Every generation has different music. This is not just because of emerging movements, but because the psychological and spiritual needs of new generations often differ from those that came before. The balance between sharing one’s received culture and acknowledging the individuality of each person is a timeless challenge, but also a divine one. As Rabbi Shai Held recently taught on the podcast Answers WithHeld, a God whom I recognize and follow as being Other than myself also must implicitly recognize my own Otherness and individuality.
To explore this on a musical level, I recently performed music diagnostic on one of my kids to try to understand what genres spoke to their needs. Fortunately, a basic test of this sort was recently developed by Professor Jason Rentfrow at Cambridge University, called the STOMP (Short Test of Music Preferences). Stomping through over one hundred musical examples, I discovered that my kid loved electronic dance music (EDM), John Philip Sousa-style marches, and avant-garde classical music.
While I can connect on some level to this music—and I am tickled that my kid likes the twelve-tone compositions of Arnold Schönberg — these are not the genres that animate my life or my religious spirit (though I do love a good sea shanty).
How does one convey the musical values of one’s family while also honoring the uniqueness and the Otherness of each person? This question is deeply intertwined with a talk that I gave this past Shabbat at Temple Gates of Prayer in Flushing, NY, about the familial music culture of my religious denomination, Masorti/Conservative Judaism. The talk was entitled “The Sovereign Musical Self: Musical Leadership in the Conservative Movement.” I have expanded it here to address the broader history of music in Conservative Judaism, and as a window into the cross-generational dynamics of musical change.
Good Shabbes!
As we walk today through the priestly parameters of Parashat Shemini, we are putting in focus how one comes close to God. This includes how offerings are made (or not, in the tragic case of Aaron’s sons, Nadav and Avihu); and how we eat (the laws of Kashrut). Well if music be the fruit of love of God, play on — how shall we distinguish bein hatamei uvein tahor? Between pure and impure music?
I’m afraid I can’t offer easy dichotomies of good and bad. If the rising melodies of Jewish music are like a reiach nichoach, a pleasant offering, our own day is more like the Israeli saying: al ta’am v’al reiach, ein ma l’hitvakeiach — concerning smell and taste, there’s nothing to argue about.
But people do argue about musical taste, particularly in communal settings which define families, movements, and groups of people. Many of us who celebrate Passover will have our “family melodies” that represent the continuity of the generations, representing the continuity of our family in body and tradition. An interloping melody may be welcomed as a pleasant offering, or just as easily rejected as an eish zarah — a strange fire.
So too with the history of our denomination the Conservative Movement, whose multiple coalitions over time represent different visions for musical community, potentially strange fires dwelling together as the offering of one musical family.
I. The Early Days - Congregational Singing and Cantorial Confidence
The Conservative movement, which coalesced beginning in the second decade of the twentieth century, was defined by two aesthetic visions — the European cantorial tradition and an emergent culture of communal singing. Conservative synagogues, like Congregation Mishkan Tefilah of Leonard Bernstein’s youth, featured mixed choirs with European-influenced choral music, together with well-trained cantors who were in aesthetic dialogue with the cantor craze of the Golden Age of Hazzanut. But in counterpoint to this was the rising movement of congregational singing, led by some of the faculty and limelights of the Jewish Theological Seminary.
Dr. Geoffrey Goldberg captured many aspects of this fascinating story in a recent article, giving credit for beginning this movement to the great scholar, Solomon Schechter.1 I quote the article here at length:
“Within the small group of faculty and rabbinical students of the Seminary the idea emerged of inserting congregational song, as a means of outreach and engagement of the young. According to composer, music director and scholar, Abraham Binder (1895–1966), ‘Credit must be given to Solomon Schechter…for the first real efforts to organize congregational singing at the Seminary…’ Under Schechter’s leadership a course in hazzanut (for rabbinical students) was introduced at JTS in 1902 and one of the classes that Rabbi/Hazzan Israel Goldfarb (JTS 1902) taught from 1920 to 1942 was entitled ‘Traditional Melodies,’ consisting largely of congregational melodies.
