Secular Jewish culture: Encyclopedia II - Secular Jewish culture - Literary and artistic culture

Secular Jewish culture - Literary and artistic culture

In some places where there have been relatively high concentrations of Jews, distinct secular Jewish subcultures have arisen. For example, ethnic Jews formed an enormous proportion of the literary and artistic life of Vienna, Austria at the end of the 19th century, or of New York City 50 years later (and Los Angeles in the mid-late 20th century), and for the most part these were not particularly religious people. In general, however, Jewish artistic culture in various periods reflected the culture in which they lived.

Secular Jewish culture - Literature

Jewish authors have both created a unique Jewish literature and contributed to the national literatures of many of the countries in which they live. Though not strictly secular, the Yiddish works of authors like Shalom Aleichem (whose collected works amounted to 28 volumes) and Isaac Bashevis Singer (winner of the 1978 Nobel Prize), form their own canon, focusing on the Jewish experience in both Eastern Europe, and in America. In the United States, Jewish writers like Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, and many others are considered among the greatest American authors, and incorporate a distinctly secular Jewish view into many of their works. Other famous Jewish authors that made contributions to world literature include Heinrich Heine, German poet, Isaac Babel, Russian author, and Franz Kafka, of Prague.

Secular Jewish culture - Theatre

The Ukrainian Jew Abraham Goldfaden founded the first professional Yiddish-language theatre troupe in Iaşi, Romania in 1876. The next year, his troupe achieved enormous success in Bucharest. Within a decade, Goldfaden and others brought Yiddish theater to Ukraine, Russia, Poland, Germany, New York City, and other cities with significant Ashkenazaic populations. Between 1890 and 1940, over a dozen Yiddish theatre groups existed in New York City alone, performing original plays, musicals, and Yiddish translations of theatrical works and opera. Perhaps the most famous of Yiddish-language plays is The Dybbuk (1919) by S. Ansky.

Yiddish theater in New York in the early 20th Century rivalled English-language theater in quantity and often surpassed it in quality. A 1925 New York Times article remarks, "…Yiddish theater… is now a stable American institution and no longer dependent on immigration from Eastern Europe. People who can neither speak nor write Yiddish attend Yiddish stage performances and pay Broadway prices on Second Avenue." This article also mentions other aspects of a New York Jewish cultural life "in full flower" at that time, among them the fact that the extensive New York Yiddish-language press of the time included seven daily newspapers. [Melamed, 1925]

In fact, however, the next generation of American Jews spoke mainly English to the exclusion of Yiddish; they brough the artistic energy of Yiddish theater into the American theatrical mainstream, but usually in a less specifically Jewish form.

Yiddish theater also played a prominent role in the arts scene of the Soviet Union until Stalin's 1948 reversal in government policy toward the Jews.

Yiddish theatre fed into the mainstream of American stage and film acting: the method acting of Konstantin Stanislavski found its way to America through Jacob Adler; Adler's daughter Stella and son Luther were instrumental in the Group Theatre, two of whose three founders were also Jews. The list of Stella Adler's and Group Theatre founder Lee Strasberg's students, mostly Gentiles, reads like a Who's Who of American acting: Marlon Brando, Jill Clayburgh, James Dean, Robert DeNiro, Paul Newman, Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino, and Eva Marie Saint, to name just a few. Similarly, what Jewish composer John Kander calls an "interesting phenomenon that Broadway musical composers like Jerome Kern, George Gershwin and Marc Blitzstein are predominantly Jewish" comes from "the tradition established from New York's Yiddish theater" [5].

Not only have "Jewish composers and lyricists always dominated Broadway musicals" [6] in New York City, but they were instrumental in the creation and development of genre of musical theatre and earlier forms of theatrical entertainment, as well as contributing to non-musical theatre in the United States. According to University of Toronto English professor Andrea Most,

Almost all the American musicals in the 20th century were written by Jews and... the most compelling reason for this is that the musical offers a lot of strategies for exploring and performing new identities theatrically... the musical theater exists because of the unique historical situation of the Jews who created it" [7] [8].

Brandeis University Professor Stephen J. Whitfield has commented that "More so than behind the screen, the talent behind the stage was for over half a century virtually the monopoly of one ethnic group. That is... [a] feature which locates Broadway at the center of Jewish culture" [9]. New York University Professor Laurence Maslon says that "There would be no American musical without Jews... Their influence is corollary to the influence of black musicians on jazz; there were as many Jews involved in the form" [10]. Likewise, in the analysis of Aaron Kula, director of The Klezmer Company,

"...the Jewish experience has always been best expressed by music, and Broadway has always been an integral part of the Jewish-American experience... The difference is that one can expand the definition of "Jewish Broadway" to include an interdisciplinary roadway with a wide range of artistic activities packed onto one avenue--theatre, opera, symphony, ballet, publishing companies, choirs, synagogues and more. This vibrant landscape reflects the life, times and creative output of the Jewish-American artist" [11].

