Appeared also in Hungarian Liturgical Music II (1994-1995), 59-71.
Surveys problems in the research of Jewish music, from historical and methodological points of view, and suggests ways of improvement. It is an extract of the opening keynote address to the one of the most ecumenical congresses on Jewish music held after WWII. It delineates the future challenges of the field, with emphasis on the assembly of documentation. It does not problematize Jewish music but takes it for granted.
Samuel Adler was born in Mannheim, Germany (1928). His father was Hugo Chaim Adler, a cantor and composer. The family came to the United States in 1939, where Hugo became the cantor of Temple Emanuel in Worcester, Massachusetts. There the young Samuel Adler displayed his musical talents at an early age. He became his father’s choir director when he was only thirteen and remained at that post until he began his university studies.
Born in 1927 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Ray is the fourth generation in a family of Klezmer musicians. As a child, Ray learned to play Klezmer dance music at Jewish weddings. His parents immigrants to America from Northern Russia. From his parents, Ray inhererited a love of Eastern European Jewish music from Russia, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary.
Akiva Zimmerman was born in 1936 in Tel Aviv. He attended the Shalva Gymnasium, enlisted in the Intelligence Corps. He would also serve in the military rabbinate. Akiva Zimmerman worked as a bank employee, while devoting all his spare time to the study of chazanut.