Solomon Schechter’s wife, Mathilde (1857–1924), was also an early active proponent of congregational song. Ever since her arrival in New York she had been disquieted by the lack of participation in Uptown synagogues. Already a significant figure in Jewish communal life, in a lecture delivered in 1904 at the National Council of Jewish Women, Mathilde contended that ‘the professional choir is a mistake unless it leads the congregation’s singing.’ She argued that congregational song would help connect Jewish women to the synagogue and called for ‘a return to the beautiful ancient melodies, at present neglected and almost disappearing.’
Mathilde’s appeal led to the establishment in 1905 of the Choral Society for Ancient Hebrew Melodies. To encourage participation from the immigrant community, rehearsals were relocated to the Downtown Educational Alliance (established in 1899 to promote Americanization of the immigrant Jews). Several local cantors and musicians, including Simon Jacobson, hazzan of the Seminary synagogue, assisted in selecting melodies, both Ashkenazic and Sephardic. The project culminated in the publication in 1910 of Kol Rinnah: Hebrew Hymnal for School and Home. Its objective was ‘to present traditional melodies of the synagogue and the home…[and] to further the spread of congregational singing.’
Eleven of the twenty-seven melodies of Kol Rinnah were composed (or were arrangements of traditional melodies) by Sulzer, Naumbourg, Lewandowski, and Mombach. An important source for several melodies was Kol Rinnah V’todah, an English publication with which Mathilde would have been familiar. The intent of both works was for the choir to lead unison singing by the congregation. By virtue of Simon Jacobson’s involvement, some of the melodies were in all probability sung in the Seminary synagogue. According to Binder, Jacobson helped realize Schechter’s desire for congregational song in the Seminary synagogue ‘as well as it could have been.’”2
This synthesis of the European cantorial tradition, the Golden Age of Hazzanut, and the congregational hymn were among the principle trends behind Conservative music culture in the early 20th century. Following the Holocaust and the founding of the State of Israel, the golden era of American Jewish institution building began, with cantorial schools founded at HUC and JTS creating American-born professionals who synthesized these three aesthetic pillars, together with Yiddish, Israeli, and American music, for the respectable, middle-class domestic life of suburban Jewry. The momentous growth of the American cantorial professional in the Conservative movement grew through the 1960s, with the CA holding a broad coalitions of traditionalists and modernizers who experimented heavily with creating authentic American cantorial traditions.3
The second half of the twentieth century would be filled with rude disruptions, and a new generation with broader musical ideals. Two emergent genres from this era have come to dominate the last fifty years of the Conservative Jewish soundscape — songleading and niggunim (wordless melodies). Both have passed into cultural normativity, while nevertheless existing side by side with melodies and echoes of previous generations of Conservative Jews and their musical and social visions.
II. Songleading - Then & Now
Synagogue music experienced a radical transformation in the late 1960s, when sing-along tunes that originated in youth groups (simultaneous with the folk revival in American culture) dug their cultural heels into (predominantly) Ashkenazi Jewish souls. This music was especially incubated in the NFTY summer camps of the American Reform movement in the 1960s & ‘70s. It took a generation for this current to make its way into the synagogue service — the same time it took those kids that grew up in Reform summer camps to become rabbis, cantors, and Jewish leaders. Pioneers in this movement included clergy-duo Kol B’Seder (Rabbi Daniel Freelander and Cantor Jeff Klepper), Julie Silver, and of course Debbie Friedman z’l, whose hits like “Mi she-beirakh,” and “Havdalah” are now so ubiquitous as to be rendered “traditional” (even black hat orthodox circles now find themselves singing her melody for Havdalah).
At the beginning, the songleading was a movement centered in Jewish camping and youth subculture. A half-century later, it has become mainstreamed, democratized, and reshaped by new organizations. YouTube and Facebook have led to new opportunities for young new talent to rise up and gain recognition for their music, beyond “official” institutional channels. Online groups such as “Harmony in Unison” and “Sacred Space” reveal independent platforms which empower individuals to be heard by thousands within a short period of time.
