from leaving town without the express permission of the Board of Directors. This new development represented an parallel gig economy for sacred singers based on reputation and vocal ability, as well as an ascending desire for novel musical inspiration in the synagogue. Ergo, these guys were the original “cantors-in-residence.”
This week, I rediscovered a wonderful scene from the three-hundred year old cantorial gig economy during a call with Dr. Olga Sixtová, a professor at Charles Unviersity in Prague and a world expert on Bohemian and Moravian Hebrew manuscripts. Dr. Sixtova showed me a source about these traveling cantors and meshorerim in a fascinating place — the Bohemian village of Sobědruhy (pr. so-byeh-droo-hee), home to many Jews who did business with the local spa industry. The nearby city of Teplice2 had expelled most of its Jews in 1668; it was also the home of a well-known thermal hot springs visited by a host of noble and royal patrons.
Got gout? Czech it out!
A century before Beethoven and Goethe were trolling these Bohemian hot springs for inspiration, social connections, and a good schvitz, traveling rabbis and cantors were showing up en masse in nearby Sobědruhy — perhaps for the same purpose. The following source comes from the community’s regulations on how to deal with sharing the expense of hosting these frequent guests:
16. Allowances for honoring distinguished guests, [passed] on Sunday 7 Elul 460 (August 22, 1700), Pinkas Sobědruhy, fol. 36b.
Since before, there was a provision to the effect that if an esteemed guest, such as a rabbi or a cantor and the like, visits the community and stays over Shabbat with the officer of the month (parnas hachodesh) from the leaders of the community, this must be paid for from the fund of the leaders of the community. The community thus incurs high expenses during the year.
Therefore from today it applies, as was accepted today at the board meeting, that if such an esteemed guest appears and stays by the officer of the month, this officer will be reimbursed for a rabbi or cantor for Shabbat—two boletes, and one bolete for each weekday. And if two rabbis or cantors arrive at the same time, each one goes to one of the community elders; or [for] a bass-singer (meshorer bas) who comes with a cantor or a singer (meshorer), even on Shabbat, only one boleta will be paid. Adopted at a meeting of the Board of Directors on Sunday, 7 Elul 460.3
Don’t you love reading old synagogue board minutes? Honestly, this is where many of the gems of cantorial history are hidden.
Here we have a fascinating example of the costs of boarding itinerant rabbis, cantors, and singers overwhelming the Sobědruhy community’s annual budget.4 The burden of such hospitality will have to be shared by those in the leadership, but at least the Sobědruhy synagogue will be filled with inspiring and musical guests.
Vignettes like this make writing cantorial history fun. But history alone doth not a PhD dissertation make.
II. Back to the PhD: A “Come to Jastrow” Moment
Last month, I sat down with my advisor to review my dissertation to date. I had written big chunks of four different chapters. I had transcribed and translated over a hundred pages of early modern cantorial sources. All of this looks like a dissertation whose end is ultimately in sight.
But my advisor gently presented me with a cutting and unavoidable critique: My work to date read like a monograph history of the early modern cantorate — but not yet a PhD dissertation. Moving forward, I require a narrower focus within this rich field of study.
She’s not wrong. I have the curiosity bug and a penchant for wide-ranging history, which inevitably must be sublimated to achieve the deep-dive focus of the PhD. Here are two reasons why it’s more complicated than it looks.
A. Learning Styles: The Divergent Scholar
During some professional coaching last year, I was introduced to the theory of experiential learning styles by American psychologist David Kolb. Among his four types of learners, my primary orientation was that of the divergent thinker. Here’s an excerpt from Tracy Atkinson’s profile of this type:
“The Diverger will see things from a variety of aspects that will allow them to use their imagination, allowing them to see the whole picture. They enjoy organizing smaller pieces into a large and manageable whole.
The Diverger is also an information gatherer, working best in groups. They will enjoy personal feedback.
David Kolb called this learning personality as a Diverger because this type will perform best in situations where they can have a variety of options and viewpoints, not one black/white solution.”