In the 19th and early 20th centuries the European operetta, a precursor the musical, often featured the work of Jewish composers such as Paul Abraham, Leo Ascher, Edmund Eysler, Leo Fall, Bruno Granichstaedten, Jacques Offenbach, Emmerich Kalman, Sigmund Romberg, Oscar Straus and Rudolf Friml; the latter four eventually moved to the United States and produced their works on the New York stage. One of the librettists for Bizet's Carmen (not an operetta proper but rather a work of the earlier opera comique form) was the Jewish Ludovic Halévy, niece of composer Fromental Halévy (Bizet himself was not Jewish but he married the elder Halevy's daughter, many have suspected that he was the descendant of Jewish converts to Christianity, and others have noticed Jewish-sounding intervals in his music [12]). The Viennese librettist Victor Leon summarized the connection of Jewish composers and writers with the form of operetta: "The audience for operetta wants to laugh beneath tears—and that is exactly what Jews have been doing for the last two thousand years since the destruction of Jerusalem" [13]. Another factor in the evolution of musical theatre was vaudeville, and during the early 20th century the form was explored and expanded by Jewish comedians and actors such as Jack Benny, Fanny Brice, Eddie Cantor, The Marx Brothers, Anna Held, Al Jolson, Molly Picon, Sophie Tucker and Ed Wynn. During the period when Broadway was monopolized by revues and similar entertainments, Jewish producer Florenz Ziegfeld dominated the theatrical scene with his Follies.

While the modern musical can best be described as a fusion of operetta, earlier American entertainment and African-American culture and music, as well as Jewish culture and music, the actual authors of the first "book musicals" were the Jewish Jerome Kern, Oscar Hammerstein II, George and Ira Gershwin, George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind. From that time until the 1980s a vast majority of successful musical theatre composers, lyricists, and book-writers were Jewish (a notable exception is the Protestant Cole Porter, who acknowledged that the reason he was so successful on Broadway was that he wrote what he called "Jewish music") [14]. Rodgers and Hammerstein, Frank Loesser, Lerner and Loewe, Stephen Sondheim, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Schwartz, Kander and Ebb and dozens of others during the "Golden Age" of musical theatre were Jewish. Since the Tony Award for Best Original Score was instituted in 1947, approximately 70% of nominees and 60% of winners were Jewish. Of successful British and French musical writers both in the West End and Broadway, Claude-Michel Schönberg and Lionel Bart are Jewish, among others. The ranks of prominent Jewish producers, directors, designers and performers include Boris Aronson, David Belasco, Joel Grey, the Minskoff family, Zero Mostel, Joseph Papp, Mandy Patinkin, the Nederlander family, Harold Prince, Max Reinhardt, Jerome Robbins, the Shubert family and Julie Taymor.

Many Jewish composers, lyricists, and playwrights used the Broadway musical to explore issues relating to assimilation, the acceptance of the outsider in society, the racial situation in the United States, the overcoming of obstacles through perserverance, and other topics pertinent to Jewish Americans and Western Jews in general, often using subtle and disguised stories to get this point across [15]. For example, Kern, Rodgers, Hammerstein, the Gershwins, Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg wrote musicals and operas aiming to normalize societal toleration of minorities and urging racial harmony; these works included Show Boat, Porgy and Bess, Finian's Rainbow, South Pacific and the The King and I. Towards the end of Golden Age, writers also began to openly and overtly tackle Jewish subjects and issues, such as Fiddler on the Roof and Rags; Bart's Blitz! also tackles relations between Jews and Gentiles. Jason Robert Brown and Alfred Uhry's Parade is a sensitive exploration of both anti-Semitism and historical American racism. The original concept that became West Side Story was set in the Lower East Side during Easter-Passover celebrations; the rival gangs were to be Jewish and Italian Catholic. [16]

Jewish playwrights have also contributed to non-musical drama and theatre, both Broadway and regional. Edna Ferber, Moss Hart, Lillian Hellman, Arthur Miller and Neil Simon are only some of the prominent Jewish playwrights in American theatrical history. Approximately 21% of the plays and musicals that have won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama were written and composed by Jewish Americans.

From their Emancipation to World War II, Jews were very active and sometimes even dominant in certain forms of European theatre, and after the Holocaust many Jews continued to that cultural form. For example, in pre-Nazi Germany, where Nietzsche asked "What good actor of today is not Jewish?", acting, directing and writing positions were often filled by Jews; controversial psychologist Kevin B. MacDonald has reported that in Berlin 80% of theatrical directors were Jewish and 75% of plays produced were by Jewish playwrights [17]. "In Imperial Berlin, Jewish artists could be found in the forefront of the performing arts, from high drama to more popular forms like cabaret and revue, and eventually film. Jewish audiences patronized innovative theater, regardless of whether they approved of what they saw, [18]" Writer Paul Johnson, commenting on Jewish contributions to European culture at the fin de siècle, writes that

The area where Jewish influence was strongest was the theatre, especially in Berlin. Playwrights like Carl Sternheim, Arthur Schnitzler, Ernst Toller, Erwin Piscator, Walter Hasenclever, Ferenc Molnar and Carl Zuckmayer, and influential producers like Max Reinhardt, appeared at times to dominate the stage, which tended to be modishly left-wing, pro-republican, experimental and sexually daring. But it was certainly not revolutionary, and it was cosmopolitan rather than Jewish. ^[19]

Jews also made similar, if not as massive, contributions to theatre and drama in Austria, Britain, France, and Russia (in the national languages of those countries). Jews in Vienna, Paris and German cities found cabaret both a popular and effective means of expression, as German cabaret in the Weimar Republic "was mostly a Jewish art form" [20]. The involvement of Jews in Central European theatre was halted during the rise of the Nazis and the purging of Jews from cultural posts, though many emigrated to Western Europe or the United States and continued working there.