Jewish institutions are also mainstreaming the songleading phenomenon as both time and the rapid change of online culture accelerates its change. Reform cantors have been actively co- opted into the American songleading norms of their movement’s dominant camp culture, all acquiring the necessary proficiency in guitar and songleading during cantorial school.Beyond the URJ, Rosalie Will’s Sing Unto God and Rick Recht’s Songleader Boot Camp (SLBC) have created a powerful post-denominational networks of Jewish songleaders and singer-songwriters. These have been strongly anchored by artist development, social media, and annual retreats, which function simultaneously as an experimental environment for new learners and as a launchpad for emerging talent.
Conservative Jews too, are now more at home with songleading than ever before. With particular leadership from Rabbi Josh Warshawsky, the SLBC conference-community has become home-base for training Camp Ramah music specialists and staff at large. Rabbi Warshawsky’s own repertoire has been recorded and shared widely through social media, bringing the reach of his music across boundaries and denominations. This trend reflects a norming of guitar-based worship across many parts of the Conservative world--at summer camp, Friday night “live” services, and beyond. Students at Conservative-feeder cantorial schools are required to take guitar, to work at Camp Ramah, and to be well-prepared for this post-traditional environment. While traditional prayer and nusach still makes up a core marker of authenticity within the Conservative movement, songleading is no longer a newcomer on the fringes. It is a flowering style with new leaders and a broad reach, finding a normative home within the Conservative musical landscape.
III. The Nigun
The rise of the niggun in Jewish worship can be seen from many different angles: the growth of Chabad Hasidism; the growing access to recordings of niggunim in the second half of the 20th century; the rise of communal singing in summer camps; and of course, the influence of major recording artists and teachers like Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach and Joey Weisenberg. Love of the niggun is also shared with the Jewish Renewal and neo-Hasidic worlds, who have emphasized it as a way of achieving spiritual ecstasy and new heights of religious feeling.
This interest in niggun is also part of a fundamental shift in American religion away from centralized authority and/or elite culture, and towards relational authority and personal meaning. One might see it very much in line with the organizational and social trends affecting American life; the niggun sensitively connects a lonely, sovereign self within a temporary, radiant network of living, human voices. One may describe it as music of equity, prophetic music which denounces authority and emphasizes that we are all vocally equal before God. It is also the music of therapy, expressing the deep feelings which lie, beyond words, within each individual soul. And unlike much of the songleading world, the world of the niggun is more thickly cloaked in Ashkenazi culture, and, sonically, in Jewish particularism. For these reasons, and more, the niggun singing movement continues to catch the souls of the sovereign selves of the 21st century.
The niggun’s rise in the Conservative Jewish world has experienced a particular acceleration over the past twenty years. Apart from camp settings and the charismatic wake of the Carlebach craze, niggunim formed the emblematic music culture of one group close to the vanguard of Conservative Judaism—the independent minyanim. Founded by empowered Jews from day school backgrounds (with many rabbis among them), minyanim developed as a strong influence in Conservative music culture throughout the early 21st century, presenting both a halakhically normative yet musically empowering environment for communal song. One of the main participants in this culture is the Conservative rabbinate, which co-opted its style in rabbinical schools and spaces, and have often longed for its ethos of equity and communal emotion to successfully bridge into the more hierarchical environment of the synagogue.
Beyond the Conservative rabbinate and minyanim themselves, the niggun’s greatest champion has been the Hadar Institute. It has been led musically over the last decade by its bard and first inspiration, Joey Weisenberg, who runs Hadar’s Rising Song Institute with its emerging musical co-leader, Rabbi Deborah Sacks Mintz. Hadar and Rising Song Institute's resonant religious message and cultivation of the niggun as a communal spiritual art have been successfully combined with intensive in-person learning retreats and fellowships, and the effective use of music sharing platforms, technology and social media.
Like with songleading, cantors of both Reform and Conservative movements have co- opted the niggun into their toolkit as worship leaders. Transcontinental has published three volumes of its Nigun Anthology since 2004. The Cantors Assembly published Shira Chadasha: Music of the Independent Minyan in 2016, and is preparing to publish aa new volume of nigunim and nigun-style melodies, Shirata, later this year. The organization has also developed “SongSwap,” a monthly, online melody and niggun-sharing group of over 125 regular participants. The singing of niggunim and cultivation of communal singing is now both practically (and perhaps theologically) de rigeur in the mainstream all denominational AND post-denominational synagogues.