This describes a lot of my orientation as writer, and I highly recommend Kolb’s theory as a helpful framework for understanding your fellow human beings. But Kolb’s diverger also describes the plague of the generalist — the person whose natural curiosity leads to a desire to understand everything in its broadest context. As I learned from my executive coach, one must adapt one’s style for other people and tasks — in this case, the dissertation. Or as my other advisor, Dr. Edwin Seroussi, suggested to me of late: “At some point, you just have to stop reading!”
So even if I have to curb my enthusiasm to focus in on the dissertation, that doesn’t solve the issue of narrowing its scope. And it is here, dear reader, where I’ll ask you to join me in my work.
B. Complex Problem, Complex Solution
My original dissertation title is “The Development of Music Professionalism among Ashkenazi cantors in Early Modern Europe (1500-1750).” I chose this because music professionalism is the primary organizing factor around many facets of cantorial change in this era, including:
the emergence of cantors as traveling musicians
the rise of a cantorial market based on reputation and vocal ability
the growth of Jewish communities, leading to both a sizable vocational community of cantors, and a concentration of capital that can support higher salaries and the possibility of full-time cantorial work
the emergence of cantorial literature written by cantors about the cantorial vocation
the rise of kabbalah and its focus on music as a vehicle of religious joy
secularization and the moral crisis of pleasure
the standardization of the printed prayerbook, leading to changes in human creativity and the broadening of cantorial candidates
The waning of rabbinic authority and the independence of boards to choose their own candidates (often those who are more musical and less pious).
the growth of musical complexity in the synagogue, including extended melismatic singing, meshorerim (choristers), and intentional experimentation with Western notation and co-territorial aesthetics.
the migration of Polish cantors Westward in the second half of the 17th century, bringing many of these musical and social innovations into Western Europe and causing a huge backlash amongst the Western Ashkenazic rabbinic establishment on both on cultural and moral grounds.
To me, these are all inseparable elements of a transformational era in Jewish music history. For a diverger like myself, it’s hard to imagine sublimating much here on the altar of specialization.
So nu, what do you think?
III. Substack & Outsider Advantage
As a diverger, I naturally like imaginative, interactive group learning, considering many options and viewpoints in my learning process. Perhaps that’s why Substack is such a fertile place for my work — the opportunity to share and interact with a diverse group of people within and completely outside of my field.
The advantages of outsiders in problem solving is a long established phenomenon. You might know it from the Hebrew Bible, in which an Egyptian-reared, intermarried, fugitive, eighty-year old Moses ends up being the agent of God’s redemption and spiritual transformation of the Israelite nation.5 As
describes in his recent book, Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, insiders often employ familiar solutions to solve problems, limited by specialization and the norms of their fields; outsiders, on the other hand, are often able to create novel solutions based on the wisdom gleaned and creatively applied from other fields.I am waiting for my chance, for example, to collaborate with an epidemiologist on tracing the spread of specific trends in the history Jewish music. Music, like disease, is often airborne, transferred and incubated in large cities, and constantly mutating to find a new host. Tracking cultural change with epidemiological tools would be a potentially fascinating intervention in musicology. But such approaches will have to wait until after this dissertation.6
In the meantime, I am inviting you, dear readers, as a new chevruta into my dissertation process. Below I’ve included the current abstract and chapter outlines of my dissertation project, and you can also reference my description of this dynamic era above. What could make this a dissertation vs. a book? What should be sublimated, and what is central to the argument as presented? If you’re curious for a deeper dive, I’ve included at the bottom the YouTube of a lecture I just gave at the Czech Consulate in New York, which is a good lay of the land for my second chapter.
Thanks to everyone reading — you have been and continue to be my valued study partners in this vast sea of Jewish music. Take a look below for a deeper dive, and you can leave a comment or send a message to mattausterklein@substack.com. Thanks again.
DISSERTATION: The Development of Music Professionalism among Ashkenazi cantors in Early Modern Europe (1500-1750)
ABSTRACT: Both Jewish Musicology and Jewish Studies over the last century have largely ignored cantors or cast the early modern period as period of decadence in the Ashkenazic synagogue. In this dissertation, I properly situate the professionalization of Ashkenazic cantors in this period within the broader trends of Jewish migration, cultural exchange, mysticism, and secularization. Based on my detailed analysis of manuscripts, communal documents, rabbinic responsa, ethical literature, songs, and iconography, I demonstrate how specific aspects of Ashkenazic cantorial style and professionalization originated in 17th century Czech and Polish communities and spread afterwards to Western Ashkenaz, fomenting a hotly contested transformation of the 18th century synagogue. I further argue that these developments created a new paradigm of Ashkenazic cantor focused on musical specialization and aesthetics.
