Introduction

Abstract

Abstract A critical reflection on historical developments and current realities related to Jewish music studies as an emerging field that revisits the much-debated term “Jewish music” and its ideologies and contexts, asserting that Jewish music studies does not need embrace a given definition, thereby circumventing the limits of any one claim. It departs from definition of Jewish music through (surrogate) theories and proposes to understand Jewish music studies in a different way, as a complex field that takes account of all the many factors that form the context of and are indissolubly bound together in the experience of Jewish music. The chapter then continues to discuss issues of theory and methodology of Jewish music studies in the broader context of music studies and Jewish studies, including major trends. It problematizes the related issue of institutionalization. A model for Jewish music studies is then proposed that draws on the concepts of spatiality, temporality, and collectivity (rather than identity) as pillars and with the aim to veer away from previously established binaries (Jewish/non-Jewish, Sephardi/Ashkenazi, and so on). Taking space as a primary lens, it explains a prototype approach to the proposed model by way of eight spatial domains: land, city, ghetto, collection, and sacred and ritual spaces, as well as phenomenological spaces such as destruction and remembrances, as well as the shekhinah.