The earliest known Hebrew drama was written around 1550 by a Jewish-Italian writer from Mantua [21]. A few works were written by rabbis and Kabbalists, in 17th century Amsterdam, where Jews were relatively free from persecution and had both flourishing religious and secular Jewish cultures [22]. All of these early Hebrew plays were about Biblical or mystical subjects, often in the form of Talmudic parables. During the post-Emancipation period in 19th century Europe, many Jews translated great European plays such as those by Shakespeare, Molière and Schiller, giving the characters Jewish names and transplanting the plot and setting to within a Jewish context.

Modern Hebrew theatre and drama, however, began with the development of Modern Hebrew in Europe (the first Hebrew theatrical professional performance was in Moscow in 1918) [23] and was "closely linked with the Jewish national renaissance movement of the twentieth century. The historical awareness and the sense of primacy which accompanied the Hebrew theatre in its early years dictated the course of its artistic and aesthetic development" [24]. These traditions were soon transplanted to Israel. Playwrights such as Natan Alterman, Hayyim Nahman Bialik, Leah Goldberg, Ephraim Kishon, Hanoch Levin, Aharon Megged, Moshe Shamir, Avraham Shlonsky, Yehoshua Sobol and A. B. Yehoshua have written Hebrew-language plays. Themes that are obviously common in these works are the Holocaust, the Arab-Israeli conflict, the meaning of Jewishness, and contemporary secular-religious tensions within Jewish Israel. The most well-known Hebrew theatre company and Israel's national theatre is the Habima (meaning "the stage" in Hebrew), which was formed in 1913 in Lithuania, and re-established in 1917 in Russia; another prominent Israeli theatre company is the Cameri Theatre, which is "is Israel's first and leading repertory theatre" [25].

Secular Jewish culture - Film

In the era when Yiddish theatre was still a major force in the world of theatre, over 100 films were made in Yiddish. Many are now lost. Prominent films included Shulamith (1931), the first Yiddish musical on film His Wife's Lover (1931), A Daughter of Her People (1932), the anti-Nazi film The Wandering Jew (1933), The Yiddish King Lear (1934), Shir Hashirim (1935), the biggest Yiddish film hit of all time Yidl Mitn Fidl (1936), Where Is My Child? (1937), Green Fields (1937), Dybuk (1937), The Singing Blacksmith (1938), Tevye (1939), Mirele Efros (1939), Lang ist der Weg (1948), and God, Man and Devil (1950).

The roster of Jewish entrepreneurs in the English-language American film industry is legendary: Samuel Goldwyn, Louis B. Mayer, the Warner Brothers, David O. Selznick, Marcus Loew, and Adolph Zukor, to name just a few, and continuing into recent times with such industry giants as super-agent Lew Wasserman, Steven Spielberg, and David Geffen. However, few of these brought a specifically Jewish sensibility either to the art of film or, with the sometime exception of Spielberg, to their choice of subject matter. A much more specifically Jewish sensibility can be seen in the films of the Marx Brothers, Mel Brooks, or Woody Allen; other examples of specifically Jewish films from the Hollywood film industry are the Barbra Streisand vehicle Yentl (1983), or John Frankenheimer's The Fixer (1968).

Jewish film composers have also written scores to a large amount of the great films of the 20th century. Among the most profilic have been Elmer Bernstein, Danny Elfman, Elliot Goldenthal, Jerry Goldsmith, Bernard Herrmann, James Horner, Alan Menken, Alfred Newman, Miklós Rózsa, Lalo Schifrin, the Sherman Brothers, Howard Shore, Max Steiner, and Dimitri Tiomkin.

Secular Jewish culture - Radio and Television

The first radio chains, the Radio Corporation of America and the Columbia Broadcasting System, were created by the Jewish-American David Sarnoff and William Paley, respectively. These Jewish innovators were also among the first producers of televisions, both black-and-white and color. ^[26] Among the Jewish immigrant communities of America there was also a thriving Yiddish language radio, with its "golden age" from the 1930s to the 1950s.

Although there is little specifically Jewish television in the United States (National Jewish Television, largely religious, broadcasts only three hours a week), Jews have been involved in American television from its earliest days. From Sid Caesar and Milton Berle to Joan Rivers, Gilda Radner, and Andy Kaufman to Billy Crystal and Jerry Seinfeld, Jewish stand-up comedians have been icons of American television. Other Jews that held a prominent role in early radio and television were Eddie Cantor, Al Jolson, Jack Benny, Walter Winchell and David Susskind. In the analysis of Paul Johnson,

The Broadway musical, radio and TV were all examples of a fundamental principle in Jewish diaspora history: Jews opening up a completely new field in bsiness and culture, a tabula rasa on which to set their mark, before other interests had a chance to take possession, erect guild or professional fortifications and deny them entry.^[27]

One of the first televised situation comedies, The Goldbergs was set in a specifically Jewish milieu in the Bronx. While the overt Jewish milieu of The Goldbergs was unusual for an American television series—one of the few other examples being Brooklyn Bridge (1991–1993). Jews have also played an enormous role among the creators and writers of television comedies: Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, Selma Diamond, Larry Gelbart, Carl Reiner,and Neil Simon all wrote for Sid Caesar; Reiner's son Rob Reiner worked with Norman Lear on All in the Family (which often engaged anti-semitism and other issues of prejudice); Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld created the hit sitcom Seinfeld, Lorne Michaels, Al Franken, Rosie Shuster, and Alan Zweibel of Saturday Night Live breathed new life into the variety show in the 1970s.