OUTLINE
Chapter 1: Introduction and Literature Review
Chapter 2: The Medieval Ashkenazi Cantor: Homeland and Diaspora. This chapter gives an overview of the medieval Ashkenazi cantor, as well as the basic, recurring tensions surrounding his religious character and musical activities. Additional attention will be given to the Ashkenazim of Northern Italy, clarifying what the musical voices and Ashkenazic sources of this era do and do not tell us about the rise of cantorial music professionalism.
Chapter 3: The First Cantorial Golden Age, Part 1: Cantorial Music Professionalism and its emergence in Czech Lands. This chapter presents the emergence of Jewish musical professionalism in Bohemia and Moravia, particularly in the urban centers of Prague and Nikolsburg. This is illuminated using extensive sources such as travel reports, guides on cantorial ethics, festival books, contracts, and sheet music. A particular Czech strand of musical experimentation will be suggested, generating in the mid-to-late seventeenth century before spreading Westward.
Chapter 4: The First Cantorial Golden Age, Part 2: The Polish-Lithuanian Culture of Cantorial Transgression. This chapter presents the unique dynamics of the early modern cantorate in Poland-Lithuania the sixteenth to mid-seventeenth centuries. By interweaving factors from print culture, politics and music, it illuminates the emancipation of the Polish cantorate from rabbinic control, leading transgressive cantorial personalities who were innovative in both musical expression and liturgical gestures.
Chapter 5: East Goes West—Migration and Transformation in the West Ashkenazi Synagogue
In this chapter, I examine the synthesis and transfer of Czech and Polish cantorial forms to Western Europe by Eastern European migrants, who causing a cultural and religious backlash from both Western Ashkenazi and Sephardic rabbis alike, as well as precipitating markers of a new, transnational Ashkenazi cantorial culture. This extended regional analysis will also address the musical changes brought about by secularization and increasing interaction with European music. My analysis will be constructed with regional studies, begining with older medieval Jewish centers such as Fürth, Frankfurt am Main, and Worms, followed by newly founded Ashkenazi communities in the port cities of Hamburg, Amsterdam and London.
Chapter 6: Conclusion. This chapter concludes the dissertation with a review of the state of the Ashkenazi cantorate before the spread of Western music literacy in the second half of the 18th century and the musical changes of the Enlightenment. This chapter gestures towards the the development of the hazzanut today and its relationship to the changes described in previous chapters.
Appendices: The appendices contain detailed translations of the most important sources on early modern Ashkenazi cantors. These include significant excerpts from the books Mal’ah Ha'aretz Deah (1560), Reishit Bikkurim (1709), Shirei Yehuda (1696), Teudat Shlomo (1718), and Reiach Nichoach (1724), and as well as several anti-cantorial polemics and cantorial contracts.
Cf. BT Taanit 7a
The nearby city of Teplice had expelled most of its Jews in 1668; they resettled in Sobědruhy.
Olga Sixtová, Pinkasim a správa židovských obcí v českých zemích raného novověku: struktura a funkce (“Pinkasim and the administration of Jewish communities in early modern Czech lands: structure and function”), ed. Pavel Sladek (Prague: Academia, 2023): 249.
This culture of traveling, celebrated cantors is further attested in the nearbye Moravian Jewish center of Nikolsburg (Cz. Mikulov), where by 1680 the community regulations favored more “famous” cantors, and also limited bass-singers from being appointed without communal consent.
Moses’ father in law, Yitro, a Midianite priest, will also fulfill the role of outsider/problem-solver by solving a judicial backlog problem amongst the Israelites and through a system of lay judges (Cf. Exodus 18) .
For an innovative use of mapping technology charting the spread of Jewish music trends over time, see Jewish Music Mapped, a collaboration between Hebrew Univeristy’s Jewish Music Resource Center and Da’at HaMakom.