The ′ugliness′ of Jewish prayer: Voice quality as the expression of identity

Abstract

This article is based on the musical material and interviews the author collected in Hungary, France, Czechoslovakia, the USA and Israel in the course of thirty years of her fieldwork among the traditional East-Ashkenazi Jews. It relates to the aesthetic concepts of the prayer chant of the Ashkenazi Jews of East Europe (′East -Ashkenazim′) as it appears to have existed before World War II, survived in the oral tradition until the 1970s and exists sporadically up to the present.

Keywords

• Jewish prayer
• ′East -Ashkenazim′
• ′Jewishness′
• voice quality
• aesthetic of the non-beautiful
• ba’al tefillah
• sheliach tzibbur
• hazzan
• kavvanah
• Kedusha
• Avromi Tzvi Erbst
• Jenő Róth