Secular Jewish culture - Music

Jewish musical contributions also tend to reflect the cultures of the countries in which Jews live, the most notable examples being classical and popular music in the United States and Europe. Some music, however, was unique to particular Jewish communities, such as klezmer in Eastern Europe.

While the below two sections address instances in which Jews have contributed musically using originally non-Jewish forms or the forms used by the mainstream culture, Ashkenazi/Yiddish (klezmer), Sephardic, Mizrahi and Israeli Folk music are examples of genres of music that are secular but yet Jewish in their form.

Before Emancipation, virtually all Jewish music in Europe was sacred music, with the exception of the performances of klezmorim during weddings and other occassions. The result was a lack of a Jewish presence in European classical music until the 19th century, with a very few exceptions, normally enabled by specific aristocratic protection, such as Salamone Rossi and Claude Daquin (the work of the former is considered the beginning of "Jewish art music") [28]. Although during the Classical period small numbers of Jewish composers were present in Amsterdam, Southern France and Italy, the vast majority of Jewish classical composers were active during the Romantic period (following the French Revolution) and even more so in the 20th century [29]. Paul Johnson summarizes the dynamics of this cultural pattern:

The Jewish musical tradition, for instance, was for older than anyone else's in Europe. Music remained an element in Jewish services, and the cantor was almost as pivotal a figure in local Jewish society as the rabbi. But Jewish musicians, except as converts, had played no part in European musical development. Hence the entry, in considerable numbers, of Jewish composers and performers on the musical scene in the middle decades of the nineteenth century was a phenomenon, and a closely observed one.^[30]

Despite this later trend, however, it should be noted that the origin of Gregorian chant, which was the earliest manifestation of European classical music, was Jewish choral music of the Temple and synagogue, according to large number of analytical liturgists [31] and music historians [32].

After Jews were admitted to mainstream society in England (gradually after their return in the 17th century), France, Austria-Hungary, the German Empire, and Russia (in that order), the Jewish contribution to the European music scene steadily increased, but in the form of mainstream European music, not specifically Jewish music. Notable examples of Jewish Romantic composers (by country) are Charles-Valentin Alkan, Paul Dukas and Fromental Halevy from France, Josef Dessauer, Karl Goldmark and Gustav Mahler from Bohemia (most Austrian Jews during this time were native not to what is today Austria but the outer provinces of the Empire), Felix Mendelssohn and Giacomo Meyerbeer from Germany, and Anton and Nikolai Rubinstein from Russia. Singers included John Braham and Giuditta Pasta. There were very many notable Jewish violin and pianist virtuosi, including Joseph Joachim, Ferdinand David, Carl Tausig, Henri Herz, Leopold Auer, Jascha Heifetz, and Ignaz Moscheles. During the 20th century the number of Jewish composers and notable instrumentalists increased, as did their geographical distribution. Jewish composers were most heavily concentrated in Vienna and other cities in pre-Nazi Austria and Germany. During the late 19th century and early 20th century, after Jews moved out of the Austrian-Hungarian provinces into Vienna, they "comprised a third of the students of the city’s conservatories and more than half of its music audiences. Jewish children acquired musical instruction at rates exceeding three times that of the non-Jewish population [33]. Beyond Vienna, Jews were also to a certain extent prominent in Paris and New York (the latter's Jewish population being heavily multiplied by waves of immigration). During the rise of the Nazis in the 1930s, when works by Jews were labelled as degenerate music (not only because of the Jewish origins of the composers but also their association with Modernism), many European Jewish composers emigrated to the United States and Argentina, strengthening classical music in those countries. Sample Jewish 20th-century composers include Arnold Schoenberg and Alexander von Zemlinsky from Austria, Hanns Eisler and Kurt Weill from Germany, Viktor Ullmann and Jaromír Weinberger from Bohemia and later the Czech Republic (the former perished at the Auschwitz extermination camps), George Gershwin and Aaron Copland from the United States, Darius Milhaud and Alexandre Tansman from France, Alfred Schnittke and Lera Auerbach from Russia, Lalo Schifrin and Mario Davidovsky from Argentina and Paul Ben-Haim and Shulamit Ran from Israel.

