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TODAY I'M GOING TO EXPAND ON SOME OF THE POINTS Frank touched upon in his overview of the revival, when he spoke of the variety of motivations for "reviving" klezmer to be found among performers and audiences; and I'm going to offer my own understanding of why we're doing this to begin with. I plan to look at the phenomenon of the klezmer revival from a sociological point of view, in the context of some larger trends in American Jewish life which have been emerging over the past two decades, and I'll be speaking not as a scholar presenting research (which I'm not), but as one of the participants in the phenomenon and as someone who has promoted a particular use of klezmer and direction for its future. I'll finish with my own personal klezmer manifesto.
I'm not going to try to cover all the reasons people have been drawn to klezmer, so I'm not going to talk, for example, about the fact that many musicians and listeners, both Jewish and non-Jewish, take a purely musical interest in the genre; what I'm addressing here specifically is the role of the revival in the American Jewish cultural scene.
Since the social upheavals and the ethnic-identity or "roots" movements of the 1960s and '70s, American Jews, especially young American Jews, have been looking for new ways to negotiate our Jewishness in America. Three movements in particular have emerged which address the needs of Jews who reject the assimilationist model of the previous generation, but who haven't felt an affinity for, or haven't felt satisfied by, the Israel-centered alternative, and who want to create a new, strong sense of Jewish identity and community. I'm going to try to situate the klezmer revival within the framework of these three movements.
The first two are made up of Jews who identify with the progressive left. These are people who are looking for a way of being Jewish that is consonant with their feminist, gay-positive, and other new-left values, and that does away with the social strictures of the past: that is, a way of being Jewish while still being themselves. But they come at the problem from two very different directions.
The Havurah/Jewish Renewal approach locates the social conservatism of...