The AMS-JSMSG presents a special interest group session:
“We will dance again”: Amplifying Jewish Joy in the Face of Contemporary Trauma
Thursday, November 14
7:30pm-9:30pm, Crystal, 3rd Floor, Palmer House Hotel Hilton
Featured presenters: Rachel Baum (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee), Philip V. Bohlman (University of Chicago). The session will be co-chaired by Zeke Levine (New York University) and Nicolette van den Bogerd (Indiana University). The panel will be followed by remarks from discussant Samantha Madison Cooper (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee).
On October 7, 2023, during the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah, Hamas terrorists massacred over 360 people at a music festival in Re’im, Israel. In the wake of the festival, released Israeli hostage and festival survivor Mia Schem tattooed “We will dance again 7.10.23” on her arm in a dual declaration of personal resilience and a call for a future of communal joy in the face of overwhelming violence. Invested in the place of Jewish perspectives within music studies, our panel takes Schem’s provocation as an opportunity to meditate on the sonic assertion of joy as a strategic counter to the trauma of contemporary antisemitism.
Schem’s insistence on joy as a prescription for communal strength follows similar calls from within and beyond the academy to re-prioritize joy as an expression of group pride and solidarity. We situate our discussion of “Jewish Joy” against the backdrop of recent scholarship in and beyond music studies devoted to understanding the joy of other ethno-racial groups as a powerful act of resistance in a world in which their members feel fundamentally unsafe (see Johnson 2015, Stewart 2021, Ashcroft 2022, and Combs 2023). While Jewish studies scholars have investigated the concept of “Jewish Joy” in relation to the Holocaust, Jewish lifecycle events, and the writings of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks (see Klepfisz 1986, Ehrlich 2018, and Soloveichik 2023), this panel seeks to address “Jewish Joy” in relation to music and sound.
During this session, the group will also announce the winners of the 2024 JSMSG Publication Awards.