IV. Cantors - A Multigenerational Bridge
As we explored above, Conservative cantors have absorbed emergent styles into their own practices and institutions over the past two decades, particularly as a new generation of rabbis and congregants arose for whom this type of communal singing is so important.
Cantors generally absorb emergent styles only once they have become culturally canonized. This of course does not come without emotion or difficulty, as populist genres of songleading and niggunim came to displace more elite musical forms: hazzanut, art music, and choral singing. It is in the 21st century that more cantors have emerged who were perhaps less traumatized by this development (partly because it was standard practice when they were growing up), and thus were able to adopt it rather than see it predominantly as a threat.4
But cantors also remain as the principal carriers of the sonic memory of earlier eras of Conservative music — particularly choral music, art music, Yiddish song, and other genres championed in the early- and mid-twentieth century. Cantors are among the most likely to form choirs, perform Jewish art music, and/or bring classical, jazz, or other normative musics into their communities.
This may be countercultural, but monoculture of any kind looks to be increasingly a thing of the past. Songleading and nigunim are clearly now established forms, yet they do not exhaust the interest of American Jewish humans (or Conservative/Masorti ones) in the spiritual potential of older music.
The Cantors Assembly’s successful activities during the coronavirus pandemic are an interesting testimony to this phenomenon. Over the pandemic, the Cantors Assembly leaned into its nationwide network of colleagues to create a robust schedule of programming for online audiences, including concerts, benefits, online courses, worship opportunities, and education projects. These programs initially reached over 10,000 individuals in 30 countries, and have continued to expand even after the pandemic has waned.
Recent studies of listening trends show not that everyone is listening to the same songs. Instead, everyone is listening to everything. How is a mega-family — a movement — then to have a coherent culture of song and spiritual uplift? How do we teach authentic and even spiritual tradition, while also knowing the sacred Otherness of each generation?
Making predictions and choices about these blending musical visions is probably harder than distinguishing between pure and impure animals. Human beings are always beinoni — in between, rarely fully pure or impure, and the same thing for their music. But even with the excesses of our era of sovereign selfhood, and there are many, we should never forget that the priests of Leviticus were facilitators of individual worship – they helped not just the community to be heard, but the individual to come to God with their personal offering, al ta’am v’al reaich. A movement holds its cultural memory in its music, but should also listen deeply to the broad needs of its individual strands, not just the popularity and volume of its macrotrends.
So stay tuned. A techno-marchy-avant garde version of traditional prayer may be on the way. It may not be for everybody. But it will be for somebody I love.
It is important to note that Schechter loved to lead services, and apparently was known for giving the stink eye and shushing people who talked during the prayers. This may reflect his British-acquired love of decorum or his scholarly and spiritual devotion to the prayers themselves.
See Geoffrey Goldberg, “The Development of Congregational Song in the American Conservative Synagogue” in Cantors Assembly 75th Anniversary Journal, ed. Matthew Austerklein (Akron: Cantors Assembly, 2022): 339-40.
Mathilda Schechter’s Hymnal remains an amazing repository for melodies that have remained in the movement for over a century, including for Yigdal, Az Yashir Moshe, Hodo Al Eretz, Se’u She’arim, En Kelohenu, and Migdol Yeshuot (Yes, the tune from Birkat HaMazon!).
You can find a large amount of history and reflection on this era in the Cantors Assembly 75th Anniversary Journal, which I edited in 2022. It is available for free online, and in hard copy by request.
I owe this observation to my colleague, Cantor Hinda Labovitz. She has pointed out that the specter of post-Ashkenazi and post-cantorial Jewish music raised by Debbie Friedman and her followers awoke great resentment and resistance within the 1970s cantorial establishment, who passed that trauma on to their students and the next generation of cantors and educators. The 21st century represents an opportunity for cantors to emerge from this trauma and discover both the benefits and the limits of these developments for themselves.