There are some genres and forms of classical music that Jewish composers have been associated with, including notably during the Romantic period French Grand Opera. The most prolific composers of this genre included Giacomo Meyerbeer, Fromental Halévy, and the later Jacques Offenbach; Halevy's La Juive was based on Scribe's libretto very loosely connected to the Jewish experience. While little-known today, this "work by a Jewish composer in which anti-Semitism is a motivating force" was an extremely potent influence on late Romantic composers from Mahler (who took the story of anti-Semitism and assimilation personally, also calling it "one of the very greatest works ever written" [34]) to (ironically) the anti-Semitic Wagner [35]. In the 20th century, Jewish composers were pioneers of avant-garde and contemporary music. Arnold Schoenberg in his middle and later periods devised the twelve-tone technique and was a primary advocate of atonality, a system of composition which was laster used by Jewish composers Paul Dessau and René Leibowitz. George Rochberg and Milton Babbitt were leading composers in the school of serialism, Steve Reich and Philip Glass worked with minimalism, George Perle devised his own form of twelve-tone tonality, Leo Ornstein helped develop the tone cluster, Morton Feldman and Armand Lunel were noted composers of chance music (the latter is also considered the inventor of spatialization, and Mario Davidovsky was famous for writing a series of compositions mixing acoustic and electronic music. In addition, Lera Auerbach, Alfred Schnittke and John Zorn have worked with Polystylism and other forms of Postmodern music, and Modernist Miriam Gideon combined atonalism and Jewish folk motives in her pieces.

While orchestral and operatic music works by Jewish composers would in general be considered secular, many Jewish (as well as non-Jewish) composers have incorporated Jewish themes and motives into their music. Sometimes this is done covertly, such as the klezmer band music that many critics and observers believe lies in the third movement of Mahler's Symphony No. 1, and this type of Jewish reference was most common during the 19th century when openly displaying one's Jewishness would most likely hamper a Jew's chances at assimilation. During the 20th century, however, many Jewish composers wrote music with direct Jewish references and themes, e.g. David Amram (Symphony – "Songs of the Soul"), Leonard Bernstein (Kaddish Symphony, Chichester Psalms), Ernest Bloch (Schelomo), Arnold Schoenberg (see below), Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (Violin Concerto no. 2) Kurt Weill (The Eternal Road) and Hugo Weisgall (Psalm of the Instant Dove). However, even during the 20th century some Jewish composers often quoted Jewish music within non-Jewish contexts; for example, Gershwin used liturgical melodies and Hebrew songs for a few numbers in Porgy and Bess, and many also believe that the opening clarinet glissando in his Rhapsody in Blue is a reference to klezmer. Finally, many non-Jewish (mostly, but not all, Russian) composers have composed classical music with clear Jewish themes and inspiration, such as Max Bruch (Kol Nidre), Sergei Prokofiev (Overture on Hebrew Themes), Maurice Ravel (Chanson Hebraique in Yiddish, Deux Melodies Hebraiques - including "Kaddisch" in Aramaic and "Fregt di velt di alte kashe" in Yiddish) [36], Dmitri Shostakovich (Second Piano Trio, From the Jewish Folk Poetry and Symphony No. 13 "Babi Yar") [37] and Igor Stravinsky (Abraham and Isaac - used the Hebrew Masoretic text of a passage of Genesis, and was dedicated to the Jews and the State of Israel). Manyoperatic works by non-Jewish composers show a direct connection with and sympathy for the Jewish people and history, like Saint-Saëns' Samson and Delilah (incidentally, Saint-Saëns' composition teacher was Halevy) and Verdi's Nabucco.

In addition to composers, many Jews have been prominent music critics, music theorists and musicologists, such as Guido Adler, Leon Botstein, Eduard Hanslick, Abraham Zevi Idelsohn, Julius Korngold and Hedi Stadlen. Jewish classical performers have most frequently been violinists (as can be expected from the violin's importance in klezmer), pianists and cellists. Notable examples are Isaac Stern, Vladimir Ashkenazy and Leonard Rose, respectively. It has been observed that "Of the one hundred leading virtuoso performers of the twentieth century... approximately two-thirds of the violinists, half the cellists, and forty percent of the pianists were, or are, Jews" [38]. Beginning with Gustav Mahler and most frequently today, Jewish conductors have also been prominent, with many like Leonard Bernstein achieving international stature. As of January 2006, the principal music directors of the American Symphony Orchestra, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra/Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra , Boston Symphony Orchestra/Metropolitan Opera, Chicago Symphony Orchestra/Berlin State Opera, National Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Pittsburgh Symphony Pops Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony and Tonhalle Orchestra (in Zurich) are of Jewish descent (respectively Leon Botstein, Mariss Jansons,James Levine, Daniel Barenboim, Leonard Slatkin, Lorin Maazel, Marvin Hamlisch, Michael Tilson Thomas and David Zinman); furthermore, "of the one hundred leading conductors of the twentieth century... approximately one-fourth were, or are, Jews" [39]. A few notable cantors also worked as opera singers, such as Jan Peerce and Richard Tucker.

