Music in Lubavitcher Life. (Cultural Topics).

Music in Lubavitcher Life. By Ellen Koskoff. (Music in American Life.) Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2000. (225 p. ISBN 0-252-02591-1. $39.95.]

The Hasidic rebbe (spiritual tcacher) Hillel of Parichi, Byelorussia, is reputed to have said, "Whoever has no sense for music has no sense for Hasidism." Ellen Koskoff's research, conducted over a twenty-two-year period with three Lubavitcher communities, makes a major contribution to our understanding of the central role music plays in contemporary Hasidic life. Her work focuses on nigunim, "a body of paraliturgical, folk and popular melodies" repetitive in nature and sung to vocables or simple text, whose performance is understood by Lubavitchers "as a primary form of spiritual communication with the divine" (p. xi).

As a movement, Hasidism developed in seventeenth-century Poland after the bloody persecutions of the Chmielnicki massacres and the false messianic promises of Shabbetai Zevi (1626-1676) and Jacob Frank (1726-1791). The Jews of Poland and Eastern Europe flocked to this pop. ulist, revivalist movement. Hasidic worship developed as a reaction to the stress on elite scholasticism in Eastern European Jewish culture. Through sincere and intense prayer, common people could bind themselves to God (devekus) and achieve a state of spiritual ecstasy (hislahavus). Among the Hasidim, singing and dancing are important aids to prayer and religious experience.

Koskoff studies the group of Hasidim founded by Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Lyady who developed the philosophy of Habad that sought to balance mysticism with Jewish legalistic intellectualism. His disciples moved to the town of Lubavitch in Belarus, hence the name Lubavitchers. For those who are unfamiliar with Hasidim, Koskoff presents a detailed and helpful overview of Habad's philosophy and an accessible introduction to the difficult world of kabbalistic cosmology. Throughout her book, Koskoff examines how these Hasidim negotiate their relationship with modernity, addressing such issues as the return to roots movement, the women's movement, and the impact of technology upon their community. Modernization does not necessarily lead to secularization in the Lubavitcher community. In one example, a musician uses a synthesizer in his performance of nigunim to attract newcomers to the community (p. 175). In another, the rebbe's teachings are broadcast via satellite from Brooklyn literally around the world (p. 66).

A central thesis of Koskoff's book is that Lubavitcher views about nigunim and music in general are "embedded within a wide-ranging network of beliefs surrounding the nature of spirituality, of history and lineage, of gender difference, and of modernity" (p. xi). What is so impressive about her study is the manner in which she proves this thesis by drawing from so many different aspects of Hasidic life and expressive culture. She demonstrates how certain core values--devotion to the Torah, the value of ritual observance, the rise and fall inherent to spiritual search, a reverence for lineage--are essentially present in Lubavitcher musical practice. This is shown through vivid case ...