Research regarding the Jewish identity of composers usually centers around the assimilated German-speaking Felix Mendelssohn and Gustav Mahler; the former, although the grandson of the most famous philosopher of the Haskalah, was baptized and raised as a Lutheran, and the latter converted to Roman Catholicism in order to remove his most powerful obstacle to success (anti-Semitism) in musical Vienna. While in both cases the conversion was made in order to assimilate with European Christian society and therefore leave persecution in favor of prosperity, Mendelssohn wrote overtly and unapologetically Christian music (Symphony No. 5 "Reformation", St. Paul Oratorio and numerous chamber and other vocal pieces), and on one occassion he even changed his appearance in order to avoid looking like related Jewish composer Meyerbeer. Mahler also wrote Christian-inspired music in the fifth movement of the Second Symphony (although this highly spiritual piece has also been interpreted as fundamentally Jewish at its core [40]), the fifth movement of the Third Symphony, the fourth movement of the Fourth Symphony and his Eigth Symphony.

However, the issue in both cases is not so simple: although his father urged him to drop the name "Mendelssohn" in concert programs to purge any reference to his Jewish past, Felix "retained the name... despite his father's protests, and though undoubtedly a sincere Lutheran, retained a respect for his Jewish history. His professional and social success may have emboldened him to be more forthrightly pro-Jewish than other converts" [41]. Mahler wrote what have been percieved as Jewish references in his works, including klezmer-like passages in the third movement of the First Symphony and first movement of the Third; in addition, the previously mentioned fifth movement of the Second Symphony includes a passage that many believe imitates shofar blasts with a programmatic text resembling the Unetanneh Tokef prayer.

The most compelling reason why Mendelssohn and Mahler are commonly considered Jewish composers are because they have been repeatedly identified as such both by anti-Semites and Jews. In both cases contemporaries (respectively, Richard Wagner in his Das Judenthum in der Musik, and the virulent Vienna press and Austrian anti-Semites such as Rudolph Louis [42]) argued that no matter how much the composer in question attempted to pass himself off as a good Austrian/German and a good Christian, he and his music would remain fundamentally and unalterably Jewish (in the context, with an obviously negative connotation). Therefore, when Nazi Germany suppressed what they considered "degenerate music", both Mendelssohn and Mahler were banned as Jewish composers; they were contrasted with "good" German composers like Beethoven, Bruckner and Wagner [43] (it should be noted, to a lesser degree concerning Wagner and Bruckner but most especially in the case of Beethoven, that the fact that the Nazi propagandists claimed that deceased, and therefore unable to object composers are personifications of their ideology does not mean that they would have approved of such a label). The claim of "fundamental Jewishness" was repeated, but with a completely opposite meaning, by 20th century Jews like Leonard Bernstein (regarding Mahler), who viewed that the dual Jewishness and success of the composers is something to be championed and celebrated [44]. A persuasive argument to the Jewishness of Mahler comes from his wife, Alma Mahler:

He [Gustav] was not a man who ever deceived himself, and he knew that people would not forget he was a Jew.... Nor did he wish it forgotten.... He never denied his Jewish origin. Rather he emphasized it. ^[45]

Regarding Wagner himself, it often seems ironic to some that many of the most influential and popular interpreters of his work have been Jewish conductors such as the aforementioned Mahler and Bernstein, as well as Daniel Barenboim, Arthur Fiedler, Asher Fisch, Otto Klemperer, Erich Leinsdorf, James Levine, Hermann Levi (who was chosen by Wagner to conduct the premiere of Parsifal [46]), Lorin Maazel, Arthur Nikisch, Eugene Ormandy, Fritz Reiner, Sir George Solti, George Szell and Bruno Walter. It has been noted that there is a "love of contemporary Jewish conductors for Wagner" [47]. While much has been written about Wagner's anti-Semitism in his writings and music, and the Nazi appropriation of his music, research in recent years has analyzed the possibility that Wagner was himself of Jewish ancestry, and explored Wagner's interaction with and attitude towards the Jews through a multi-sided perspective [48] [49].

Much less complex and disputed is the Jewishness of Arnold Schoenberg. Although he was brought up as a Catholic and converted to Protestantism in 1898, during the rise of the Nazis in 1933 he openly embraced and returned to Judaism. The result was a number of later works dealing with Judaism and the Holocaust, such as A Survivor from Warsaw, Kol Nidre and Moses und Aron. During this time Schoenberg also began to concern himself with the historical situation of the Jewish people in his essays and other writings.

Despite the three above examples, a majority of Jewish artists and intellectuals in Austria, Germany and France during the 19th century and early 20th century assimilated culturally either by keeping the Jewish religion but living a mainstream European lifestyle (as Moses Mendelssohn had wished in earlier decades) or renouncing religion in favor of secularism, but retained at least the identification of Jewishness. It is the dual existence of people who disassociated themselves with Judaism yet remained affiliated with the Jewish people, and those who wished to retain the Jewish religion but eliminate any distinct Jewish culture by blending into Gentile society in this region and period (as opposed to Eastern Europe at the same time, where both the Jewish peoplehood and religion were perserved) that show the complexities of both Judaism and secular Jewish culture.

Jews have also contributed to popular music, primarily in the United States (and, obviously, in Israel), and in some specific forms of popular music have become or are dominant. This is true to a lesser extent in Europe, but it should be noted that some of the first influential Jewish popular musicians in the US were actually natives of Europe, such as Irving Berlin, Kurt Weill and Sigmund Romberg. The most visible early forms of American popular music in which Jews have contributed are the popular song and musical theater. Approximately half of the members of the Songwriters Hall of Fame are Jewish [50]. However, the latter especially has been dominated by Jewish composers and lyricists throughout its history and to a certain extent still today.

While Jazz is primarily an African-American art form, many Jewish musicians have contributed to it including clarinetists Benny Goodman, Mezz Mezzrow and Artie Shaw, saxophonists Michael Brecker, Paul Desmond, Kenny G, Stan Getz, Benny Green, Lee Konitz, Ronnie Scott and Zoot Sims, trumpeters and cornetists Randy Brecker, Ruby Braff, Red Rodney and Shorty Rogers, vibraphonist Terry Gibbs, drummer Victor Feldman and singers and pianists Billy Joel, Al Jolson, Ben Sidran, Mel Tormé and Harry Connick, Jr.. Some artists such as Harry Kandel were famous for mixing Jazz with klezmer, and others like Flora Purim have worked with Latin jazz and Jazz fusion. Since a great deal of Jazz music consisted of musical cooperation of Jewish and African-American musicians or black musicians funded by Jewish producers, the art form became "the racist's worst nightmare" [51].

Although the early rock and roll performers were mostly either African Americans or Southern Whites, Jewish songwriters played a key role: Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, Carol King and Gerry Goffin, Neil Diamond, Neil Sedaka, and nearly all of the other Brill Building songwriters were Jewish, as was Phil Spector. With the mid-1960s rise of the singer-songwriter, some (King, Diamond, Sedaka) became performers; others (such as Burt Bacharach) managed to continue to work primarily as songwriters. In the rock era, Jewish musicians were by no means dominant, but many worked with a mix of folk and rock forms, including Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Simon and Garfunkel; more purely on the rock side are David Lee Roth, Lenny Kravitz, and all three Beastie Boys. Today Jews have begun to experiment with forms such as reggae and rap, and artists such as Matisyahu have used forms of secular culture to express religious ideas.

"Popular" music in Europe during the early 20th century would have been considered to be lighter classical forms such as operetta and entertainments like cabaret, and in these Jewish involvement was very large, especially in Vienna and Paris. Probably the most notable ethnically Jewish composer of operettas was Jacques Offenbach, a Roman Catholic convert; in the second half of the 20th century, Serge Gainsbourg's was one of the dominant figures in the evolution of cabaret music. During the more recent period with its different definition of popular music, Jews have to a lesser extent still contributed, such as band musicians in Britain and songwriters in France. Perhaps the most notable Jewish rock musician in the UK was Marc Bolan of T. Rex.

Popular music in Israel has also a been medium for Jewish secular musical expression. Many Israeli secular musicians explore topics such as the Jewish and Israeli people, Zionism and nationalism, agriculture and the land of Israel, and the Arab-Israeli conflict. Israeli popular music for the most part uses borrowed American forms like rock and alternative rock, pop, heavy metal, hip hop, rap and trance. In addition to these and classical music, Israel is host to a wealth of styles of Mizrahi music, featuring the influences and contributions of Arab, Yemenite, Greek and Ethiopian Jews.

Secular Jewish culture - Dance

Deriving from Biblical traditions, dance had long been used by Jews as a medium for the expression of joy and other communal emotions. Each Jewish diasporic community developed its own dance traditions for wedding celebrations and other distinguished events. For Ashkenazi Jews in Eastern Europe, for example, dances, whose names corresponded to the different forms of klezmer music that were played, were an obvious staple of the wedding ceremony of the shtetl. Jewish dances both were influenced by surrounding Gentile traditions and Jewish sources preserved over time. "Nevertheless the Jews practiced a corporeal expressive language that was highly differentiated from that of the non-Jewish peoples of their neighborhood, mainly through motions of the hands and arms, with more intricate legwork by the younger men." [52] In general, however, in most religiosly traditional communities, members of the opposite sex dancing together or dancing at times other than at these events was frowned upon.

Israel folk dancing, first developed by early immigrants to the Land of Israel in the 20th century, "reflects the life of a people returning to its own land." [53] The hora is the name of a circle dance in Israel and other countries. (This same name applies to the circle dance that is the national dance of Romania.) In Yemen, where Jews were banned from dancing publicly, forms of dance evolved that are based on stationary hopping and posturing, such as can be done in a confined space.

Jews have made important and vital contributions to ballet and contemporary dance in the Europe, United States and Israel, as well as musical theatre dance in the former. In Russia and France, the Ballets Russes was, according to Paul Johnson, "primarily a Jewish creation" ^[54]. In Israel both Jewish immigrants from France and other European countries and native born Jews have established a vibrant art dance scene, incluing the popular and influential Israel Ballet. This company features both native-born Israelis and emigrants from the former Soviet Union. Contemporary dance in Israel derives from both Israeli Folk dance and European influences, and is featured in the popular Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company, Inbal Dance Theater, Bat-Dor Dance Company and Batsheva Dance Company. In the United States Jerome Robbins, Anna Sokolow, Michael Bennett, Michael Kidd, Ron Field, Helen Tamiris and Pearl Lang have been successful and leading forces in Broadway dance, ballet, and contemporary dance, and to a certain extent social dance. Jewish ballet impresario Lincoln Kirstein either founded or helped found the School of American Ballet, The American Ballet and the New York City Ballet.

Secular Jewish culture - Humor

See main article Jewish humor

Secular Jewish culture - Visual arts

Compared to music or theater, there is less of a specifically Jewish tradition in the visual arts. The most likely and accepted reason is that, as has been previously shown with Jewish music and literature, before Emancipation Jewish culture was dominated by religious tradition. As most Rabbinical authorities believed that the Second Commandment prohibited much visual art that would qualify as "graven images", Jewish artists were relatively rare until they lived in assimilated European communities beginning in the late 18th century [55] [56]. It should be noted however, that despite fears by early religious communities of art being used for idolatrous purposes, Jewish sacred art is recorded in the Tanakh and extends throughout Jewish Antiquity and the Middle Ages. The Tabernacle and the two Temples in Jerusalem form the first known examples of "Jewish art". During the first centuries of the Common Era, Jewish religious art also was created in regions surrounding the Mediterranean such as Syria and Greece, including frescoes on the walls of synagogues [57], as well as the Jewish catacombs in Rome [58] [59]. Middle Age Rabbinical and Kabbalistic literature also contain textual and graphic art. However, in the ghettos of Europe it was even illegal for Jews to create art [60]. Johnson again summarizes this sudden change from small amount of participation of Jews in art (as in many other arts) to a large entry of Jews into this branch of European cultural life:

Again, the arrival of the Jewish artist was a strange phenomenon. It is true that, over the centuries, there had been many animals (though few humans) in Jewish art: lions on Torah curtains, owls on Judaic coins, animals on the Capernaum capitals, birds on the rim of the fountain-basis in the fifth-century Naro synagogue in Tunis; there were carved animals, too, on timber synagogues in eastern Europe - indeed the Jewish wood-carver was the prototype of the modern Jewish plastic artist. A book of Yiddish folk-ornament, printed at Vitebsk in 1920, was similar to Chagall's own bestiary. But the resistance of pious Jews to portraying the living image was still strong at the beginning of the twentieth century. ^[61]

Jewish secular art, therefore, just like Jewish participation in European classical music, did not really appear until after Emancipation and escalated during the rise of Modernism in the 20th century. There were many Jewish artists in the 19th century, but Jewish artistic activity boomed during the end of World War I. According to Nadine Nieszawer, "Until 1905, Jews were always plunged into their books but from the first Russian Revolution, they became emancipated, committed themselves in politics and became artists. A real Jewish cultural rebirth" [62]. Individual Jews figured in the modern artistic movements of Europe— Art Deco (Tamara de Lempicka), Bauhaus (Mordecai Ardon, László Moholy-Nagy), Constructivism (Boris Aronson, El Lissitzky), Cubism (Nathan Altman, Jacques Lipchitz, Louis Marcoussis, Max Weber, Ossip Zadkine), Expressionism (Erich Kahn, Jack Levine, Jules Pascin, Chaim Soutine), Impressionism (Max Liebermann, Leonid Pasternak, Camille Pissarro), Minimalism (Frank Stella), Orphism (Sonia Delaunay), Realism (Raphael Soyer), Social Realism (Leon Bibel, Raphael Soyer), Surrealism (Victor Brauner, Marc Chagall, Méret Oppenheim and Man Ray), the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism (Arik Brauer, Ernst Fuchs) and Vorticism (David Bomberg, Jacob Epstein), as well as some not necessarily affiliated with a single movement (Balthus, Eduard Bendemann, Mark Gertler, Maurycy Gottlieb, Nahum Gutman, Menashe Kadishman, Moise Kisling, R. B. Kitaj, Mane-Katz, Isidor Kaufman, Michel Kikoine, Pinchus Kremegne, Amedeo Modigliani, Elie Nadelman, Felix Nussbaum, Charlotte Salomon, Boris Schatz, George Segal, Anna Ticho, William Rothenstein)— and have been particularly prominent in the post-World War II United States and UK— Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach, the minimalist Richard Serra, pop artist Roy Lichtenstein and Judy Chicago.

During the early 20th century Jews figured particularly prominently in the Montparnasse movement, and after World War II among the abstract expressionists: Helen Frankenthaler, Adolph Gottlieb, Philip Guston, Al Held, Franz Kline, Lee Krasner, Barnett Newman, Milton Resnick and Mark Rothko, as well as the Postmodernists [63]. Many Russian Jews were prominent in the art of scenic design, particularly the aforementioned Chagall and Aronson, as well as the revolutionary Léon Bakst, who like the other two also painted. Frida Kahlo's father was Jewish, and there have been other Mexican Jewish artists like Pedro Friedeberg. Gustav Klimt was not Jewish, but nearly all of his patrons were. Among major artists Chagall may be the most specifically Jewish in his themes. But as art fades into graphic design, Jewish names and themes become more prominent: Leonard Baskin, Al Hirschfeld, Ben Shahn, Art Spiegelman and Saul Steinberg. And in the golden age of American comic books, the Jewish role was overwhelming: Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel, creators of Superman, were Jewish, as were Bob Kane (né Robert Cohen), Martin Goodman, Joe Simon, Jack Kirby, and Stan Lee of Marvel Comics; and William Gaines and Harvey Kurtzman, founders of Mad.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Literary and artistic culture", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki